We're in a series here at Celebration called Amazing. This past Sunday Pastor Chris Hodges came to speak to us. He spoke about Passion. I wasn't going to type any of my sermon notes to my blogs but I feel like I should because the same day Sarena texted me and told me that the message at her church was about being passionate too. Thought it was a sign... this might be a little jumbled but hopefully something is moving to you. He talks about how we get so caught up in doing we forget to sit in silence and just take God in. We fall in love with doing things that we forget. "There are things to love but not love above God." One of my favorite things he said that night was, " I don't want to be in the temple doing stuff and forget to fall in love with Jesus." Which is so true we think we need to do things for God to love us. Question is out of all this doing do we love God? Imagine him sitting up there and we are grocery listing off what we do for him and he says, "I know what you DO for me but do you love me?" "God loves us doing things for him but his highest desire is for us to just love him." A couple of bullet points of what to have passion for are... 1. Passion for worship... it's not just about standing and sitting raising your hands singing the words on the screens it's a relational time with God. 2. Passion for prayer... if you've read my past entries you'll see that prayer that is something I'm really focusing on. "prayer is something that deserves a lot of attention." "Get passionate about prayer, be serious about prayer or else it won't work." God knows what's going on inside of you but he wants you to come to him with it. Lizzie, an intern with me said, "A friend can tell if something is wrong with you and they might even know what it is but you have to still confide in them." James 5:16 says, "....The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." 3. Passion for people... People are going to last forever so get passionate about them. All of your material items are going to burn down. Take interest in listening to one another. We're complex and you never know what someone is going to do or what they're capable of. We're forever.. 4. Passion for purity... this was actually number three but I loved what he had to say here I put it last. "Impurity is a passion for YOU." It may be lovely at the time but what about forever? Pastor Stovall said today, "Pay now with discipline or pay later with regret, you'll pay either way." Pastor Chris told a story about how his son got swine flu and he was freaking out. He said he stayed clear of his son for three days and was constantly washing his hands. Trying so hard not to catch it to. As he was washing his hands he heard God say, "Look how hard you're working when you've found out something can get on you." I loved that. Just because sin isn't an itchy bump on our skin doesn't mean it isn't real. Actually it probably hurts a lot worse than the itchiest itch. We can forget that the Devil is real too and he's plotting against us. When things are going along smoothly he's making a customized sin for all of us. He knows just as well as God does what our weaknesses are. I felt like that message was pretty intense. Of course I didn't portray it as good as the original.
The internship is still awesome!
This is Me, Alison, Erika, and Casey at TacoLu for Girl's Night!
This is, oh wow, Lee, Lizzie, Chris and Tom
We went downtown to some not so nice areas to talk to people and invite them to a movie night!
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