I know that the weather gurus out there are saying that we are going to get snow tomorrow but I don’t know if I believe it.  Aren’t they always saying that?  Is it just me or does it feel like they think it’s going to snow every other day?

Okay, here’s the deal.  Last year, we canceled church way too early on a Saturday and felt very foolish the next day when it felt like spring outside.  We are not doing that again.  We fully plan on having church tomorrow!  Even if there’s a little snow on the ground, we’re having church!  Even if everyone goes and buys all the bread and milk in the city, we are having church tomorrow!  Even if we all have to wear coats and even hats, we’re having church tomorrow!

Of course, if we ever feel like it would be dangerous for folks to come to church we would cancel services but I doubt that’s going to happen.  If it did happen, you could check here on my blog for the latest.  We’d also probably send out a calling post call.  But, again, I want to stress that I don’t think that’s going to happen.

See you at church tomorrow!  :)

There are two great blog posts that I saw this week that have really resonated with me.  First, I loved this post from my man, Bil Cornelius.  His thoughts about pastors, support and great leaders are all on the money.  Then, Steven Furtick posted this little gem.  Dang.  He’s hit the nail on the head too.  Enjoy.

As most of you already know, God made a way for me to go to C3 last week.  I knew that God wanted me there and I was so glad when the doors opened for me to attend.  I will tell you, however, that it was a bit of a battle.  First, Amy was sick before I left.  She had some sort of stomach bug and we thought that she was getting better.  Then, the morning of my flight she had a fever.  I thought about staying home but she insisted that I go any way.  (She’s an amazing woman!)  We had planned on Amy driving me to the Marta station so I made her stay home an I drove myself down.  It was pouring down rain and bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way to the airport.  Once there, I started feeling absolutely awful myself.  This made for one miserable flight.  It was truly the worst flight I’ve ever experienced.

During the flight, I read my daily devotional that said that you sometimes have to “push through the pain” to get what God wants to give you.  That should have inspired me but it felt more like an omen of things to come versus a word of encouragement.  :)

By the time I was on the ground in Texas, I was starving but I afraid to eat anything.  I called home and Amy was feeling worse than when I left and I started getting concerned for my roommate at the hotel.  I decided to get another hotel room so as to not ruin the conference for him.  Finding another room proved to be a bit of challenge though.  Thankfully, I was eventually able to find something.

That evening, I was able to spend some time with Greg Rohlinger and his wonderful team but I wasn’t myself.  My stomach was still feeling funky and I was worried about Amy.  Then, after the evening session of the conference, I got a call from Amy.  Her throat was killing her and she was experiencing a lot of pain when she swallowed.  She had asked a friend to come over and take her to a quick med place.  When I hung up the phone I couldn’t have felt more helpless.  I prayed for her.  Then, I twittered and asked a bunch of other folks to pray too.  It was comforting to have so many praying and offering to help but I just wanted to be home to take care of my wonderful wife.  This was the low point of the trip for me and I honestly thought about catching the next flight home.  Still, I keep hearing the Lord telling me to press on.

The next day the doctors confirmed that Amy had strep and they prescribed some meds.  I went to the conference and got to spend some time with a lot of really great folks that I know through twitter.  The whole time though, I was just worried about Amy and the kids.  Amy is almost never sick but going from stomach bug to strep really put her through the ringer.  Still, I tried to get something out of the conference.

The sessions were all great and I took a lot of notes but, honestly, I didn’t really feel like I was getting much more than I would have if I had stayed at home and read all the tweets from the conference.  I started to wonder why I was there.  Still, God keep reminding me to push through the pain.

Thursday night, I started to experience the full brunt of the stomach bug myself (nice!) and only slept a few hours.  I started to wonder if God was the one trying to get me to C3 or if it was perhaps the devil instead.  :)

The next day was another day of good sessions but I still didn’t feel that I had received whatever I was supposed to receive from God until the last session that evening.  It was there that Bishop T. D. Jakes spoke.  He always ministers to me and I was really looking forward to hearing him speak but, honestly, it was a some point during worship, before he spoke, that I started to sense God in a very powerful way.  I felt like He was saying to me, you stuck with it and now I’m going to bless you. I just sort of had this experience with God right there.  It was awesome and then, when the Bishop did speak, I was ministered to again in another powerful way.

So, that’s the end of my saga.  I flew home the next morning.  I felt like I had been away a week but it was really just a few days.  I’m glad I went but I guess the moral of the story is that if God promises you something you’ve got to hang on until He delivers.

Just like every other church I know, we are having to adjust to the new financial realities that our current economy has presented to us.  Churches like Fusion are always living by faith and we will always do so, but there are times when you just sense that it’s time to make some changes and I believe we are currently in one of those seasons.  With all that in mind, I’d like to ask all you guys to be praying for Fusion and her pastors as we make some hard decisions in the coming weeks.  Truthfully, we’ve already cut a ton of stuff and it looks like the painful cuts are the only ones that are left at this point.  Again, we’d appreciate your prayers as we seek God on all this and do our best to make wise, faith-filled decisions.

Just to be clear, I want you all to know that I have no doubt that God will provide for us as we move forward!  We just want to be wise given the current circumstances.

This weekend we are continuing our Whispers series and I’m going to be talking about how God sometimes speaks to us through pain.  I’ve been working on the message all day and I’m really pumped up about it because I know that all sorts of people need to hear this message.  With that in mind, I’d like to ask all you guys to help me out with a few things…

1. Please pray like crazy. I believe that God is giving me this message and that it has the potential to absolutely set people free but my words won’t amount to anything unless God shows up in a major way.  Please pray that He’ll set people free and that He’ll continue to guide me as I put the finishing touches on everything.
2. Please invite your friends. I know that there are a lot of hurting and confused people out there right now and I couldn’t imagine a better time to invite friends and family to church.  Do whatever you need to do to get them there.
3. Be there yourself. I guess this goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway.  You need to be there this weekend.  You know and I know it…and the devil knows it too so he’s going to put all kinds of crazy obstacles in your way.  Don’t let him or anything else stop you.

I’m heading out to the C3 conference this week and I couldn’t be more excited about it!  I’m going to miss my family as always but, honestly, I’ve been running on fumes lately and  I need something like this to recharge me.

Early last week I didn’t think I was going.  It just wasn’t in the budget so I told God that if He wanted me to go He would have to provide a way.  Well, within two days, everything was taken care of.  First, Greg Rohlinger, pastor of Palm Valley Church, contacted me and offered me a free ticket and a free hotel room!  Then, the very next day Pat Gillen called and said that his church had decided to send me some money to “go to whatever conference I wanted to attend.”  Neither of these guys knew anything about what the other was doing but the end result is that everything for this trip has been paid for.  I’m so thankful to the both of them, and their respective churches, for their generosity.  Ultimately, I give thanks to God for making this happen.

I’m really looking forward to hearing the speakers at the conference.  I’m also really excited about having a chance to reconnect with Greg and all my twitter buddies that are going to be there.

Please pray for me to find a balance with my time while I’m away.  I feel like God wants me to connect with a bunch of folks but, at the same time, I know that I want to spend a good chunk of time alone just seeking Him on some stuff too.  I’m weird when I get to a conference.  If God starts speaking to me I just want to go back to the hotel room and spend time unpacking what I’ve heard.  It’s just the way I’m wired.

Anyway, the whole thing is such a God thing that I can’t wait to see what develops.

• The energy at Fusion the past couple of weeks has been amazing!  God’s definitely up to something.  You can just feel it!
• The band has been doing a great job and I’m really digging some of the new songs we’re doing.
• We overdid it with the smoke today.  :)  Hopefully, we’ll get that dialed in next week.
• I’m so proud of my wife.  She was a real trooper and rocked the bass even though she was sick.
• I’m not going to lie.  I think I butchered my sermon this morning.  I wanted to do so much more.  Still, given the fact that I felt horrible yesterday and this morning,  I guess it was okay.
• Sermons are sort of like landing an airplane…Any sermon that you can walk away from is a good one.  :)
• One highlight is that I used a flip chart today on stage.  How cool/geeky is that?
• I know that the sickness in our home was just the devil.  I need to start tracking how often someone in my family gets sick on Saturdays.  I think it would be an eye-opening chart.
• I need to enlist a group of people that will commit to pray for me, my family, the staff, their families and the church in general every Saturday night.
• I’ve got a couple of friends that are really hurting right now.  It breaks my heart.  I can’t stop thinking about them.
• A bunch of people from Fusion stepped up in a big way yesterday to help some folks in need.  I’m VERY proud of you guys!  Thank you for being the church yesterday.
• I think this Whispers series is exactly what God wants us to be studying right now.
• This is the first week for our growth groups to base their discussions on the sermon.  I wish I could be at every group to listen to all those discussions.
• I got a lot of flack about saying that peanut butter M&M’s are better that Reeses Pieces on twitter the other day but it’s true and I won’t back down.
• The sickness in our house this weekend ruined all our Valentine’s plans.  Amy and I ended up having a “romantic” dinner in the dinning room while the kids ate in the kitchen.  It didn’t matter that much though because any meal with my wonderful and amazing wife is a treat regardless of the circumstances.
• I mentioned distractions today during my message.  I know that the enemy has been trying to distract me a lot lately.  Please pray that I focus on the right things.
• BSG (Battlestar Galactica) is getting really, really good.  I’ve been watching in on Hulu in bits an pieces when I have time.
• Facebook is driving me nuts.  I don’t know how much longer I can take it.  At the same time, I don’t want to disconnect from all the Fusion folks that are on there.
• My blog has been suffering from neglect lately.  I’ll try to blog more soon.
• I used a Amazon gift card I got for Christmas to buy a Wii Fit last week.  I really like it but every time I step on it, it says, “Please, one at a time.”  What does that mean?  :)
• Later.

I’m so excited about our Fusion One class tomorrow morning.  If you’re interested in joining Fusion (or just learning more about the church) this is the class for you.  It’s always a fun and exciting class AND it’s not too late to sign up.  Just contact the church office today and we’ll save you a spot!

• I’m getting this out so very late because things have been absolutely CRAZY in my life lately.
• Church was great Sunday.  I love it when God changes lives and Sunday was just one of those days when God changed lives.
• I am SO pumped about our growth groups right now.
• It looks like we’re about to unleash the power of community in our church like never before!
• The Group Connection was amazing!  We had a huge turnout and it looked to me like all the groups were starting to gel by the end of the evening.
• We’ve had more people sign up for groups this semester than at any time I can recall!
• I truly believe the new format of our groups is exactly what we need right now as a church.  These groups are going to absolutely rock!
• I’m also really pumped about this coming weekend.  Can’t wait to see what God does.
• It’s funny how God leads us through our lives.  My life never goes how I think it’s going to go.
• I think we’re finally starting to shake the sickness in our house.  Yeah!
• Christa Sellers is one hard working woman.  Her passion for groups really shines through and God has certainly blessed her efforts.
• If you ask me, Michelle Lee earned her Wonder Woman shirt on Monday night.
• Nathan Lee also worked hard and he deserves a better shirt than the one he was wearing on Monday!  :D
• I sense that we are at a pivotal time in the life of Fusion Church.  Please be praying for her.
• I’ll say it again.  I think my days on facebook are numbered.
• If you’re not in a group at Fusion yet, there’s still time to join.  Just call the office or sign up on Sunday.  Don’t miss out on this great opportunity.
• The two Community Experiment messages are up on our podcast.  If you didn’t catch them, be sure to listen to them so you’ll understand why community is so important.
• The more I work on my Mac the more I like it.  There is, however, absolutely no good Bible software for Macs, IMHO.
• I’m still trying to figure out if there’s any way on earth that I might be able to make it the C3 conference this year.
• I’m listening to some Motown-era Jacksons.  I’m telling you that Michael Jackson was amazing and all he had to do was not get weird and people would have loved him forever.  Unfortunately, he got real weird.
• I’ve sort of got a bit of writer’s block with my blog.  What would you guys like to see me talk about here?
• Remember to bring your Bible with you this weekend, if you’ve got one.
• Later.

This weekend I’m going to be talking about how to hear from God.  The series is called “Whispers” and it’s going to be great.  You know, of all the topics I get asked about as a pastor, I’d have to say that hearing from God is at the top of the list. Folks, this is one of those “divine appointment” messages.  Do whatever you’ve got to do to be there and bring every friend you’ve got.

I’m also asking everyone to bring their Bibles with them this weekend.  Please spread the word.  BRING YOUR BIBLE! (If you don’t have a Bible, we’ll be providing free ones at the door but if you own one bring it with you.)

Don’t miss this weekend.