MIDWEEK CONNECTION
And suddenly we are experiencing a whole new move of God in our Sunday sessions. Last Sunday was absolutely the BEST gathering we’ve had all year.
From the very beginning, when everyone came in and began to share in laughter and fellowship, I knew that something special was about to happen.
As mom Dennis led us in corporate prayer, the Lord spoke a simple word in my heart. I heard the thought,
“Just enough is not enough; you have to want MORE.”
I knew for sure, that God was going to do something different.
Our songs of praise and worship were filled with new life. For the first time, the room was too small. Not because we had so many people, but because we needed space to dance. We wanted to do more than sing. We wanted to take our expression to another level.
We are very excited because the joy of the Lord is present in our gatherings. His love is flooding our hearts. In spite of the conditions of the city, state, country and world, we are filled with new hope and expectation for a new move of God.
When I tried to start the message, following our fellowship break, the presence of the Lord was so strong in the room that I could not begin to talk. That’s when a prophetic word of exhortation and encouragement came forth through our sister Dovonna Smith. Afterwards, God loosed me to preach; not just preach, but preach like I used to preach back in St. Louis. The boldness returned. The fire returned. The fighting, gangster-warrior mentality returned.
Secretly, I always felt this aspect of my spiritual warfare attitude would frighten the people of Harrisburg away, but instead, the Urban Life family was praising God and getting fired up about God’s purpose and plan, too.
I can definitely tell you that we are a different church family from who we were just a month ago. We are getting to know one another as we spend time together in social gatherings away from the Family Center. This means we are becoming more connected as we are building genuine relationships. We are stepping into the MORE aspect of what God whispered to me at the beginning of Sunday’s session.
We can honestly declare that ‘just enough’ is not enough for us. We don’t want to do ‘just enough’ to get by. We don’t want ‘just enough’ to survive. We don’t want to do ‘just enough’ when so much more is available to all of us.
Can you imagine how much God can use this church family to bring His love and life into hearts and homes if we don’t settle for ‘just enough’?
Oswald Chambers once said, “The GOOD is always the enemy of the BEST." At Urban Life, we won’t settle for what is just good enough to get a passing grade. We always want to give God our best. And we want to receive ALL of God’s best for us.
O’ how I hate the mentality in this community that rewards mediocrity and forces people to pay top dollars for inferior business practices. Last week I found a very poorly designed website for a very important Christian event. As a leader in this community I must say, we simply cannot represent our God in such an immature way. We must strive for more.
We say it all the time at Urban Life: We must do the BEST we can with what God has given us! If we show ourselves to be faithful with a little, He will make us stewards over MORE.
