Passion City Church

Hello fellow blog readers!

You may be shocked and surprised to see that I am writing another blog only one day after my last blog. It may seem unusual for me, and it is. For me to desire to blog this often, something has to happen to me to drive me to post again one day after my last one.

And, something did happen. In three simple words, my reason for blogging is "Passion City Church". Last night, July 27, I attended my first worship service at the Passion City Church in Atlanta, GA. The name may sound familiar to you...Passion. It is synonymous with the Passion Conferences that you may have attended. Led by Louie Giglio and his team of worship leaders, including Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Kristian Stanfill, Christy Nockels, and some other cool folks, the Passion City Church is led by those same people of the conferences.

So, I will admit that I did not attend 100% for church. With a roster like this, I did have interest in going to hear Louie speak and these awesome musicians lead worship. My wife went with me, along with some members from the 18-30 year old Sunday school class that I lead. We made it into a college event for the Sunday School class.

In the back of my mind, I did want to visit for the sake of visiting the church too though. I wanted to see how a service would be led by these folks that I last saw perform in front of several thousand people in an arena in Atlanta.

Well, let's just stop there.

We arrived at 5:20, got seated fairly quickly, and waited for the service to begin. Upon minutes of getting seated, one of the church's volunteers approached and welcomed my wife and I. For sake of his privacy, we'll just call him "J". He was a college student at Kennesaw State, and he was talking about why he attended the church, what he got out of it, and just welcomed us to the church. We began talking and he shared his passion for sharing the gospel around the world. He told us that he was preparing to leave for a mission trip to South Africa in the next few days. His spirit was contagious. His love for God and his compassion for sharing the message of Christ was evident and overwhelming. Before the service began, we received an unexpected, but very welcome blessing from this young man. (By the way, please pray for "J" as he begins his trip to South Africa.)

Well, the service began right at 6:00 with Louie coming out to welcome everyone and discuss some of the amazing results from the recently ended, first leg of the Passion World Tour. From Louie, we went into a time of worship with the musicians that went over an hour. Louie spoke for well over an hour, some folks on staff shared some memories from the world tour, and we prayed, watched some video from the tour, and just took the night in, minute by minute. When the service concluded, it was around 8:45pm. We had been in worship for nearly 3 hours. But, it did not seem like it.

I walked away feeling different than I had felt in weeks, maybe even months. I had not been to a concert. I had not listened to a good speaker. I had not shared in just some items from a world tour. I had not been to an event. I HAD JUST EXPERIENCED GOD. Through each and every aspect of the worship service, my heart, mind, soul, and spirit was renewed and revived. The Holy Spirit used the opportunity to move through me.

I have been a minister now for over 12 years. I have worked with youth and college students for most of this time. I have been to thousands of worship services in church, at schools, at camps, at conferences, at crusades, etc, etc, etc.

But, at the end of the night, I understood why the church was named "Passion City Church". The people that led the service were passionate about Christ. They poured their talents into His glory. And, it flowed out to us. In a three hour time period, I feel that we truly brought fame and glory to name of Christ, which is what Passion is all about anyway.

I have been moved by the Spirit in a powerful way. I was blessed in a tremendous way at last night's service.

And, if you read my blog from yesterday, you'll know about our Sunday School lesson on Job 29 that happened the morning of the same day that I attended Passion City Church in the evening. With no doubt, I have been awakened to God's message that he started in Sunday School and continued through Passion Church last night:

* God is worthy of all praise and glory forever, and I long to give Him the glory in everything.

* We are not just designed or called, but we actually have the opportunity to develop and maintain an intimate relationship with our Lord. He desires our fellowship, and our souls crave His presence. And, He has made a way for this to happen!

* I am blessed more than most of the people on this Earth: I have freedom to worship freely; I have endless opportunities to serve God; I have an unimaginable wealth of resources at my fingertips from Bibles, to electronic Bibles, to podcasts, to resource and study materials, to the Internet, and so forth. If I don't use this to serve my Lord, I don't have an excuse. We are too blessed to be idle and stagnant.

Ok, I will end here. I just wanted to share this pure, contagious experience from yesterday with you all. Take care, and live everyday intentionally to serve our God.

Rise up generations. Claim your purpose and implement it daily for our Lord.

Brent

On the Journey...

It has been about a month since I have posted here. A lot has happened. My wife, son, and I made a trip back to my parents' home in North Carolina. We spent a few nice days there. While in NC, I got to preach the 11am sermon at my home church, which is always an honor.

Then, we came back to GA, I worked a week, and then we took off on the first 7 day vacation we have had in 7 years! My wife, son, and I went with another couple from our church and their kids to the beach. We had an awesome time. Regardless of the oil concerns, we stayed in a condo on the gulf at Panama City Beach. We ate, played, hung out, and had a great time!!!

On vacation, I really achieved one immense goal...I cleared my head. I left the concerns of work, church, life, finances, and anything else that has been on my mind back in Georgia. I was truly able to give it up, clear my head, enjoy my time with family and friends, and truly relax, which I struggle with doing most of the time.

Today, I was back at my current church for the first time in three weeks. It was a good day, but Sunday School shook me hard. I teach the 18-30 year old class called, just as blog, "Generations Rising". At the beginning of the year, we began a study of the book of the Job where we just take it verse by verse, chapter by chapter, each week. Today, we covered Chapter 29.

If you have studied Job like this, you will understand Chapter 29. But like me and most people, I had never really studied the entire book of Job. I had done the traditional read Chapter 1 and 2, and then jump to chapter 38-42 and finish it out. So, I was not ready for Chapter 29.

The first six verses really act as a mirror to a Christian to see if you are reflecting who you should be in Christ. The very name "Christian" signifies that someone is "of" or "like" Christ. In Chapter 29, Job discusses how his walk with God used to be. Here it is in the NIV translation:

¹ Job continued his discourse:

² "How I long for the months gone by,
for the days when God watched over me,

³ when his lamp shone upon my head
and by his light I walked through darkness!

⁴ Oh, for the days when I was in my prime,
when God's intimate friendship blessed my house,

⁵ when the Almighty was still with me
and my children were around me,

⁶ when my path was drenched with cream
and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil.

After reading these verses, I wonder how many of us "Christians" can say that we feel this way about God, or can even remember these times in our life?

• Do we know that God is watching over us?
• Do we know that his lamp shines upon on head and lights our path, so we can make it through any trial that comes our way?
• Do we have the type of relationship with God that we can say "God's intimate friendship blessed my house"?
• Do we feel his blessings like Job describes in verse 6? (By the way, I may blog about these items in detail soon.)

For me, I could not say yes to these things. I know these things. I believe these things. But, I am missing that deep intimacy with God that brings these things to life, like Job describes. I am reminded that a relationship with God is like a relationship with anyone. It takes dedication, consistency, and time to grow and develop. Without continuous, true efforts, one will not grow in depth with God.

My challenge for you and I is that we take an active, intentional approach to developing our relationship with God. Prioritize it. Be disciplined and committed to it. Let's be a generation that rises to love, serve, and walk with our Lord, Jesus Christ, so we too can be "Christians" -- someone who is "of" and "like" Christ. Let's be disciples, so we can disciple others.

-- Brent