December 21, 2008

This morning a cool dude at the Homestead campus of Life Pointe Church asked me if I was going to be at the Plantation Key campus tonight. I said ‘No’, and I followed-up my response with the fact that I would be at home watching my precious Washington Redskins on local TV this afternoon.

About an hour later I was filling up my car with gas at Chevron in preparation for a possible visit to the Plantation Key campus.

Four hours later I was driving down U.S. 1 on my way there.

Jesus is more important than the Redskins. Jesus is urgent.

Pastor Bill Wilson had me in stitches and moved me to tears during this morning’s first service at the Homestead campus. There was no way that he could possibly do that all over again during tonight’s service, right ? Wrong.

I get it.

Check out Pastor Bill’s Wikipedia entry.

Check out his ministry’s official web site.

On this Sunday morning we enjoyed the preaching of a special guest speaker:

bill-wilson

2 Corinthians 5 (NLT, 2ND Ed.)
We Are God’s Ambassadors
11 Because we understand our fearful responsibility to the Lord, we work hard to persuade others. God knows we are sincere, and I hope you know this, too.
12 Are we commending ourselves to you again ? No, we are giving you a reason to be proud of us, so you can answer those who brag about having a spectacular ministry rather than having a sincere heart.
13 If it seems we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God. And if we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit.
14 Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life.
15 He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.
16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now !
17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun !
18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.
19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.
20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God !”
21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.