Sermon Sunday

Grey Matter Week One

The Taurus and The Fox

Psalm 23     Romans 12:1-2

This weekend, Pastor Steven preached an amazing message on how to make choices when it's not black and white.

The Bible is designed to draw us closer to the One who wants to guide your life. 

God wants us to get past the point of looking for His guidance and let Him guide us! 

Even if the right thing to do is unclear - it is clear who we are suppose to follow. 

If all He did was give us directions, we wouldn't build a bond during the journey

Visit Elevation Network at 12:00, 4:00 and 8:00 AM and PM to get the entire message!

Personal Reflection - This was a powerful sermon!  I have been looking forward to this series for weeks.  I don't know what I was expecting from the sermon, but it was fabulous!  Part of me was hoping that Pastor would give all the answers to all the questions that don't have a questions that don't have clear answers.  That was a huge expectation. 

I may not be in a position where I need the answers to a question that is a grey matter, but know that I will encounter those situations in the future.  Everything he said was noteworthy.  I couldn't write fast enough.

Pastor made an analogy of how we follow someone when driving and how we should follow God.  When you follow someone in a car somewhere, you are very aggressive to make sure that no one separates you and the car you are following.  We need to be more like that when following God.  We need to be aggressive and make sure that no one comes between us! 

Reflection Friday

If you are new to .Redeemed., I lead a middle school girls eGroup.  Thursday evenings with the girls is one of my favorite parts of the week.  They are an amazing group of girls and they teach me as much as I teach them. 

Bare with me today, as I try something new for the Reflection Friday post!  I would love to transform this into a way for the girls in my eGroup to look to this as summary of what we did if they missed eGroup and make this a guide for small group leaders!

Icebreaker: We have a few girls who have been coming for less than a month, so we are focusing more on ice breakers right now.  The girls paired up and interviewed one another.  Then, introduced the person they intereviewed to the group and shared three unknown facts about their interviewee.  I think this went very well.  We all found out at least one thing that no one knew about everyone.

Discussion: Our eGroup's focus is when God writes your love story by Eric and Leslie Ludy.  We tried something different this week.  We read attempted to read the chapter together.  Each girl took one page.  We would stop at the end of each section and discuss the important parts. 

Discussion Highlights:
- What are some keys to building a strong foundation in a relationship?  Honesty and communication were the most common answers the girls gave.
- Physical purity can't be seperated from our emotions.
- Have you ever thought of your heart as a treasure as important as your physical purity?  This blew the girls minds!
- The heart break most of us experience at the end of a relationship is a kind of pain that God never meant for us to experience.

Closing: We wrapped it up with going through the highlights and discussing an upcoming event.  We enjoyed some delicious cookies as the girls were being picked up!

During the Week: The girls are going to finish reading chapter six on their own and read chapter seven!

Next Week: Wrap up discussion on chapter six and discuss chapter seven. 

Personal Highlight: At least once during each eGroup meeting, I say something along the lines of, if you build your relationship around God, your world won't be over at the end of the relationship.  This week, this statement clicked with one of the girls!  She got it!  She admitted to not understanding what I had meant previously, but this chapter made it make sense!!  Seeing that light bulb turn on was fabulous!!

Serving

our eTeams are connectors to the current of the power of Christ.

Elevation Church on eTeams

I have been serving for over two years now.  I have always loved serving.  When I did Host Services (eKidz Check-In), I loved it!  It was a great opportunity to welcome VIP's to Elevation, check regulars in and everything in between. 

Something amazing happened this weekend.  I realized that I am totally in my sweet spot as eKidz Coordinator.  I love this role so much!  I am very detail oriented, tech savvy, and a people person.  I love interacting with potential volunteers after going through an First Experience (Elevation style volunteer orientation).  I love explaining the vision behind each area of eKidz.  Some would say that this is my sweet spot.  I don't know what I do, but that is what I get commented on the most.  But, my favorite part about my role is getting a potential volunteer on the schedule.

This past Sunday, I had the opportunity of plugging a potential volunteer into an area that she was not initially interested in.  I swayed her to try the area with more of an opportunity to serve, and she loved it!  We talked about scheduling, and I was explaining how we are looking for small group leaders who serve every week.  She agreed!!  I felt so accomplished to have been able to have been able to plug her into every week on the schedule!

You see, not many people want to serve every weekend.  Something about that amount of commitment freaks them out.  Personally, I could never go back to every other week.  I love every week.  I love being able to be there every weekend and help out in whatever way needed.

I suppose that it has taken a long time for me to get to my point...  If you attend your local church, wherever you may be, you need to get involved.  You have the opportunity to get in your sweet spot and do what you enjoy doing.  I look forward to Sunday mornings every week!  There is so many opportunities to get involved in at Elevation Church.  You have eKidz - which has six areas to serve in itself, Production - which has several ares to serve, and Guest Services - which has more than five areas to serve... Stuff behind the scenes, during the week, from home, interacting with people, praying for people, ANYTHING! 

Why are you not involved at your church?  It will be a blessing to others, as well as yourself!  Don't say you don't have time... As long as you have time to sit on the couch and watch TV for hours, go shopping three days a week, sit on facebook for countless hours, make random videos... you have time to volunteer for an hour at your local church!

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.

Romans 12:11

Hey, It's Okay

You know the drill - Whispering Writer has a series called "Hey, It's Okay". I loved it so much that I started doing it too!

Hey, It's Okay...

... to have spent the majority of my day off yesterday in my pajamas on the couch.  I sent a few emails, scheduled a few blog posts, did a little laundry, but mostly just pajamas and movies on the couch!

... to have had to get rid of all of my fat clothes for inspiration to keep losing weight and a need to buy more clothes.

... to have missed work on my day off.

... to need to schedule in sleep on my to do list.

... to have completely blown my getting healthy plans the last four days.

Thankful Tuesday

Thankful Tuesday

... the opportunity to be a part of Elevation Church



... the one family in my eGroup who got out of bed at a ridiculous hour on Saturday to serve for Love Week 2012. 

... to have checked everything off of my to do list on Sunday.

... to have had yesterday off

... to have my tax refund, so I can go shopping for new clothes!

What are you thankful for today?