Friday, October 14, 2011

Desperate


Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.          Acts 5:14

Are you desperate? I have been challenged this week to consider my desperation for God.  How dependent am I really on Him and how do I even gauge that? 

I read of the early church in the book of Acts and I see desperation. I see urgency. There is a hunger, a craving for God’s power to be displayed for His glory.  And it was!  Often in the book of Acts, the writer testifies about the church using passive verbs like were added  (above in Acts 5:14) because this was not human addition, it was God!  What in your life is present only because of God’s power? What does it say about you if you can’t point to anything? 

I love how David Platt puts it in Chapter 3 of Radical:
“This is the design of God among his people.  He is giving unlikely people his power so it is clear who deserves the glory for the success that takes place. As I read the story of the church in the New Testament, I cannot help but long to be part of this kind of scene in the church today.  A scene where we refuse to operate in a mind-set dominated by an American dream that depends on what we can achieve with our own abilities.  A scene where we no longer settle for what we can do in our own power.  A scene where the church radically trusts in God’s great power to provide unlikely people with unlimited, unforeseen, uninhibited resources to make his name known as great.  Our great need…is to plead for God to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength.

I am praying for us as a body to access God’s power when it comes to our own character development, when it comes to our marriages, our parenting, our relationships with neighbors and colleagues, and our relationships with each other. I am praying for us as a body to access God’s power when it comes to faithfully accomplishing God’s mission for PCC.  I don’t just hope these things happen; I am desperate for them to happen.

Hang out in John 15 between now and Sunday and ask God to create a holy desperation for His power to manifested through you. Come ready to worship, wrestle and serve other people who are gathering together.

Thank you to those of you taking the shuttle!  We hit an all-time high of shuttle participation and it is making a huge difference.  I look forward to gathering together on Sunday. 

I Love Being Your Pastor!