So, i go to this church. it's a mainline church. they're trying to grow. and they're struggling. but the Lord has put a number of really solid people on staff that have a big vision for God to do BIG things in our church. And i'm pretty sure satan is pissed.
we've been planning this big fall kickoff outreach event - it was going good - minus that it's all staff pulling it off and we only have 2 weeks - but it was going good... then a few of us started trying to take some comp time to get some rest and relax a bit and everything fell apart. People started dropping the ball, things started not working the way we had planned, info got confused, people got irritated, blah blah blah... we diffused a bomb today - and as i was sitting on the floor of amber's office - dripping with sweat because the lady in charge of the AC decided that 90 wasn't hot enough to turn the AC on - and we need to save all the money we can - cutting hundreds of invite tickets to our event (that we had printed for the third time due to some miscommunications) i came to a sudden conclusion.
Our God is BIG!
amber introduced me to this song the other day, it's pretty awesome. it's called "by and by" and it's by selah - and it's in some african language - probably swahili - but i'm not sure... but anyhow - the song opens with a radio broadcast from the 50's (i think) of a missionary talking about how they had over 1,000 africans show up to be baptized the day that the ban was lifted which made it punishable by death to be a christian. During the broadcast you can hear the crowd singing this old hymn in the background... it's pretty amazing when you stop to think about it. There's no way they could have marketed this baptism event - cause they all could have been killed - so the Lord managed to bring over 1,000 africans that had secretly been following the Lord all together in one day to get baptized. Out God is COOL!
So - we're sitting in the office cutting invites and i mention that i think it'll be sweet when loads of people show up and the Lord uses this even to change the hearts of some of our congregation - and amber starts to talk about how it'll be hard for ppl to come when they havn't heart about it - and how we only have 2 weeks... and the Lord just put it on my heart that he's bigger than any advertizing or marketing or cool tickets that we make... he can spread the word to 1,000 africans that there's a baptism going on - in ONE DAY... he can do plenty more than that now - with all our social networks and instant everything...
so - i just said "1,000 people showed up to be baptized THE DAY the ban was lifted - there's no way they were able to invite people to it - and the Lord brought 1,000 people... our God is BIG. REAL BIG!
he's bigger than our best laid plans....
he's bigger than our worries....
he's bigger than any media we create....
he's bigger than all of our social networks....
he's bigger than we could ever imagine.....
he's bigger than the city block that our church owns....
he's bigger than satan....
and....
he's bigger than the boogey man :)
i'm really excited to see what the Lord has in store for this event - i just hope that i have the faith and ability to pray hard and not worry or doubt the awesome power of the Lord.
Our God is BIG!
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