The force is definitely with this guy!

Wow! What a wonderful Sunday! It’s just so incredible to attend and be a part of the Destiny family. I absolutely love going to church! Not everybody can say that, especially those that are on staff at churches (smile)… but I absolutely love the people I work with. I love the people that attend. I just really look forward to every gathering!

Anyhow, this Sunday morning, our district leaders Loren and Erie Houltberg stopped by to visit our church for the first time. Quite the drive, as they pastor and live in Salina, KS. Loren shared a great message on God meeting us and being present in the valleys. Good stuff. They loved the church and it was a great time showing them around and hear them praising what God is doing here in South Dakota.

Then, at the evening service, after an amazing time of worship, we had about ten show up for Catalyst Discipleship. Whoo-hoo! I was planning on showing the “Starving Jesus” documentary (actually, not really “planning”, more of a last minute decision) and was just going to sit with our usual three or four attendees and watch it on my Mac. When the bigger group showed up, I decided to run over to the office building and get the multimedia laptop to show it on the TV. We did and it was challenging, but everyone was eating it up, just like I did when I first watched it. We went half way through it and then stopped for some lively discussion. We’ll probably finish up the rest next Sunday night.

Okay, so that was all really cool even up to that point… but then, in the middle of our discussion, one of the adults came in and told us that they were wanting us to come out to the sanctuary and get anointed — that they were having some sort of ministry time and that they were calling us out there to get in on the action.

Let me rewind a little bit now, and give you some more background information before I share the rest… I had prepared a video for Pastor Brent’s evening message to the adult congregation and therefore had gotten the chance to preview it and learn a little bit about what he was sharing that night. His message was on the theme of cultivating a culture for signs and miracles. Cool! I’m all about that. I believe that our God is a miracle working God. That he is still doing the miraculous on earth today and that the American church needs to wake up to that reality so that we can start seeing it over on our side of the planet.

Anyhow, the short video that follows (UPDATE: which has since been removed from YouTube) is the video that he showed. It’s a documented video of miraculous things that are happening at a small church in Puerto Rico: oil flowing from the walls and dripping all over, oil and gem stones flowing out of a Bible on the church’s pulpit, gem stones and gold dust appearing fresh daily, angelic footprints… I mean, it’s pretty cool to watch. It turns out that a lady was visiting our services this evening and “just happened” to have some of the actual oil from this same church with her this evening. She had no idea that Pastor Brent was going to be sharing what he was or showing the video. Again… WOW!

So, during our discussion time in the discipleship group with our students, I had mentioned the video that Pastor Brent was showing and we were talking about God doing the miraculous through us. It was just at that time that we were invited out into the sanctuary to have the oil from the church in Puerto Rico placed on our heads and anointed as a zealous generation.

Oh, my God! What an amazing time of worship / ministry followed! I was tearing up, barely able to contain myself; the whole evening was just tied together so beautifully. I was leading worship and the Holy Spirit, through my tears, kept on directing me to speak the miraculous over the church — taking it “outside of the church doors”. By the end of the thing, I could barely stand and talking with the students afterwards, several of them were still shaking in the presence of God.

YES! GO GOD! Can’t wait to see the after-effects of this evening. God is so good.

The 24-hour prayer event has officially begun. Remember to stop by sometime this weekend and get on your knees, especially during the “youth hour” — where the prayers will be specifically focussed on the Millennial generation — from 4:00 to 5:00 pm.  Here’s a link to Isaiah 58, the theme chapter for our intercession.

As a long-time fan of Caedmon’s Call — a devoted fan since their self-titled debut — I was beginning to lose confidence in the band with their last few year’s worth of recordings. They weren’t “bad”, but they didn’t have the heart or guts that their earlier recordings did. Not to fear, though, “Overdressed”, the bands newest offering is returning Caedmon’s Call back to top form. I’ve been spinning this disk all week long and have been more deeply enthralled with every listen. Derek Webb’s return to the band, at least for this album, brings along another level of excitement for me. He’s one of my favorite solo artists.

If acoustic driven, pop-folk with biting lyrics, great storytelling, and amazing musicianship (almost a super-band!) sounds good to you, then you need to pick “Overdressed”. Check out the e-card here.