Encounter 11 2 05 / Recap
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Man, last night was awesome. We had 93+ students in the house and we just had a total blast. GOD is really doing some awesome things. We had a lot more people out on time tonight. Go figure! Maybe it's the time change. Whatever it was, it was cool. After last week, I decided to just fast every Wednesday. It makes a difference. A real difference. A tangible difference. There is something that happens when you say "GOD, I can't do it on my own. I've got nothing and I'm relying on you 100%." He honors that. He shows up. Yesterday was kind of a crazy day. I had planned to focus on my message all day and just really invest time into that to make it top notch, but with a long staff meeting taking a chunk of the morning, constant interruptions during the afternoon, and other different things (not youth related) that had to be set up or torn down before the service ... I found myself at 3:30 with my day gone, a 5:00 sound check quickly approaching, and a message untouched. What to do ... I sit down to write out some thoughts. I've been working out the general direction I wanted to go for the past week or so, so it was just time to get it on paper. I hear ... "Go pray." What? Are you serious? I've got to get this message together. I'll pray later at 6:30 the scheduled prayer time. "Go pray." Okay, okay. I decided to walk around the building and pray a bit. As soon as I got out there I felt like, and this will sound totally nutty, I needed to do a prayer walk around the building seven times. I was like, "Seriously, I've got to get this together for tonight. This is going to take some time. I haven't eaten anything all day! I'm going to pass out. And on top of that everyone is going to think I'm totally nuts when they see me pacing outside around the building." So I finish the 1st lap and think to myself "why not?" So I had a great time of prayer walking around the building, binding, loosing, building hedges - all that great stuff. It took a good 45 minutes. And it was well worth it. I got back into my office about 4:15 and everything just fell together nicely. Printed up my message notes at 4:59 and hit practice at 5:00. Everything just fell into place superbly. And it's all GOD. Worship was amazing. We're totally getting into GOD's presence every time. Kids are entering in. You can actually hear them singing. How amazing is that? We had a great time of prayer ministry at the conclusion of worship (something I'm praying will continue to grow). Moved onto our guest routine. Accept that there is nothing routine about it. We had at least 11 first time guests to CGEN this week. On top of all the returning guests from the past few weeks. It's really starting to fill up in there. Praise GOD! It's all Him. We bring all of our guests up front, hit the music, and the rest of the kids come up, walk through the line and introduce themselves. I absolutely love this time of the service. Actually, I think this is my favorite time of the week. I love walking through the line and shaking these peoples hands, many for the first time. It's great. After guests, we had a new fellow, Corey, play an amazing drum solo during the offering. Really blew me away. Did a great job. This was his 2nd week to CGEN. For the message this week I continued the Raising the Bar series. This week's topic: Purity in Relationships part 2 / Hearts (get the podcast). I had ten or so girls volunteer and line up on stage and I went down the line "dating" each one of them. Giving each one a piece of my heart along the way. Of course we had a killer presentation going to just drive the point home. You can check out the slides from the presentation here (they're just not as cool without the transitions). So I had fun with the ladies on stage. I really took a lot longer than I had originally planned, but it went well. I finished up my message and gave an opportunity for salvation. At least four people made first time commitments for Christ. It possibly could have been more, but those are the ones who came and told me afterwards. Three of those four were first time guests. I'm so excited for them! Anyway, I could write about this all day, but I've got to get the bulletin done for Sunday. Have a great night and a safe weekend! + Link to message notes + Link to message audio (.mp3 or podcast) + Link to presentation slides
posted by MATTHEW JOHN BELL @ 11/03/2005 04:39:00 PM,
