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The Hand of God was Upon Me...

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Last week, I brought up the topic of spiritual attack coming against the church. In my previous post, I said that I get strangely rejuvenated in situations like these. It may be as simple as the fact that the reality of the darkness always makes me more aware of the light, but it may be something more spiritual. I think God manifests himself more in and through us when we are more aware of our need for Him. Obviously, we need Him all the time, but in the midst of attack, we REALIZE we need Him. One thing I'm noticing across our church body is that we seem to be hearing God speak more clearly than usual. In a normal month, I'll usually come across 2 or 3 stories where people hear God speak and receive some kind of confirmation. However, in the 30 minutes following the sermon last week, I heard 5 or 6! I've continued to hear more and more throughout the week. Most of these testimonies would be a bit difficult to try to explain here, but one excellent example gives us the titl...
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Rejuvenated by Spiritual Attack?

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We have begun our season of prayer and fasting--incase you were wondering why you were so hungry! We kicked things off on Wednesday with a worship night that felt quite powerful to me. I was on stage banging away on a hand drum called a cajón, but I could hear the congregation singing and shouting pretty passionately the entire time.  That worship night marked the first of several special prayer nights that we will hold throughout the season of prayer and fasting. We're hoping that people make a special effort to join in to corporate prayer if possible.  On Sunday, we are also planning on changing up the liturgy a little by moving the sermon earlier in the service to leave more time for worship and ministry time at the end. Even though it wasn't originally a part of the plan, this first Sunday of Lent will have a couple of baptisms to kick it all off.  ______ As this season of prayer and fasting kicks off, I find myself rejuvenated in prayer , not necessarily because of t...
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The Benefits and Risks of Fasting as a Church

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Around this time last year, I preached a sermon simply called Fasting in a sermon series called Make Disciples. In that sermon, I gave the following definition of Biblical Fasting: Abstaining from food and sometimes water for spiritual purposes: expressing sorrow, seeking intervention from God, and subjugating your flesh to the Spirit .  Starting on February 18, we will enter into a time of fasting as a church. In my last post, Anyone Up for a Nice Long Fast? , I described the two fasts we will be choosing from: The Daniel Fast or a Sun-up to Sun-down fast. Again, you're free to modify either of those to make them less or more extreme. Go check out that post for the logistics. In this post, we need to focus on the benefits and risks of fasting as a church.
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Anyone up for a nice long fast?

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The season of Lent starts February 18 and ends on Easter Sunday, April 5. As a church, we will be joining together in fasting.  We will choose a type of fast that works for us individually, and we will fast from Monday through Saturday, and break the fast each week on Sunday as we celebrate together.  For more information on the theology of Fasting, please watch this message called Sermon on the Mount: When you Fast   Here are two options to choose from for a fast that you can dive into for this season of Lent.
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What if you pray for a stranger, but they don't get healed?

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The biggest question in Power Evangelism is the title of this post: What if you pray for a stranger, but they don't get healed? I am both happy and sad to say that I have figured this one out the hard way. On Friday, February 6, at the Remnant Radio Conference in San Diego, I'm going to teach on Power Evangelism and answer this question, but here are the cliff notes of what I'll say.  When it comes to healing in Power Evangelism, there seem to be two approaches: Healing as an Opener and Healing as a Sign.  Healing as an Opener I don't personally take this approach often, but this is what most people think of when they imagine Power Evangelism. This looks like offering to pray for healing as your introduction to the conversation. Understandably, if the person actually gets healed right after you say "hello," it's going to be a pretty easy transition to preaching the Gospel. Here's what you can say to get into it: "I'm a Christian, and I pray f...
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Wisdom is Justified by Her Deeds

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 I hope everyone is warm. I hate that we had to cancel the Sunday service, but I went ahead and recorded a short announcement that I want you all to be aware of, and I recorded the sermon that would have otherwise preached.  I wanted to have something for all of us to watch while we're cooped up at home, and I also wanted to stay on track for my sermon schedule. Usually a sermon schedule is not too important, but I really wanted to share some specific stories THIS week, and I really wanted to speak on a specific topic next week. I didn't think they would work to postpone them a week.  The sermon is now available to watch on our Youtube Channel (9am, January 25). Click the picture, or the link below to see it.  Click here to see the sermon
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What do you actually SAY in evangelism?

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***Below is the next part in a series of posts I'm making about Evangelism, but if you're seeing this post on Saturday, Jan 24, then you know we're snowed in! I said we'd make the final decision about cancelling church at sundown on Saturday, but the writing is on the walls that we're obviously going to have to cancel our church service on Sunday. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming*** Real-life Evangelism in action (click to see the video) One of the many difficulties people have with going out and doing random street evangelism is that people often struggle to know what to say. How do you start a random conversation about Jesus, and what do you do AFTER you start the conversation? This post will cover what I call The Approach (how to start a conversation) and The Drive (how to get to your destination). Over the last 16 years, I've gone out and started thousands of random evangelism conversations, and I've figured out a few things that work ...
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