Day 2 God is Good

So this morning I did not hear my alarm go off, or in classic David fashion I probably got up and turned it off, but forgot about it. I did wake up with enough time to have some time with God and get going. I felt like I should check out a new church this morning so I did. It is a smaller church that broke off from a larger one in the area called the Journey Church. The worship was really great and the teaching was phenomenal on money. I learned a lot about how to be a godly steward and God showed me some areas in my life that I had not submitted to Him. I also had some clarity about saving and not feeling like I was hoarding it, but rather holding savings as a way to protect money that God has not given it a place for it to go yet. I also was challenged to remember that every dollar I earn and spend is from God and that I will have to give an account to Him. I hope that I can honor God with my finances and submit every dollar I earn to what he wants me to spend it on. I know it will take some time to get it all figured out, but I want real treasures not just money which will perish along with everything in the world. It really came at just the right time too because yesterday I found out just how much money I was going to get for a tax refund and boy am I excited, but I was letting my imagination go and starting thinking about all I could buy with it rather than how I could honor God with it beyond giving the 10% of my income. But today I was able just to repent and ask God to change my thinking about money and I hope anyone that reads this and knows me would help keep me honest when it comes to spending money and time on things that do not have any significance.

After that I went to meet a friend at another church I had been to before. When I found my seat, another guy came and sat with me too that I had met previously at the college/young professionals fellowship meeting. I did not know all that God was doing at the time, but his plan began to click as time went on. The sermon was excellent and the music was awesome. There was a lady behind me that had the most soulful, beautiful voice I have heard and it was such a blessing to hear her loving on Jesus. The teaching was on the importance of the body of believers, the church, to have a mission centered mindset. That we should be focused on those that are not within the church and have the heart of God for the lost. To be able to go and get the lost sheep from the 99 that are safely inside the sheepfold. It was so powerful and God showed me some people in my life that I could be ministering to and sharing the gospel with at work and at my school, Georgia Tech. I was also reminded that it is important to love others in the body of Christ outside the walls of the church as the fellowship and unity of true believers is one of the strongest forms of evangelism available. What I learned yesterday was about to be lived out in my life today. After the service ended, my friend I came to see left and I just talked with my new friend for a while. We shared what was going on and I knew I had was going to meet another guy for lunch so we all went out to taco bell together. We chatted and were talking about the service and the message we had heard and the other guy had to leave to do some errands and so I was there with my friend again and we just started opening our hearts to one another and speaking God's word into each others lives. All the scripture memorization I had been doing over the past year and little by little in my life was coming back in our conversation as God just brought scripture to mind that spoke specifically into what he was going through. And afterwards when we were getting ready to leave God showed me that our entire exchange was just witnessed by four families that were sitting around us and they were watching and listening as if we were indirectly ministering to the entire lobby as we were just loving encouraging one another and building one another up in Christ. It was such an amazing moment that took my head knowledge of what I thought to be true and moved into my heart as something I have experienced and know that God just used me in a way that I could not have planned.

Later that same night we made plans to meet up at Starbucks and share a little more and talk, because we had some stuff to do in the afternoon. On my way there I was reminded to use that time in the car to listen to biblical teaching. I turned on a Derek Prince recording that was addressing the issue of rejection, especially the extent of rejection and how deep of a wound it can leave on a person. As I was talking with my friend at Starbucks I could sense something inside me telling me that what I just learned was ready to be applied right in front of me. All the symptoms of this young man's troubled life was springing from a spirit of rejection inside from the divorce of his parents during the most crucial years of his development into manhood, puberty. His life spiraled downward and he told me how he would not even be alive today if it was not for Jesus taking a hold of his life, but I could sense that he was still struggling with horrible things that grew into a bitter loneliness within him. By faith I just said to him that I thought his problem was that he had a spirit of rejection in him after he had spoken and that it entered him during the splitting up of his parents and that I wanted to pray for it to leave him. His eyes just lit up as if I knew the problem he was facing and I just defined what he had been trying to isolate all these years. We continued to talk about how God has been shaping and orchestrating our lives. Finally we prayed for each other and did not care if people were watching and we both left and hugged, yes we hugged, and went our separate ways making tentative plans to meet up another time.

I know from his testimony and all that has transpired today that God is good.