This the song that was played tonight to end an increadable day at NewSpring where 516 people recieved Christ. Unbelievable.
I am in such awe that I get to be apart of a church where stuff like this takes place, it’s completely not normal. Seeing people physically nail their names to a cross after praying to receive Christ made chills run up my back during every service today.
The service will be online Tuesday. You must watch it. www.newspring.cc
We played this song at NewSpring today and it just totally wrecked me. I had to share it with everyone.
Earlier this year at NewSpring we did a series called Practical Atheist. It was a completely based off the book that Craig Groeschel was going to release in April called The Christian Atheist. After the impact the Practical Atheist series had on me, I was really excited to get a copy of the book. (You can watch the entire series here)
First, let me give you a little background on who Craig Groeschel is in case you might not be familiar with him. He is the Pastor of a church based in Oklahoma City called LifeChurch.tv. They have an amazing ministry with multiple campuses all over the world, yes I said world. They also have in my opinion, the best execution of online church, which they conveniently call Church Online. You can chat and worship with people all over the world. The chat will actually translate your words into the language of other people and vise versa. It’s absolutely incredible. You should check it out sometime, they have many services all week long.
Ok, now on to the book. For some reason I never ordered a copy of it when it was released. Once I got my iPad I saw that it was one of the books available in iBooks. I thought it would be a great first read to try out how reading a book on the iPad was.
Let me take a quick moment to talk about how easy it is to read a book on the iPad. Bookmarking, searching, and just reading is all fun again. The iBook library isn’t that large yet, but hopefully it will continue to grow.
The Christian Atheist. Wow, is really all I can say. It’s one of those books with so many good truth nuggets in it, you almost want to twitter the entire thing. It’s incredible. One that hit me the hardest was when he was talking about how it’s God’s nature to love, he says..
Love is not something God does. It is who God is. And because of who he is, God loves you. Period.
So many people miss that core truth. God loves everyone. EVERYONE. No matter what you’ve done or not done, he still loves you. And when we give our lives to him and are call to be like Christ, part of that is us learning to love everyone also. It’s hard sometimes, but that is a area that can make the biggest impact on people. Someone can hear the greatest message you pastor has ever preached on Sunday, but if the people in the church didn’t love on that person when they walked in the door and as they were leaving. The chances are less likely that they will ever come back.
If you don’t like reading a book that leaves your stomach hurting, you don’t want to read this one. It will challenge every area of your life. From your salvation to prayer life to your finances. Craig lays it all out there, but does it in a loving way. In most instances he uses examples from his own life from when he had struggles with the same things we could be going through. The basis of the book is how many people call themselves a Christian and say they believe in God, but live their lives as if they are a atheist and do not believe at all. It’s quite a eye opening. I realized many of the topics he covered to be applicable to my own life. It’s definitely one that will leave you a changed person after you read it.
I look forward to reading it again to dig in deeper and find some of the things I missed.
I would suggest this book to ANYONE. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t stop. Order yourself a copy today!
Links:
Purchase Book: Amazon
