Thunderbirds, Serving, and Victory

--- Adam, Terri and I all served the local community college as volunteer ambassadors today at the annual Air Force Thunderbirds show. The show was AWESOME! I love air shows and watching that kind of stuff so it was cool to be a part of. About 12 - 14,000 people come out to watch. Thousands of cars, thousands are shuttled in and they literally shut down the major road to the college to get people out when it's over. All lanes devoted to outgoing traffic. It was quite the site.

--- Now on serving. What we did today really seemed pointless. I guess if anything the college knows that Element Church wants to serve. BUT, they didn't really need us. When I go to events, I guess because of my personality, I always think of what could be done better. There were LOTS of things that could have been VERY different. As Adam and I were standing there being Ambassadors (doing nothing) we were brainstorming what we could offer the college next year to make it a better event. It's one of those things where we stepped out and said "Let's serve!" And it didn't work. That's going to happen. BUT instead of saying "That sucked let's never do it again." Why don't we say "Man, you could do some really cool stuff at this event, lets do something that will make a HUGE impact." I know this was a very small "step" but lots of churches won't even take the initial step of trying something. Others try something and because it "fails" they'll never try again. We won't do that.

--- Buckle up Maverick we're about to take off. Now what my heart is burning over. I won't go into the whole story of what caused this today but we got into a conversation with a tourist at the event about some spiritual issues. This guy was a believer and basically was debating with us that there is no victory in this life BUT the blood of Jesus is so powerful that it just overlooks who we are and finishes the work for us. I tell you what. I tried staying out of the conversation. Adam was very much holding his own but I had to jump in. If I hear another person, pastor, church, or movement talk about how we just can't ever give our all, can't have victory, have to keep on sinning cause we are so fouled up I'm gonna STINKIN' PUKE! Is the devil more powerful than the blood of Christ. Is sin so conquering in our lives that God can't stinkin DESTROY IT! If there is no victory then I want out. I don't want anything to do with a God who can't fix my sin problem. Eve said "If we eat the fruit we will die." The devil replied "NOOOO, you won't die." And guess what? He offers the same lie today! AND PEOPLE ARE FALLING FOR IT! No wonder there is no victory. No wonder people are left empty, unsatisfied, unfruitful and flat out depressed in their spiritual life. SIN CAUSES DEATH! My heart feels dead, empty and useless. MAN, I get fired up over this. The Life that Jesus offers is an abundant, overcoming, fulfilling, flat out DESTROY SIN AND KICK IT OUT kind of life. It's high time that we LIVE our faith not waiver in it. That we let the blood FREE us instead of sin enslave us. That we show this dying world what it looks like to LIVE!

There, I said it. Man, that gets me going.

Fired up,

Jeff