Vision

I was at the O.B.F.F. National conference this past week and I had the opportunity to hear Pastor Larry Stockstill speak on the subject of missions and he rocked my world. In fact I haven't been able to stop thinking about the message he gave all week and at many times I have been almost overcome with the heart of God for missions.

He started talking about vision and he told a story about a time when he went through a drive through and got a burger on his way to speak somewhere. He wrapped the bottom of the burger up carefully so he would not spill, but when he took his first bite he felt something fall out and land on his pants. When he looked down he saw that a pickle had fallen out all covered with mustard and it was laying on his pant leg making a stain. He quickly put down the sandwich, took the pickle off of his pants and proceeded to wipe off his pant leg with a napkin. As he finished he looked up and realized that he was in the wrong lane and in the path of a tractor trailer, so he swerved and was nearly crushed. He pulled over to the side of the road to push his heart back into his chest and when he did the Lord Spoke to him.

God said " what is outside the windshield is more important than the pickle on your pants". As he said that I had a serious God moment. I realized that over this past few years I have been so concerned about the pickle on my pants that I had not looked out the windshield. As a Pastor I have been so busy trying to keep things going inside the church and to solve and meditate on all the problems and people that I had lost sight of our mandate. So today as I write this I have committed to keep looking forward in faith to the mandate that God has given to Jubilee to Go into all the world both to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

As a church we at this time support many people on the ground in Canada, USA, India, Northern and Southern Africa, Italy, Israel, and Vietnam. That is great, but I think that God has so much more for us to do so let's pray and believe that we can plant churches, feed the hungry and continue with evangelism, and that by reaching out past our own towns that God will also help us to be fruitful here!

The Dream is True!

Great it is to dream the dream

When you stand in your youth

By the starry stream

But a greater thing

To fight life through

And to say at the end

The dream was true

This was a poem that was spoken many times by John Osteen, and since Mark Davy shared it yesterday morning in the service it has been rolling through my mind. The truth is that most people start out with a dream when they are young and idealistic. They believe in the dream and they see no reason why the dream cannot become a reality.

Many people as life rolls along get into the fight of making the dream a reality and grow weary in the fight. they lose the belief that it can come true. In reality in order to accomplish God's will for our life there will be a fight, there will be challenge, and there will be weariness, but the dream is still God's dream, and if you choose to fight the fight, stand up to the challenge, and push through the weariness, you can accomplish the dream.

The choice is yours and the choice is mine, will we rise to the challenge in order to fulfill God's call for our lives? Will we dare to look beyond disappointment and see the prize that God has prepared for us? Will we push past the weariness and persevere until we accomplish our assignment? Each of us as individuals need to answer that question for ourselves, and to a degree Heaven and Hell are waiting to see what we will do and how we will respond.

Empty Chair

Tonight I get to hang out with our young people for our Thursday night meeting and I am pretty excited about what God is doing. When I was at the Creative Church Conference on Monday in Albany, Ed Young said something that rang so true to me, especially after our Sunday service. He said "Our church is all about the empty chair". what he was saying was, that everything that they plan, everything that they say is with the passion to reach one more person for Christ. this is so important, I think that if we are going to fulfill the great Commission and the call we have as a church then we also must learn to plan around the empty chair.

So who has God put on your heart lately? who are you reaching out to, and trying to lead to Christ? How important is it to you to reach the people that Jesus died for? Think about where you sit in church on Sunday, is there an empty seat near you? Will you take the responsibility of filling that seat this week? Pray and ask God who you can invite, and let's expect God to do great things this weekend!

What a bonus!

What a great day today! Today I went with some of the board to have a look at a Southridge Community Church in St. Catharines, to see how they had renovated a school into a functioning church building and to get some thoughts on how to renovate our school. We got some good ideas and insights and we are continuing to move ahead with plans to prepare our new site. The bonus that we got today was that Pastor Jeff took an hour or so to talk to us about their vision and strategies for building their church into what God is calling them to be. I would have to say, that I have been to some great seminars but the info we got today was as helpful as anything else I have learned about building God's Kingdom. It was a great afternoon and I would like to say a big thank you to Pastor Jeff!

Monday at Team Church

Man, I prayed in the morning service a couple weeks ago that God would give us an encounter like Isaiah Had where in Chapter 6 He said woe is me I am undone. God is messing me up, I am undone. As I have been writing on this blog, God has been really stirring something in my heart that I think is huge, and that something is a deep passion and concern for those that have not yet connected with Jesus. well this week is not helping me shake that stirring, in fact it is stirring it up even more. I am sitting here and I just can't wait to see what God is going to do through us to help these people meet Jesus. Anyway, here are a few highlights of tonight.

1. Kevin Gerald opened with this, God touched our lives and said, tag your it, and left us to pass on the good news to others. Who have you touched with your life? Who are you going to touch?
2. Craig Groeshel was up next and He went right at it with a challenge to all of us to believe God for great things. some of the major points were as follows.
3. We all dream positive dreams, but without some sort of action and a plan, we will never achieve the dreams we have. Without a vision people perish.
4. From Acts 20:21- 24 he taught 4 things we could expect in walking into God's vision for our life. First Spirit's Prompting in verse 21 it says that Paul was compelled by the spirit. Secondly we would encounter Certain Uncertainty in verse 22b it says that Paul was going, not knowing what would happen. The third thing that we would encounter was Predictable Resistance it says in verse 23 that prison and hardship awaited Paul. so first we would sense the Spirit prompting us to do something then as we stepped out to do it we will have that feeling of uncertainty followed by resistance and if we would persevere then God would give us Uncommon Clarity.
5. He closed with this prayer that was prayed by Sir Francis Drake in 1577

Disturb us Lord

When when we are to well pleased with ourselves.

When our dreams come true

Because we have dreamed to little

When we arrived safely

Because we sailed to closely to shore.

It is my prayer that as a church we will dream, dreams so big that only God can accomplish them. That we would pray prayers that would make God smile because we need Him or we have no hope. That our hearts would break for the things that break the heart of God. i pray that we would be a church that makes a difference.

Thinking Big?

Have you ever been at the door way of opportunity before? Well I feel like that is where we are standing right now as a church. I feel this urgency inside right now that makes me feel uncomfortable all the time. I know that God is saying to us as a church that it is time to step out into the promise, but at the same time I know that God is asking us for more than He has ever asked us for. I have been really wrestling with God on this whole deal, because I don't know exactly how to express what is going on in my heart right now, but I think it is huge.

Here is the honest truth (I guess that I shouldn't have to say that as a pastor) It would be a lot easier for me to settle with where we are as a church right now then to really press on into what I believe is coming. Truthfully though it would border on insanity for me to want to do that, because I have been following God's lead up to this point and, I believe, having been preaching, teaching and leading into this moment for the past three and a half years. I have a million excuse why I shouldn't or wouldn't press through, such as, we live in a small town, we've said all this before and haven't seen it happen, and we live in Canada.

All of these thoughts and ideas are, in my opinion, are putting limitations on the ability and power of God, and also providing a comfortable out for you and for me. Let me ask you this question, why can't we do something really great for God? (I can hear some of you right now. We are doing great things for God aren't we?) to be continued..........