Discovering the Real Jesus in Monroe

(Monroe)

I’ve been busy (so what else is new). Last Mon-Wed I flew to Lakeland Florida with 20 people from our church to go to the Lakeland Revival and check it out. When I got back Wed night I was dead tired.

Then my church here in Monroe did a conference with Chris Overstreet from Bethel Church in Redding California (Bill Johnson’s church). For me this was a great weekend!

Today I spent 5 hours at Bolles Harbor alone praying… ahhh, a very, very sweet time! I did a lot of journaling, reflecting, praying, processing. 

On Friday I fly to Philadelphia to be part of Palmer Theological Seminary’s commencement ceremony. I’m the Project Director for their doctoral program, and have six students receiving doctoral degrees.

Then…, back to Monroe Saturday night and in our church on Sunday morning. I can’t wait until Sunday because God has been doing some very cool things in our church family. 

(Monroe)

400 people gathered at Redeemer Fellowship Church here in Monroe last evening for worship and then Chris Overstreet from Bethel Redding Church in Redding, California spoke. I saw some people healed physically and emotionally. I attribute these things to a loving God who wants to reach out to His children and display His love and His power.

Are you in need of healing? Why not come tonight to Redeemer. I had one local businessman tell me this after last night’s gathering. He said: “I wasn’t going to come to this thing. But now, after what God just did to me, and after what I saw God doing with others, I will never be the same again.

This is not about my church. A lot of people from a lot of different churches were there, to include people from Ohio. We’ll be gathering tonight at 7 PM. I would love to see you there.

(Monroe)

Tomorrow through Sunday - May 9-10-11 - Chris Overstreet, Outreach Pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California, comes to speak at our church in Monroe (Redeemer Fellowship). (7 PM each night. Free.)

I am very impressed with the stuff that God does through the people at Bethel Redding. And Chris is a very on-fire 28-year-old who loves Jesus passionately. So, I’m expecting God to do a lot of good things this weekend.

Our focus is what I call PDI.
- Proclamation (of the Real Jesus message, which is the Kingdom of God)
- Demonstration (of the power of God in healings and deliverances)
- Impartation (of the fiery power of God in the hearts of all who come)

I believe in this stuff. I’ve seen God move in power and love. I mean, if God is real (which I believe) then one might expect that the Maker of the universe is loving and powerful enough as well as personal enough to reach out to us.

For anyone wanting a more “rational” and “intellectual” approach to this kind of thing read philosopher J.P. Moreland’s excellent book Kingdom Triangle.

(Monroe)

Chris Overstreet, Outreach Pastor at Bill John ’s Bethel Redding Church in Redding, California, will speak and minister at Redeemer Fellowship Church this weekend.

Fri night, May 9 - 7 PM

Sat morning, May 10 - 11 AM - workshop

Sat night, May 10 - 7 PM

Sun morning, May 11 - 10:30 AM

Sun night, May 11 - 7 PM

(Monroe)

Tomorrow morning I’m flying to Lakeland, Florida, with 20 people from our church to check out the thing God is doing there - reports of healings and deliverances. Be back Wednesday!

I not only believe God can and does heal people today, I have seen this happen. One of the great joys I have as a pastor is to pray for people to be healed and see God heal them.

(Monroe)

The video game “Grand Theft Auto IV” just came out and is and is going to be a huge seller. All real followers of Jesus should protest and not buy it. Why?

Here’s one reason and, I think, it should be enough. In the game you can hire a prostitute, have sex with her, then instead of giving her a tip beat her with a baseball bat. See here and here to verify this. Now listen to this. “You don’t have to do that to advance in the game.” Gee… it’s just like real life. You don’t have to kill and rape people to advance in life. How profound.

“Some gamers have also reported playing the game with the intention of doing the minimum amount of violence possible - hanging out, making friends, watching the game’s TV shows or going online with the in-game internet. For some, the game’s realism has a sobering effect. “The physics of death feel shockingly real. Bodies can’t be blown apart or torn to pieces, but they react convincingly to explosions and severe impacts. Each death is a decision,” wrote one reviewer.”

Are we supposed to stand up and applaud GTA-IV for giving us a game that, just like in real life, we could choose to rape and kill but don’t have to? If so, then surely GTA-IV is unnecessary since we have real life situations. We don’t need a game like this to train us to make moral choices. One could learn the horror of the Holocaust by slaugthering another 6 million Jews, but I suggest figure this out in an other way.

“”It’s going to be the biggest game of the year,” says Simon Barton from Gameplanet, New Zealand’s largest on-line games retailer. “It’s blown away Halo 3. We sold out of the Xbox version the day before release with pre-orders.” In four days he’s sold around 1500 copies of the game, including about 800 of the special edition package which Gameplanet sells for $150 (compared to $120 for the standard edition). “We’ve just got some new stock of the Xbox version in today (Friday) - that probably won’t last the weekend.”"

One gamer wrote that ”It consistently portrays women as disposable sex objects and it is inexcusable.” One could begin to think that the creators of Grand Theft Auto IV (David Jones and others) themselves view women this way. The game becomes a projection of their own decadence. Purchase it and you’re voting for the degradation of women and filling the pockets of the game’s amoral creators.

Jesus-followers will rightly consider GTA-IV as ensconced in the kingdom of darkness and as advancing the dark kingdom. This game may sell more than Halo 3. Since we can learn a lot about this world we’re living in by just watching what sells, we should pray that a move of God would counter such darkness with light.

(MCCC)

I just received this press release from Monroe County Community College.

WJR-AM (760) radio anchor and Monroe County Community College alum Paul W. Smith will broadcast a special edition of his morning show live from the college’s La-Z-Boy Center from 6-9 a.m. on Monday, May 5.

The special broadcast of The Paul W. Smith Show – which is being sponsored by Monroe County Community College, the Monroe County Historical Society, Mercy Memorial Hospital System, La-Z-Boy Inc. and Eastern Michigan University – will focus on summer travel and tourism opportunities in Monroe County. It is free and open to the public.

As of the issuing of this press release, the college has confirmed that Smith will interview the following individuals live on the show from MCCC:

· 6:20 a.m.: MCCC President Dr. David Nixon

· 7:20 a.m.: La-Z-Boy President and CEO Kurt Darrow, Mercy Memorial Hospital System Board Chairman John Zarb and Cabela’s Events Coordinator Steve Zollars

In addition, Smith will conduct phone interviews at 8:20 a.m. with U.S. Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Dearborn) and Dr. William Anderson, director of the Michigan Department History, Arts and Libraries.

AND…  The WJR jetcopter will be landing on the main campus at 9 a.m. Monday to pick up Paul W. Smith after his show, which he is doing live from the La-Z-Boy Atrium that morning from 5:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.

The jetcopter will be landing in the large square area directly between the Life Sciences Building and the Welch Health Education Building.

 (I took this picture of the Negev Desert while in Israel in February.)

There’s a nice little article on christianitytoday.com on desert spirituality. I was introduced to this in the early 1980s by reading Richard Foster’s brilliant Celebration of Discipline. Then I discovered Henri Nouwen. Nouwen’s works have influenced me greatly, as have Thomas Merton’s. Nouwen’s little book The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry, is an excellent book to begin with. Read slowly and listen.

I had, as a student in my Personal Transformation class at Palmer Theological Seminary, Father Bishoy El-Antony. Father Bishoy is a Coptic monk from the monastery of St. Antony of the Fourth Century in Egypt. He’s a modern desert father, who sometimes sleeps in the desert and spends time praying for days in a cave. He came to class every day dressed up in full Coptic garments. One day I taught a lesson on St Antony of Egypt, the original desert father. After my presentation Father Bishoy told me, “You did a good job. I learned something.” He then said, “We would like you to come to Egypt and teach us more about prayer.” I responded, “Father Bishoy, I’m not sure that I would have much to teach you about prayer.” Father Bishoy said, with a twinkle in his eye, “We are so humble that we can even learn from a person like you.”

Any serious follower of Jesus would do well to spend some time immersed in the wisdom-from-God that was dispensed into the hearts of these early Christian desert fathers, who left a culture they viewed as decadent for the sake of finding God in a non-corrupted environment, for the sake of bringing God’s truths back into their culture.