Wow. What a night. Scripture says that we're not to walk in a spirit of

timidity, but rather of one spirit of power, love, and discipline. And I am amazed every

week how we are led to the throne of grace and can have such confidence in how God chooses

to use Christian and Brat and the guys and Chris and whoever it is. So thanks guys. What an

incredible night. You know, another thing the Lord asks us to have great confidence in as we

approach the throne of grace is how we ask him for wisdom to really give wisely what he

entrusts to us. And so I think whether it's worship or whether it's wisdom on giving, the

bottom line is God is asked to approach his throne of grace with confidence. And what

Louis and I are hoping for is we've talked about this series the next couple of weeks is that we

as a church, passion city church, would rise up and really understand, would really glimpse all

that Jesus has given and done for us. And that our response to that would be that we would

lavishly return all we have in our to him. Over the last weeks as I was studying, I became more

and more aware of the challenging times we live in. You can't help but watch the news and see

crazy things happening all over the world. And whether it's the economic meltdown that we've

experienced as a country or it's the things going on in the Middle East or what's happened in

Japan, bottom line is we're living in some tricky times. But you know the early church lived in

some tricky times. And as I read scripture and as I was praying and I was thinking about Lord,

what does it you want me to say? God kept bringing me back to a passage and it's where Paul talks

about the early church. It's where Paul talks about the church in Macedonia. And here's the

deal with the church in Macedonia. It says that they were living in hard difficult times.

But that they rose up into that and that they stunned the world with their faith. And specifically

in 2 Corinthians 8 it talks about how they stunned the world as they were a generous church.

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