What a week!
Bikers’ Church
- I have to admit, nothing went the way I expected it to go this week. First, I thought I’d have a lot of time to share my message. However, I forgot about some of the extra things I had already committed to, and so we had almost 30 minutes of announcements and groups sharing before the talk.
- I also expected my message to come across very low key. When I worked through it earlier, I was very casual in my presentation. In fact, I even stated in my introduction that I was going to be in “teaching mode” more than “preaching mode.” And yet, it was incredibly intense. As I moved from teaching on water baptism to talking about worship, I found my heart moving ahead of my words. It was intense, very personal, and honest. From the response, it was also received very positively.
- I can’t remember the last time I felt as drained as I felt at the end of the evening. That’s not a bad thing, but again, it wasn’t expected this week.
- I am VERY pumped about our service next Thursday. So far, we have close to 17 people signed up for water baptism. It’s going to be a great celebration.
- Oh, the only negative about the evening is that the memory card in our camera failed, meaning there’s no video from the night.
City Church
- I came into Sunday’s service drained. As I’ve shared with the church family, one of my daughter’s was hospitalized on Friday while suffering a major migraine. As a result, I had less than 7 hours of sleep all weekend. My emotions were frayed, and it was a challenge to preach.
- And yet, God was faithful. During the pre-service prayer time, as the worship team, prayer leaders and I gathered to pray, it was clear that God was going to to prove the Scripture that his strength is shown in our weakness. From the moment the first chord was struck on Cam’s guitar it was clear that this would not be a typical service. The worship was out of the park. From worship team members to people in the congregation, the tears flowed freely as God lifted burdens.
- I felt very scrambled in the message, and yet by God’s grace, people still seemed to receive. It was amazing to see.
- Fortunately, the video did work on Sunday, and so those wanting to watch the message, can view it here (it wont be loaded for a few more hours). I focused on a different aspect of worship at the Bikers’ Church service, but overall, the message was close to the same.
