Well, we had another weekend at The Gathering. The weather was incredible and people again came in a great mood. The worship time led by Ken and Barbie Isham, and others, was stellar. I love “Open the Eyes of My Heart”, “Great in Power,” and one of my favorites that Barbie wrote – “Relentless.” It may even be recorded on The Gathering website, I am not sure, but it’s a great song if you’ve never heard it.
It’s really great as I come in early to see people at work setting up signs, setting up classes, sound, and all the things that go into creating the environments we know that people are going to come and have this amazing experience with Jesus.
Today I talked about “Mastering the Art of Abundance,” and illustrated the fact that we can have one of two mindsets; a scarcity mindset which amazingly causes us to go in debt, over-spend, and feel like there is never enough. As opposed to an abundance mentality that helps us stay out of debt, save, and actually have money to give.
It is far more than money or possessions. It’s the promise that Jesus gave, that He’d come to give us life and give it to us fully. He’s come to prosper us, to bless us, to supply all of our needs. And there’s one place in Scripture that says that God supplies us all things for our enjoyment. This really doesn’t sound like the God I was raised with. God didn’t supply anything for our enjoyment. As a matter of fact, having joy or having fun was a strict no-no.
I really wanted in this series, “Loving God,” to help us understand that the greatest thing in all of life is receiving God and returning it, finding out how to love God in our everyday, work-a-day world; to break down the barrier between the sacred and the secular, to see all of life as sacred, to see work as sacred, to see home life as sacred.
That’s why The Gathering is what we call a “three G church.” We gather to worship in order to go worship everywhere else. We also gather to grow, to grow together in love, up in Christ, out through ministry, and more through conversion. And this gathering and growing turns us into incredibly generous people. We’re generous with what we know, what we’ve learned. We’re generous with our money, our time, our talent, and our energies. We live, as I talked about today, with a full heart and an open hand.
Since I am part of a brand new church that officially, this Sunday, has been meeting in Cool Springs for four months, it’s been amazing to recover that real joy and excitement of being a part of something new, something that’s growing and changing and morphing as people come and add their love and their talent. It was awesome today to see new faces and to be introduced to new couples – young, bright, happy couples who have an amazing future in front of them. And it’s also really great to see familiar faces, faces I haven’t seen in awhile who are now finding out where The Gathering is and migrating over and joining the journey, being a part of this movement, learning how to be the church in this new, wireless, wall-les, worn-out world. It’s a great trip, and I’m enjoying it!
Next week at The Gathering, I’m going to be talking about “Growing Up Into Greatness.” This is one of my favorite talks and maybe my favorite chapter of the entire book, “A Renegade’s Guide to God.” I really look forward to seeing what God is doing.