40 Days
- 40 Days to seek the face of G0d
- 40 Days of fasting as God prompts
(food/ sleep/ a meal/ TV/ computer/ ... yeah, anything that might free you to pray and to seek God's face)
- 40 Day to read the book of Colossians... Read the letter once a day for 40 Days
- 40 Days to pray!
- 40 Days to unite as a church!
- A great starting point might simply be to read Colossians 4.12 and to ask God how He might ask you to 'wrestle' in prayer for Emmanuel..... for the glory of God.

What could happen if we pray? Devote yourself to prayer!! (Col 4.2)

40 Days to Launch on 6.15

Week Four 7.06.09 – 7.12.09
- Park and think about Colossians 1.24 – 29… God is inviting you to treasure Him. He is inviting you to treasure His goodness and His grace and His life in you. He is inviting you to love Him and through that love, to love those around you. Verses 28 – 29 will compel you to fast. God is challenging us to present those in our sphere of influence as perfectly mature in Him. We must deeply love Him and allow that love to pour out and to disciple those around us. What a magnanimous joy. What a challenging privilege.
- How is God asking you to pour Him onto those around you?
- This week, our fellowship will be on adventure to Port St Joe. We will lead a family impacting week. We will teach children of the boundless love of God. Pray for our family that will be on venture.
- Pray… Seek.. Fast… Expect… Enjoy!

Week Three 6.29.09 - 7.05.09
- This is a week to celebrate freedom. It was for freedom that Christ has set us free! Colossians 1.13 – 14 are amazing verses of freedom. Let freedom in Christ and from Christ and for Christ ring in your life!
- This week, our family of faith launched Fantastic World (Kids); Primal (Students); Flipt Summer Studies (Adults)… it promises to be an amazing summer for our families. Fast and pray for God to move in Spirit and in Power in and through the life of our fellowship.
- What will happen when a church prays?
- We will discover more and more of the goodness of God
- We will see our students return from camp with their lives flipped completely
- We will experiences hundreds of kids at VBS (493 to be exact); dozens rescued into the story of God; and a thousand dollars or more given to provide VBS for another church (Daytona)
- We will share story after story after story of the beauty and wonder of Christ!

Week Two 6.22.09 - 6.28.09
- a beautiful week ahead. VBS launched last night and it remains one of my favorite weeks of the year! Pray for God to DEEPLY impact the lives of many families....
- I love the theme..."It all comes back to Jesus"... After reading the Letter to Colossians daily, stop and think about Colossians 1.15 - 20... Christ supreme. Christ Beautiful. Christ amazing. Pray that Christ will not only be the head of this church, but that He will guide us into every thing that He has for us and that we will move with Him.
- I love that thought from yesterday. Worship is life. Everything. May your life be an ongoing, never-ending, amazed and beautiful act of worship! May our worship of God leave this city and the nations glad and rejoicing in the goodness of the One who overwhelms us.
- Pray... Fast...Seek... Expect

Week One 6.15.09 - 6.21.09
- An amazing week ahead..... Colossians 4.12 could be an amazing verse to pray. Invite God to teach you to pray and to be a person who stands in the gap for this church.
- Students are at camp.... If you would like a list to pray over, hit comment below and leave your e mail addy. Pray for the 90 students/ leaders at SLC!
- Boomerang Express is gearing up next week.... Ask God to pour out His life into the lives of our kids and workers in the days to come.
- As you pray this week, pause and consider the wonder of Colossians 1.15 - 17. All things are held together in Christ... He is supreme... He is enough... Is your life given 'for' Him?

What excites you about 'wrestling' in prayer with the entire emmanuel family? Hit comment and share....

Pray... Expect....Hope....Be

A friend, this week, shared a great summary to the verse Colossians 4.12. She said, 'that verse has messed me up.' With the joy of a 'mess us up' verse, we have discovered a solid plural name for Epaphras. Ready?!?! Here you go.... Epaphrites. Yep, doesn't really ring my joy bell either, but what an incredible thing to aspire toward.

Can you imagine a whole slew of people who wrestled with God on behalf of each other? I mean, it would be spiritually remarkable for a church... a movement of people who are giving great chase to God, to pray and to wrestle and to ask God to grow us into maturity and that we would be fully assured and that we will stand firm in and for the glory of God. Epaphras wrestled with God for his friends at the Church at Colosse.

Honestly, my imagination runs wild as I think about the people in that church. They kept having amazing things happen among them... you know, people being rescued into the story of God; families putting the pieces back together; people selling their stuff so that other people could have stuff; parents committing to train their kids in what it might look like to follow Christ. Things like that and so much more was happening and the people of the church were just in awe of God. They had to be asking, 'how does this stuff keep happening? How does all of this God-stuff keep springing up around us???' Yeah, Epaphras wrestled with God on behalf of the church, that they would be mature and assured and that they would stand firm in the Lord.

So, I'm hoping that our church might just be made up of a bunch of Epaphrites. That could be wildly fun..... God-sized... people in Crestview might just look at us and like what they see. So, who are you praying for? Who is praying for you? When is the last time that you wrestled with God in behalf of another? Let's go for it!

By Grace... For Glory,
Mark

Incredible day around Emmanuel yesterday. We did the Nole chop and chant, which made a portion of the room happy and left the rest of us a bit nauseated. But, we also talked about what it might look like to live for the name of God. Colossians 3.17 was our launching pad for thought and it was fresh to consider what it might mean for us to truly live out and flesh out the name or the essence of God Himself in our everyday encounters.

Honestly, I was really challenged by I Samuel 3.19.... I mean, what a verse to latch onto and what a risky verse to pray for yourself. To actually say to God, I don't want a single action or deed or word that you have for me to fall to the ground. Honestly, if we were to ask God to so posture our lives so that there was not a single action... not one task that He has for us... not a Word that He is speaking to us that might fall to the ground, we could live in the midst of a revolution of the Spirit and the Presence of God. I have no doubt that God would enjoy dwelling in an environment like that and He would give us His 'face'... His presence.. His glory. I want to live for the glory of God and I really want to share that zeal for His glory with a whole bunch of people!

Speaking of living for the glory, we collected a ton of money yesterday in order to prepare a nursery area and to prep a kids area in Daytona Beach. Via a single plea, we gave over $1100 AND a crib and we also have more than a dozen who will pile in and head toward Daytona in July. I think that we were the church yesterday.... we met and worshiped and talked about hundreds of lives that will be impacted in Crestview through this summer AND we met a critical need in another part of the world with immediacy. Amazing! I love sharing life in this environment and watching God move among us. Details are coming about the trip in July. Tentative dates are to leave on Friday July 17. Work the evening of the 17th; Saturday work; afternoon of the 18th; wrap up work on the 19th (Monday) and head back to the 'View. Changing the world.... Gotta love it.

Enjoy a remarkable week and give great chase toward the 'face of God'. Play for Glory.

By Grace... For Glory,

Mark

a quote by Chan has been messing with me this week. I am asking God what a group that enjoys Christ dwelling among them might look like. (Col 3.16) Chan writes (and I paraphrase), it's not that America is rejecting Jesus Christ, necessarily. Perhaps its just that they haven't seen Him. Instead, they have simply seen a very poor knock-off version of what a Christ-follower might be. We live in a time when the term "Christian" has been so diluted that millions of immoral but nice people genuinely consider themselves "good Christians." We have reduced the idea of a good Christian to someone who believes in Jesus, loves his or her family, and attends church regularly.

I am so begging God that people see a radical, impassioned, zealously in love with Jesus bunch of people who love God deeply..... love those around them wildly.... and, as Acts 2 reads in the message, 'people in general will like what they see' in the body of Christ.

Chan's thoughts are wrecking me. I love the church. May the church be consumed by the goodness of Christ and may His beauty, wonder, and grace dwell among us. May we never shrink back from all-encompassing call of the gospel.

By Grace.... For Glory,
Mark

I learn so much from my kids. My kids amaze me. A simple sentence that they brought home from worship a few years ago has left me challenged. Help me not to be okay simply because everything is okay with me. That seems to flow from the heart of God. Everything was okay within the trinity (God the Father, Son, and Spirit), but everything was not okay with us. His relentless love left him 'not okay' and compelled action from the heart of God. May we be 'not okay' and may our 'not okay' leave me and leave us under compulsion......

Mark

I love the Word. The Bible is alive and it gives great chase to me. God uses the Word to challenge me and to compel me and to lead me and to change my view of life. I love reading a section of Scripture and having the Holy Spirit flower a truth that I have seen hundreds of times, yet never actually seen.

I was reading Acts 2.42 and the Scripture reads that 'they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to breaking bread, prayer and fellowship.....' I have read Acts 2.42 - 47 so many times that I can't count. I tend to run toward the amazing things that God was doing among them. You know, the whole 3000 people saved or the selling of stuff or the daily gatherings in order to celebrate Christ or the awe that they seemed to generate by those around them or the constant remembrance of Jesus Christ via communion.... There was so much that was God-sized and ridiculous among them. So, how did this happen? Really, how, for heaven's sake, did all of this amazing stuff happening among them?

The simple answer that I discovered was profound. "They devoted themselves...." "They" were the 3000 new believers, who devoted themselves to one another.... to a passion for the Word... to a longing to serve those around them. They didn't ask someone else to feed them or to nurture them or to mature them. They were a wildly devoted group of Christ-followers. It seems that the Spirit of God in the life of the believer compelled them to be devoted. No excuses.... no weak pursuit... just a radical passion for God and an unimpeded devotion to know Him.

I would love for the people of Crestview to say, 'hey, that bunch of Christ-followers at Emmanuel are devoted... they are devoted to God in radical ways and they are devoted to each other.' God might just do amazing things among us that could be explained only by Him. That would be fresh!

By Grace... For Glory,
Mark

It has been a week.....

- a week of experiencing the death and burial of a friend, who in his death became a national hero
- honestly, there were so many things that were done 'right' in the middle of a situation that was so wrong......
- the OCSO and their support for the Lopez family was remarkable!
- the honor poured out for Burt's life from people across this nation leaves me with a loss for words
- perhaps one of the most 'honoring' moments of my life was to turn left on 85 out of Central BC and to see the streets lined all the way through Crestview and into Niceville with people who bestowed honor and respect for the life (and death) of Burt Lopez. From salutes to hands over hearts to homemade signs to American Flags to beautiful children stopping their ballgame to stand beside the road... it was simply remarkable. As I turned left on 20 in Niceville, I was overwhelmed by the previous 16 miles driven and I was thanking God for what the family was experiencing in the bus behind me. At that moment, God allowed me an incredible glimpse of heaven. Can you possibly fathom the utter joy of walking into heaven?!?! Can you imagine the sheer joy of walking into millions upon millions who stand before the living Christ AND who will welcome us into this wildly glorious fest around the throne of the King. I can truly only imagine......

- this week, our family ministry team ventured to the ATL and they spent three days thinking about how to most deeply and most vibrantly impact families. The outflow of the three days will be felt for years to come! What an amazing time to consider the impact of the life of the church and the life of the family and the synergizing of the two. The potential is abounding.

- Yesterday, as we gathered to worship I was so looking forward to 'sanctuary'. I needed to sing.... to worship.... and to simply be with the body of Christ. One word, from Colossians 3.11, really leaves me challenged. "HERE".... as in, here in the middle of the body of Christ I will find hope and peace and unity and joy and diversity and a thousand other gifts given by God. Here, Christ is all and He is in all. I love to find myself 'here' in the middle of a community of Christ-seekers.

Christ is all. Here, Christ is in all. I am praying that it is evident that He lives among us!

By Grace... For Glory,
Mark