Weekend Reflections April 30, 2006

This has been an incredible weekend! Here are the highlights…

Friday night was supper with some friends at Sullivan’s. I am doing their wedding in a few weeks and Lucretia and I wanted to get with them to hear their story about how they met AND to hear how they both came to know Christ. All in all it was an incredible conversation–we spent almost three hours eating and talking. AND…of course I got desert…AND they did to…AND they did not finish theirs…AND I could NOT just sit there and let it go to waste! (I have no shame!)

Saturday’s run was awesome–seriously, I felt like Forest Gump! I took off and wound up doing 12 miles in 1:43:38–that’s moving for this big boy! I have no desire to do that pace for the marathon, but I just “felt it” on Saturday. This coming Saturday is my 20 mile run–PRAY HARD!

After the run I can home and watched the Houston Texans make one of the dumbest decisions in the history of the NFL by passing on Reggie Bush…just my opinion! (WOW–I miss football so much!!!)

Yesterday at 5:00 was one of the most incredible things I have experienced as a pastor–BAPTISM at NewSpring.

I pulled into the parking lot and there were–GET THIS–people tailgating! It was AWESOME! They had a grill and a sign that said, “honk if you are getting dunked.” I walked over and chatted with them and my buddy Nick said, “If people do this before football games and celebrate nothing–why not do this at church and truly celebrate new birth!” I AGREE…and I think this should be a new “tradition” at NewSpring.

We baptized 117 people–there is NOTHING more moving than seeing 117 people say, “Jesus Christ is my Savior and Lord.”

One of the things that moved me the most was a conversation that I had before the service even began. When we built NewSpring we had a service where people wrote the names of people they wanted to see come to Christ on a card…and then we placed those cards in the area where we were going to one day baptize people and poured the cement for the pool over them.

So last night I walked up to my friends Scott and Lindsay–their daughter Micah was getting baptized. I told Scott how excited I was about this and he looked at me and said, “Yeah–we are too…we’ve been praying for this…her name is in the cement.”

I nearly lost it right there! I have a knot the size of a golf ball in my throat right now just writing about it…but that’s what it’s all about. We have a church that lifts up the name of Jesus and challenges people to reach friends and family members for Christ…and people…God is doing something amazing!!!

Last night I received an e-mail from a friend who asked me to consider reading his new book and then post a review on my blog…I was incredibly flattered and hope to have it done by the end of the week–this is so cool…my first book review! (You can pre-order this book here if you are interested.)

Today the message was AWESOME at NewSpring…I can say that because–well–I didn’t speak. I had a former professor of mine, Dr. James Emery White, come and give a talk on the Davinci Code. Let me just say that it is the single best presentation of the errors and fallacies in Dan Brown’s novel that I have ever heard. (You can listen to it here if you would like.)

As I said today at church–DON’T MISS THIS WEDNESDAY NIGHT!!! Remember our first Wednesday service begins at 6:30 and it will be off the hook! If you have ever seriously dealt with worry or stress then trust me…you need to show up! (Uh, that would just about include everyone I know!!!)

One more thing…and my heart goes out to my boy for this one…but Gary and his crew had an “interesting” experience over the weekend–you can read about it here. Gary–dude–I understand about ideas looking good on paper but then not coming out quite the way you had planned them.