The City of Refuge Story

The CCO staff and I recently traveled up to Atlanta, GA for the Drive Conference (a church leadership conference) at NorthPoint Church but we decided to go a little earlier than planned to get this amazing story on video. This is the story of how Bruce Deel followed the call of God and started the ministry "City of Refuge," a non-profit, outreach facility/church specializing in rebuilding the city of Atlanta. They work with homeless mothers, single mothers, drug addicts, the abused and much more. Listen to this story and be astounded by God's provision and possibility.

Changing How The "Head" Thinks

WOW! It's been a while since I have posted and I am really sorry. I have been swamped with holiday stuff, church musicals, and not to mention the last month of our pregnancy. Well, I was sitting at home last night watching some television and I came across the latest LA INK show. As I was watching a guy named Brian "Head" Welch (EX-lead guitarist for Korn) came on to get a tattoo. I had heard his life story through a couple of second-hand translations but this was the first time I had heard him tell about the day God consumed his life and changed the way his HEAD continued to think. He tells about his lifestyle while in Korn and now his lifestyle outside of the secular rock and about the day Jesus changed his life FOREVER. Check out his story for yourself in this video below.



It's amazing! God blows me away in how he reaches his people. One of the biggest things we instill in our youth at our church is the importance of reaching for God. We hammer it into them. We want them to realize that God has given us the HUGE responsibility of sharing His truth and love. But then I see a video like this one and it reminds me that, YES, He is calling us to reach people but He is a BIG enough God to do it on His own. If you listen to the multiple times Brian "Head" Welch has given his testimony on CNN, FOX NEWS, YouTube.com and many others, you can hear Brian say that something in the spirit reached out to him and miraculously changed his life. GOD, YOU TRULY ARE AN AWESOME GOD!!!

If you want to know more about his God encounter you can read his new book titled "Save Me From Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, and Lived to Tell My Story." Brian "Head" Welch has also released a NEW christian NU-METAL album also titled "Save My From Myself." Check them out and support his decision to follow our AWESOME GOD. You can hear his new album here.

Rock The Vote!

Now that I am about to be a parent pretty soon, voting becomes an entirely different thing for me. I have always taken pride in my freedom to vote but after watching this video you will understand what I am talking about. Take a look...

Nostalgically Blessed

This past weekend me and Jules visited where I grew up because an old friend of mine was getting married. It was so cool to see all of the friends I grew up with and to finally see all of us married and successful with kids on the way. There comes a point in your life where you look around and you realize how far you all have come and much you all have been through together. Not only to we have an awesome time visiting the past but as we returned to Orlando (the present reality), we had another amazing surprise from the past. Our old friends from the Campus Choir days, Larry and Kristin Kusic stopped in to visit our church on their way home from a family vacation. It's so good to have friends that you can just pick right back up where you left off and still keep connected.

This weekend, God was so good to me. He showed me how blessed we are and on top of that he showed me how faithful He is to give us life and to the fullest. Let me explain. Not only did He give us an opportunity to revisit the past He also blessed us in the now. As you all know, the economy is tight but we have always been faithful in our giving regardless. I will admit that it has been hard at time but we have stood on God's promise that "if we put the Kingdom of God firs that all else will be added." So Sunday morning I wrote out my tithe check as usual and trust that God would supply all our needs. Just as the first service ended, a new member of the church, that I don't know all that well, shook my hand and handed me some money. As the crowd began to disperse out the exits I looked down in my hand and I saw the same amount of money I had just paid in tithes. THANK YOU, JESUS! But I'm not done...Second service rolls around and I feel that if God blessed first service then I have give back to the God who supplied. So I gave again in the offering. I kid you not...later that night at a prayer and worship service someone handed me a card with the same amount of money I paid in the second service. WOW! GOD IS SO GOOD!

When the world is trembling in fear because they rely on their own resources to financially stabilize their own economy, know that we can trust in God that is faithful to follow through with His promises. THANK YOU, JESUS!

SHHHH... ACTion!

I was reading in my devotions this morning and as I was reading in Luke I had one of those "AAHA Moments." You know what I mean? It's when you've read something so many times before but God decides to bring His word to you in a-whole-nother light. I just began to read about the ministry of Jesus and how He went from town to down preaching the news and doing the works and miracles of God. All of a sudden, as I was reading, I began to just realized that Jesus, in the beginning, didn't want people to tell others about Him. He didn't even want the demons he cast out of people to shout, "You're the Son of God!" I kept asking myself, "Why wouldn't He want people to know who He was?" That's when the "AAHA Moment" came. Jesus wanted to show God and not just proclaim that He was God.

I began to think about us as Christians and how we would love to tell everyone that we are Christians at times, but on the flip side, our works are not seen. I think if we are going to be Christians (CHRIST-like) then we should probably take a lesson from Jesus and let our works tell of His Grace and Mercy and Love before our mouths proclaim "OUR" position in all of this. What a powerful tool of evangelism. Jesus knew this. If we just allow our works to do the miraculous then eventually the doors of the people's heart will be unlocked to share the Christianity. Jesus knew the importance of reaching people's "world" before He showed them His own.

Judah's 2nd Sonogram

Well, today we went to the Doctor for our 2nd sonogram. Everything seems to running perfectly. He is right on target for all of his measurements and the heart beat is steady and strong. We cannot wait to see him and hold. As we sat and watched Judah move around as we probed his momma's belly the sonogram wand, we couldn't help to think that God's creation of life is so spectacular. How can someone witness the formation of a human life and see it's complexity and perfect and think that there is no GOD? GOD truly is amazing and I thank Him everyday for blessing me with all that is in my life. My wife, my baby, my home, my job, my health, my home, my family, and list goes on and on. THANK YOU GOD for just being GOD!

Being Loving Not Religious

I came across this video the other day on Ed Young's site and I thought was interesting. I'm not the BIGGEST Ed Young fan but he has done a couple things here and there that have really caught my heart. This video, once get past the commercial at the beginning talks about his unusual meeting with a local porn star. I love that he didn't focus his attention on the sin but on the sinner instead. Too often we look at someone sin and we automatically write them off and want nothing to do with them but we must remember that Jesus welcomed all sinners into his company. If you think about it...the only people Jesus got angry at was the religious people. We had this situation a while back in our church and this video reminded me of that situation. Our church is located right down the road from a gay night club and so we have quite of few homosexual couples in our churches neighborhood. Well, one day a lesbian couple started attending the church and the attended on a regular basis. I loved that they were attending. Notice I didn't say I loved that they lived a gay lifestyle but I just loved that we had an opportunity to pour Jesus into their life and maybe after time it would change their lifestyle...who knows? My point is, you have to catch a fish before you can clean. The word says that He came to this world not to condemn the world but that the world MIGHT be saved. Well, to make a long story short...the lesbian couple began to make long time church members uncomfortable with how close they sat to each other and eventually they felt negativity and left the church. This was a real upset to me. When will the church stop looking at the sin and see the sinner that needs Jesus. I began to ask myself, "What made their sin any different from the sin of the struggling addict that sits two rows back?" or "What makes their sin worse than the husband that struggles with pornography?" or "What makes their sin more sinful than the wife that lies to her husband about how much she spends at the mall?" I think we ALL need to evaluate how we see sinners and ask ourselves, "Are we looking at the sin or do we see the sinner that needs the love of Christ?"

Kingdom Minded

Well, our 3rd annual three day youth conference "RENEWVAL" is finally over and it has left me with a loaded question..."What ever happened to being Kingdom minded?" Let me explain. Our vision for this amazing youth conference we host has always been to build relationships, to build ourselves and to build the kingdom but somewhere along the way it seems that people have lost the most important element of what RENEWVAL was birthed to accomplish; the aspect of building the kingdom. Let me explain further. Every year me and the Identity Student Ministry leaders bust our tails to plan, promote, and host RENEWVAL and every year we pursue other youth ministries in the Orlando area to come and participate with us in worship. Our goal is that we all (all Orlando youth ministries) benefit from the amazing atmosphere RENEWVAL creates to share the message of Christ with as many teens as possible and every year multiple youth pastors promise me they will be in attendance with a van full of youth and every year, all but one youth pastor disappoint. Whatever happened to integrity? What ever happened to being a man/woman of your word? I just don't get it. Is it a fear of losing their kids to another youth group? Is it a fear of comparison? There have been many times that I have brought our teens to other's youth ministry events in support of what other ministries are doing and even if I had no youth with me I would still come alone to support. I just guess I don't understand prioritizing the success of a "ministry" over the success of the "Kingdom." Am I making any sense? I think that somewhere along the road of building ministries churches have lost the most important aspect of what God called us to do; seek the lost. Somewhere we've turned to focus on ourselves and we've lost the element of evangelism; and it's not just other youth pastors. I was also left scratching my head after RENEWVAL because our own youth. Some of our youth brought unsaved friends to RENEWVAL and they got saved (PTL) but others... When will we get past our fears of rejection and start inviting our unsaved friends to church. Are we so insecure of how people will perceive us that we choose our comfort zone over someones eternity. Don't get me wrong...I could use work in this area as well...I just thought that "our" youth would have come through with their end of the deal for such an amazing event that they are so proud of. I guess somewhere along the road it became all about..."What can "I" get out of RENEWVAL?" instead of "What can "THEY" get out of RENEWVAL?"