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I recently discovered that my discomfort with the label “charismatic church” or a Christian that focuses on the “supernatural” is that usually the Christians that use it aren’t supernaturally focused enough. Let me explain…
If you are taught to focus on seeing someone in a wheelchair as a potential supernatural encounter that may “walk” after years of oppression, you miss the outwardly healthy looking man that is struggling with pride and is loosing all of the meaningful relationships around him.
We need to expand our definition of supernatural. Jesus does speak of us doing greater things… John 14:12 “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” Let’s not limit that to what our human minds may consider supernatural. Believe me I know what a huge burden it is to carry as we look at a city full of people in need of supernatural healing. There are many illnesses that are plaguing people today: cancer, heart disease, depression… but like our medical fields have become so specialized, I believe that the body of Christ has become too specialized.
God is by definition supernatural. How can we believe that God created us and wants to spend eternity with us after our death and not believe that He is supernatural? But also the supernatural deals with spiritual things that are unseen… so let’s not limit supernatural miracles to things that are seen.
This is a fallen world. Faith has to persist even when it feels like God says no. The sovereignty of God is holy. Trying to force God’s hand is a sin. Forcing God’s hand is what Satan tempted Jesus to do in the wilderness. Let’s not limit the “greater things” that Jesus speaks of in John 14 to only events that we can SEE for our own gratification.
Let us all pray that we have kingdom eyes. Eyes that see brokenness in every form. Eyes that see both the wheelchair and the pride, that see the cancer and the shackles, that see the crutch and the addiction. Open our eyes Lord to see the afflictions.
Can God use you through prayer to heal the sick? … absolutely. But in your quest to see the one person’s physical disability miraculously healed by God through your prayer, don’t miss the thousands of people that are hurting around you with spiritual disabilities that you can’t see and are in need our your attention and prayer.
I was so excited about the number of folks that were there Sunday. It was Memorial Day Weekend and we had a great crowd. What a blessing that was. But more than that, I think we were all challenged by the message… I know…. I was the one preaching. But you’ve got to realized, God really deals with me and speaks to me as I’m preparing and preaching the messages on Sunday. As we studied Matt. 6 together we saw how the private disciplines of prayer and planned percentage giving really and quickly point out where you place your trust. I pray that you stay committed to the 30 day challenge of giving your first minutes and first dollars to the Lord. As we grow together in our faith.
I’d love to hear your testimony of how these disciplines stretch your faith. Email me your story.
Thank you.
- A big thank you to all of the volunteers that set up Sunday morning! We had about 70% of our morning crew out on vacation. So to our first time helpers, I really, really appreciate your hard work and how you jumped right in.
- Thanks so much to my wife Heather. She coordinates the WellSpring information lunch after the service… and she does an amazing job.
- I’m so excited about events in the month of June. Check them out at our website.
Next Series.
Our next series is going to be really cool. WE are joining with about 1500 churches world wide to embody Jesus’ prayer that we become “one”.
The series is called ONE PRAYER and we will study the topic “God is…”
But more than the teaching, we’ll be giving a special offering to help with a few amazing things:
- Plant another 500 churches in each of the currently engaged target areas through current partnership networks. Working in Southern India, Sudan, Cambodia, and Northern China, we’ll be supporting indigenous church planting in the most densely populated, difficult, strategic areas remaining on the planet.
- Start pilot programs with holistic community transformation initiatives in at least two (and up to four) of these geographical target areas. We’ll be equipping the best and brightest of church planters in the existing One Prayer network to begin community transformation initiatives geared towards improving the living standards in their communities. These initiatives will be easy to deploy, grass roots, micro-interventions that make sense in their communities.
- Add one additional target area in Northern India and plant an additional 100 churches. Northern India is densely populated with unreached populations that are predominately Hindu, Muslim and tribal/animistic, and this new church planting movement will allow One Prayer to make inroads into those communities. With the outbreak of terrorist attacks in Northern India, the One Prayer movement will be strategically positioned with a relevant and powerful response to the violence.
Isn’t is amazing to think that we can have an impact in these area’s from Senoia, GA.?
Sunday I’m preaching part three in a series about growing our faith. I’ll be talking about spiritual discipline. Today I saw an article in the NYT that really highlights our need for private spiritual disciplines.
The article called “Dan Brown’s America” can be read at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/opinion/19douthat.html
“In the Brownian worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.
The polls that show more Americans abandoning organized religion don’t suggest a dramatic uptick in atheism: They reveal the growth of do-it-yourself spirituality, with traditional religion’s dogmas and moral requirements shorn away. The same trend is at work within organized faiths as well, where both liberal and conservative believers often encounter a God who’s too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they’re making or how many times they’ve been married.”
Brown is explicit about this mission. He isn’t a serious novelist, but he’s a deadly serious writer: His thrilling plots, he’s said, are there to make the books’ didacticism go down easy, so that readers don’t realize till the end “how much they are learning along the way.” He’s working in the same genre as Harlan Coben and James Patterson, but his real competitors are ideologues like Ayn Rand, and spiritual gurus like Eckhart Tolle.”
If dying to yourself daily is what Christ calls us to…. Then then trend to focus more on self is what Christ calls us away from. Spiritual disciplines cause us to test if we are trusting ourselves or is our trust and confidence completely in Christ.
After reading an article like this, we can see that the church has gotten too far away from our private disciplines of faith.
I’m excited about partnering with over 1200 churches worldwide to push toward Jesus’ prayer in John 17 that we all become “one”. This is the second year that WellSpring will participate in the event. The premise, pastors send in a message to a central location and “swap” during the month of June. There are many benefits to this concept… our congregations get to hear other pastors, we get to share a common theme with close to 1 million people, pastors get to see that the church can function without their preaching, we all get the feeling that something is happening that is larger than we are….
and… there is the opportunity to collectively collect money for several important needs.
We met our goal for the One Prayer 2008 mission! Last year, One Prayer churches partnered to make an eternal difference in the world through an ambitious mission initiative: planting 500 new churches in Cambodia, India, Sudan, and China in 18 months. With the funds from just one offering collected during One Prayer 2008, more than 660 churches have been planted! And we’re not done yet – that number is increasing by the day and the mission is continuing to change lives around the globe.
check out more details at www.oneprayer.com
The focus for this year is …. “God is…”
June 7th David Stroud
June 14th Francis Chan
June 21st Andy Stanley
June 28th Scott McInnis
This is going to be a great series and opportunity to hear from God. To know that we will be on the same page as so many makes me feel as if God is going to move in an amazing way. Not that I think we can “force” God’s hand, I just believe that prayer focused that intently will be pleasing to Him.
Let us begin praying for God to fix and ready our hearts for what He would have this series to be.
I love WellSpring. Sunday was such an amazing day.
I so appreciate how everything is set up so quickly … we have the greatest volunteers! Just 2 more weeks and we can leave everything up for the summer….woo hoo!
The new series is going well.
New Series
This series is really challenging us to grow our faith, to increase our confidence in God, and to trust God with all that we have.
I never get tired of talking with new believers after the service. As I’m preparing the messages, I pray that God is able to use it in a practical, really life way for people. Sunday, I talked about the providence of God in the life of Samuel and I was so blessed when a man came up to me and said, “All this stuff is so new to me. I was wondering why over the last couple of weeks I was able to talk to brand new friends about how God is speaking to me. Now I know… God is bringing them into my life for a reason. He’s really breaking me in a good way, so I can hear what he wants me to hear”. Wow! And this from a brand new believer that’s been so far from God’s truth.
I want to thank Jeremy for the amazing job he’s doing on Sunday with our music. I love the new songs and look forward to the new CD.
Sarah Waugh is doing a great job with the welcome area. The furniture, rugs, decorations…and the new location is much better. Thank you so much for being diligent with this important part of our Sunday mornings.
Thanks to everyone for using the “sign-in computer”. It’s so cool to have a “sign-in computer”. It makes me feel like… wooooo… a “sign-in computer”. And it’s so easy to use….just type in your phone number and BAM! …. your whole family pops up… very cool. Thanks for using it.
There is so much coming up and so much to pray for.
Our Biker Breakfast
Our Baptism Service
Our WellSpring 101 Lunch
Our students going to BIGSTUF
…
So many wonderful and exciting things.
As we get closer to the summer, let’s not hurry to plan it away… forgetting to put God first. WellSpring exists to do L.E.S.S. so that we can do more for His glory.
Looking forward to next Sunday.
I’m going to start blogging again. I’ve gotten sucked back in… I’ve been twittering you know. Before twitter I had a facebook account that I felt really bad about because I never kept up with it. I found out twitter could update my facebook status after I got my new blackberry. So with just a few text messages it looked like I was really keeping up with my facebook. I don’t think there’s a way to hook my twitter up with my blog and my facebook, but what a joy that would be.
I do think there is a need for some blogging. I’m finding that this would be a great way to communicate general ideas and thanks to the church. A blog could also be a place that I could rant about the woes of the world…. I guess I could write just about anything on here.
Mostly I want to communicate what an amazing journey that God has me on planting this church called WellSpring.
