Jeff Gonzalez, Executive Pastor at Origin Church, and I were in an hour long conversation yesterday and decompressing over the challenges, the pains, the toughness of our lives right now as we plant a new church and we basically just unloaded our poison together and felt better. At the end of the conversation, we asked each other this question: “Alright; we both know that God is in this and would have us be nowhere else on the planet, right?” We both knew the answer immediately! YES! Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced such warfare in this Christian life, but I can assure you if you have not, you are not invading any enemy territory! It means you’re comfortable! That’s where I’d like to be, but I’ve been there, and it wasn’t very rewarding! I felt dried up, used up, and unneeded. So, I guess it’s our choice! Are we going to be used or not?
It gets worse: On Jeff’s way home last night, he hydroplaned his car, ran off the road, and flipped the car. He landed with his body laying on the inside of the windshield. He tells the story that as he lay there, he just thought for a few minutes, “Lord, what else?” He shouldn’t have, but he walked away. He’s fine! Now, his car is totaled and he has no car. We discovered that at about the same time he was flipping his car, I was running off the side of the road in mine, and almost over-corrected the wheel bringing it back on the road; a near wreck experience. Ironic? I don’t know………………but, God is faithful! He must be up to something! He is working in our lives! We have been working hard, hard, hard, at two and three jobs each just to make it. Additioanlly, the same effort is being applied to the launch of this new church over the last 20 months. We are four weeks away from launching. He has a plan! There is no mountaintop without a valley! It’s rich, green grass down in that valley. The mountaintop is temporary! We were made for the valleys! Here’s the key to success through it all: The way we look at life and how we control our mind! That’s all!
