Pour It All Out

Pastor Furtick preached an incredible sermon yesterday from Jeremiah 1:4-10. I won't go into it here, you just need to watch it yourself when it comes up (check it out here). At the end of the day there were 135 people who checked the box indicating that they received Christ. I am floored! Since I want you to be just as floored as me, let me tell you a little story.

In November, Joey Smith called me. His group, lead by Will and Kerri Ross, wanted to do something for a family during Christmas. Since we have partnered with Crisis Assistance Ministries and CIS - Safe Journey, and have asked them to provide us with the names of families in need, I actually had a stack of potential families on my desk. One of those family's greatest needs was a new vehicle.

Joey and his small group decided to reach out to this family for Christmas. They raised hundreds of dollars in their group and took the family Christmas shopping - the social worker told me that they wouldn't have had a Christmas otherwise. The gifts they bought at Target, however, were only the beginning. Joey had already worked it out behind the scenes to surprise the family with a new car, purchased by Elevation; it was waiting on them when they got back from Target. It wasn't just a beater that we picked up at a local mechanics shop either, it was an '07 Ford Taurus with less than 20,000 miles on it.

I suppose that someone, somewhere is probably thinking that the way we did this or the fact that we bought this nice of a car was too much. To you I point to this principle and leave you to wallow is smallness and self-righteous pride. For those of us with functioning hearts, however, we're going to keep reading and celebrate at the conclusion of this story. Yesterday, the new owner of this car used it to drive herself to her first Worship Experience at Elevation's Butler campus where she was confronted with the truth of the Gospel and checked the box to receive Christ.

God moves when we leverage all that He has entrusted to us for His glory and His fame. He moved Yesterday! Only 134 more stories to go. Praise God for His faithfulness! Praise God for making a way!