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
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