When God Speaks

At times it's so cool to have confirmation of the "speaking" you hear in your devotion time. However, the last reflection I shared revolved around what I heard God speaking about tragedy and I sensed Him saying, "This is going to be important this week." That night I received a phone call that one of the members of my small group had taken his own life. That was a moment that I wished that message had "just been something in my head." So my apologies for not updating more regularly over the past 2 weeks. Every time I came to write I found myself so distracted by the obvious thoughts that revolve around an event like this.

It was a dark week that had many glimmers of light along the way. I had many great, late-night MSN conversations with some of the other members of my small group. We also had some great times of sharing, reflection and worship together. However, you always wish that it could have been under different circumstances.

When I think about the book of Acts I see a bit of a theme of "Satan tries to do something bad to the church and God turns it into something good." For example, the persecution of the church. It seems to be pretty bad in the life of the church but when you look again it seems to be the catalyst that begins a huge missionary movement as persecuted people flee to different areas. I think the events of the past weeks will have the same effect. It seems when there is tragedy there's heightened spiritual awareness. Please pray for us as a group that God would steer the "momentum" of the situation that many youth would come to a deeper relationship with him (already the youth room was packed with 100 sweaty youth this week!)

The coming week promises to be equally busy with our CCI fundraising banquets coming up. We'll hold on and wait for Tuesday!