A miracle on Saturday morning...

It’s Saturday morning.

For me, that means getting to the church offices and prepping my heart and preparing my mind for action.  I pray and preach through my message in the basement, shouting down the devil and lifting up the Lord. 

I denounce doubts and I affirm truth.  In a word, I battle.

It’s not like sports where you put on your game-face or get hyped.  This is about getting my heart in synch with God, which is much harder to actually do than it is to write just now.  All this to say, that’s what my Saturday mornings are about, aligning myself with God so that He can do as He wishes with my life and in our church moving into the weekend services.

But this morning was a little different.

I came into the office and checked my mailbox to find a handwritten letter.  It was from someone who had visited our church for the last two weeks.  As I opened it up a check fell out the side for $20,000.  (This doesn’t happen each Saturday morning, mind you.  In fact, I don’t think this has ever happened to me quite in this way.)  The letter was filled with encouragement and joy.  This family had been looking for a place to call home and they felt like they finally found that at Impact.  They had heard briefly from up front that we were coming down the homestretch of our year-long campaign that we’re calling “Matchpoint” where every dollar that’s given is doubled, so they wanted to give toward that cause even though they have only been here twice…Twice…TWICE.  95% of the note wasn’t about the money, it was about the culture of our church and the way they’ve felt welcomed and energized as a family.  The money was just something God put on their heart last week as they thought about our goal of raising the additional $900,000 by the end of October.  Wow!

This comes off a day I had yesterday where we were given $25,000 by someone who’s outside of our church who wanted to let us know that they were behind us and excited about the prospect of our new facility and the people that would be reached with the expanded space.  The phone call with this person just about made my heart burst with excitement because sometimes you can think, “Am I just making this all up in my head? Does anyone else out there see God moving and calling us to move with Him?” 

And it’s days like yesterday and this morning that affirm: “I’m with you.  You’re on the right path.  Keep doing what you’re doing.” 

It’s hard in the beginning stages when you see nothing and have nothing.  When you’re leading people toward what seems like the impossible and all you have is faith and a prayer, it doesn’t seem like enough.  But that’s what I’ve learned about leading over the years…the leaders have to go before they know.  They have to take the risk and step out before it’s in the bag.  They have to cast a vision before there’s anything to see.  And that’s hard, cause the doubts abound and the fears resound inside your head.  But you move in spite of those intruding thoughts confident in what God has planted in seed-form inside your heart.  And then, boom, faith becomes sight.  Rain falls from thin air.  And the water-walking, mountain-moving, sun-stopping, sea-splitting God comes through and goes before you.  There is no adrenaline rush like it—seeing God take your faith and multiplying it like loaves and fish.

So I marvel today…and everyday…that God would be so kind as to let me see and experience a revival of hearts.  I can’t wait to see how God makes a way where there seems no way in the days to come.  I will continue to do what only I can do so that God can do what only He can do.  This is the great adventure of the Christian life.  Humbling, really.