So this week is half over and I'm not half way to my goal! I'm beginning to think, "Maybe this wasn't a literal prayer God wants to answer..." But then I keep coming back to, "Anything's possible."

      Please continue to pray that I would be able to set up appointments as need be and that God would put me in connection with the right people and move the hearts of people to give! It can definitely happen and God can do it in a jiffy, but it's really going to have to take a miracle for this to happen by the end of next week.

      In any case, please continue to pray for wisdom and discernment in this process as I continue to seek God's face for His direction in my support process. I may have to amend that prayer request to something else. And if so, so be it. Please pray I would be discerning about all this and hearing God clearly. Thanks everyone, I'm going to bed.

      But one last thing...when I hit 100%...HUGE Party at my house on that day! All my supporters are invited! Your spouses too! If I had a fattened calf, I would kill one for us all to eat!But that might be too much work :) We can just barbecue instead. hahaha.

      This is a very interesting e-mail I got recently from the "Center for Reclaiming America" organization. It's a Christian organization committed to putting Christian values back in the American system.

      I'm not sure what I think about this one. Yes, I do believe in free speech, no matter where you are, but this topic starts to cross the line of politics and church-an issue many people have strong opinions about and I'm not sure exactly what to think of it yet.

      On the one hand, I think it's a bogus law as to silencing pastors from taking a particular political stance from the pulpit, but at the same time I don't think it should be used as a place to push your own personal political agenda. I'd be curious to see where this law stems from and what were the circumstances surrounding it's time, why it was brought up and why it got passed.       My main question is, is this really something affecting pastors in Syosset directly?? Or are they just targeting that town 'cause they know I leave here?! Tell me your thoughts! And if you have any further thoughts on this law, let me know! Leave a comment or e-mail me:

chrisw@keynote.org


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S P E C I A L A L E R T
C E N T E R F O R R E C L A I M I N G A M E R I C A

URGENT UPDATE

Christopher,

I wanted to rush you this update on our continuing effort to lift the "Gag Order" which has silenced pastors in Syosset and across America for more than 50 years.

The fact is, since a law was pushed through in 1954, the IRS has had the authority to censor our churches and our pastors!
This gag order has caused many pastors to shrink back from bringing a biblical viewpoint to political issues.

It is time to lift the gag order! But I need your help.

+ + 25,000 petitions needed in next 14 days

Right now, our contacts on Capitol Hill tell us that this issue is being hotly debated by members of Congress and could see action in the House in early May.

Already, the Center for Reclaiming America has rallied over 75,000 petitions on this issue. In the next 14 days, I want to rally an additional 25,000 citizens to sign the petition so I can present more than 100,000 petitions to leaders.

Please take a few moments right now to sign the "Free Our Churches" petition to lift the gag order that is silencing
your pastor:

http://www.cfra.info/53/petition.asp?RID=1765514

+ + Next 14 days are crucial

Christopher, the next few weeks are crucial. As you know, the Center for Reclaiming America has been leading this fight.
Dr. D. James Kennedy was among the first national leaders to draw attention to this issue. I have already presented petitions to Congress and just published a book called "Gag Order" which strongly makes the case for this legislation.

But the only way this issue will move forward is for grassroots citizens to demand that our leaders lift the gag order!

That's why I want to rally 100,000 citizens right away.

Please help.

Sign the petition. Then, forward this message to your friends and send a copy to your pastor.

Thank you in advance!

Dr. Gary Cass
Executive Director
Center for Reclaiming America

+ + Sign the "Free Our Churches" petition

http://www.cfra.info/53/petition.asp?RID=1765514

+ + Learn more about the history of this issue:

http://www.reclaimamerica.org/Pages/NEWS/newspage.asp?story=2513

+ + For updates:

http://www.reclaimamerica.org

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The Center for Reclaiming America, established by Dr. D. James Kennedy, is an outreach of Coral Ridge Ministries to inform the American public and motivate Christians to defend and implement the biblical principles on which our country was founded. The Center, led by Executive Director Dr. Gary Cass, provides non-partisan, non-denominational information, training, and support to all those interested in impacting the culture and renewing the vision set forth by our Founding Fathers.

Forgive me for not posting great quotes like these from my supporters. This is from Julie, a sister from Selah Fellowship who's a great composer and awesome pianist. This is what she wrote to me in an e-mail:

Just let me know if you would like me to play, sing or shareanything about you or your ministry. As I told you before, Godmade me couldn't sleep one night just to tell me to help whatever you need! Apparently, God calls you, and He will see to it.

This coming Saturday night, I'll have the opportunity to play at an open mic night at New Life Church in Queens. I'll be playing the same songs that night as I did for my youth group last week and hope to be able to strike up some conversations with people that may turn into potential appointments and potential supporters! Thanks for your prayers!

I've been meaning to write since last week but couldn't pick one single topic to write on. There was too much happening and too many thoughts swarming around in my head. I've actually been mostly working on the sidebar to this webpage, as you can see is constantly being edited and updated :P

Anyways, last week was a struggle to pray. I set aside Monday and Tuesday to pray and only really got to pray on Tuesday morning. But praise God for that prayer time. It was essential and helped ground my focus in Him. I've been running around, doing everyday tasks, pouring out myself, but not really "putting back in." I was able to pray over all my supporters, pray over the whole support process, pray for friends I knew in trouble, and for potential supporters to give to my ministry as well.

God answered my prayers LITERALLY within the hour after I prayed. I'm not at liberty quite yet to disclose the details of how this happened, but in short, a HUGE one-time gift came in from someone that was the absolute LAST person to expect it from!!! Praise the Lord!!! I asked myself, "Is this really an answer to my prayers, God???" It was almost too much of a coincidence to be true. But not a single thing happens outside the knowledge of God, so He must have had something to do with it!

Please continue to pray for me as this week I am shooting for a lot of appointments with people, which means A LOT of phone calls, some that will be tough, and a lot of needed energy and strength to work hard for the Lord. My best bud reminded me though, that if the Lord is indeed going to do it, then it will be Him, not me. I need not trust in my own strength or work to raise the funds, but in the Holy Spirit of God to do big things. Again, I ask for you to pray in faith with me and for me!

This is an article one of my supporters sent me about Dan Haseltine from Jars of Clay. He shares his thoughts on the Christian label and their experience as a "Christian band."

     Yes, so I do have a bold prayer request. I am asking you all to pray. Just recently I sensed the Spirit impress upon my heart to pray that I would receive my full support by the end of this month. Yes, the end of this month! That's pretty bold To be honest, I'm not sure if this is a prayer the Lord wants to literally fulfill, or if God just wants to seriously stretch my faith and kick it up a notch.

     The thing is, even if I am done by the end of this month, I still won't probably leave until July. And this is because I still feel there are things to be taken care of here in N.Y. before I ship out. But with my full support in at the end of this month, it would SERIOUSLY free up my time to be able to minister, prepare adequately and be in such a crazy rush to get out to Indiana and then to the national staff conference with Crusade at the end of July.

     I honestly do believe that it can happen, but I REALLY need your help! I need some mondo prayer! I can't accomplish this on my own, certainly without God and certainly without the prayers of my fellow supporters! When we are praying together, we are praying to accomplish God's purpose and ultimately, I believe this is God's mission and God's ministry. He is calling me to do it, but it is His. And when each of you signed up to be a partner with me in ministry, you signed up to do great things for God and to watch God work in missions!

     So please, I am asking that each of you would pray fervently for me this month that God would grant me opportunities to share my ministry with others and that they would respond quickly. The challenge has not so much been finding people to support me, but having the support process actually begin with potential ministry partners.

Pray for the Holy Spirit to move people's hearts to give!

Pray for me not to despair and not to be anxious about my support raising process.

Pray I would have energy and not to get lazy with everything!

Pray that it would be more about partnerships and blessing others than about a numbers game

Pray that the Lord would increase my faith. Pray I would trust Him and step out at His command

Pray that I would have no fear and ask boldly for others to give

Pray I would repent of the fleshly ways I've been living and turn about face to walk in the Spirit (And that I would mean that prayer!)

     Thank you all so much. I am eternally grateful for each one of you. I expect great things from God and so should YOU! Let's pray in faith! Thank you! Thank you!

      Last night I got to share at my church's youth group on the theology of John Mayer :) Yes, he has perfect theology. He describes the depravity of the human soul without Christ very profoundly and poetically. For those of you who read my entry, "The World Without Christ," my message was based on some of my previous commentary.

      I explained that the reason why John Mayer feels so lost is because he doesn't have true life. As it says in 1 John 5:12,

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

      My main point was that John Mayer is still empty because he's not truly living life. He's living the life of the world-friends, money, sex, superstardom-everything it has to offer, but still has something missing because he doesn't have the Son. My charge to the youth group was that you can't really be living life as it should be, meaningfully and abundantly, unless you have Christ inside you. As I quoted in my last John Mayer entry,

Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thristy forever. The water that I will give him will be come in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:13,14)

      I then shared the four spiritual laws with them: (1) God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives, (2) Man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God's love and plan for his life, (3) Jesus Christ is God's ONLY provision for man's sin. Through Him you can know and experience God's love and plan for your life, (4) We must individually RECEIVE Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.

      I asked them to bow their heads and pray to receive Christ by faith through prayer if they hadn't done that before. I'm not sure if any of them accepted Christ that night, but I could see that they were paying attention and a lot of what I was saying was resonating with them. So praise the Lord for that. I actually got to play "Something's Missing" and "Grey Street" by Dave Matthews. It was a great night and I think they really enjoyed it.

      I also got to briefly share my vision and calling with Keynote and they all prayed for me at the end of the night, which was a great blessing. Praise God! Man! I can't believe I'll be doing this for a living soon!!!! CRAZINESS!!! I love this stuff! Thank you all for praying for me! Have a great weekend!

    

      Is it possible? Read for yourself. VERY interesting. A pastor in California is using the lyrics of Metallica to preach the gospel to his congregation. It strikes close to home for me because I used to idolize every single one of them! I still know their entire history. Lars Ulrich is actually the reason I got into drumming. And now, I'm going into full-time missions with it! How amazing is that?

      God used a booze-drinking, lyrically graphic, heavy-metal rock group that you would NEVER associate with Christ, to glorify Himself. Sure, they didn't have the intent of having that affect on people, and it's the pastor preaching the message using their music, and now I've switched over to listening to Christian music and more edifying tunes, but still...God used them to glorify Himself.

In a sermon John Piper once gave, he said,

Everyone will glorify God eventually. Whether they like it or not, everyone will glorify God eventually.

I'm beginning to suspect that this is true!

It's just one of those days...crazy weather, scheduling mishaps, hurtful words and e-mails, total fatigue, couldn't find parking in the city, traffic, the whole shibang (is that how you spell that word?)

I am definitely feeling the spiritual attack upon me. I just sense so much opposition to me. I can't get my life centered on God right now. It' s like my life is this storm and I'm just trying to find the eye of it and align myself to that center so I can have peace and calmness in my heart, but I can't. It's been so hard to walk consistently with God. Each time I try to get my feet walking, I trip up and my anger gets the best of me, frustration and impatience sets in or my eyes wander to where they shouldn't be looking

I knew raising my support was going to be hard, but I didn't think it was going to be this hard. I knew I would struggle with doubts and fears, but how about the nonsense of life that just wears your spirit down? No...I didn't anticipate that. And yet that seems to be the biggest factor weighing me down. I'm tired, God...so tired.

I was listening to a sermon my friend gave me in the car yesterday and it was great. It was all about faith and how we have mustard seed faith that needs to grow. I can relate to the man that couldn't believe in Jesus' healing power and said, "Lord! Help my unbelief!" That's me! Lord, help my unbelief! I despair so often and I lose sight of hope.
My heart is heavy...pray for me my friends...that my eyes would be lifted up to the heavens and that I would operate with joy day in and day out and refuse to operate without it. It's a joy to serve the Lord and I've been forgetting that through the everday drudgeries of life. The Lord was in this world, tempted in every way, yet without sin. Wow...what a mighty God we serve. How He could resist every temptation there was in the world is a mystery to me. But maybe that's why He's God :)

"...keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel." (Ephesians 6:18, 19)

Pray for me in this way my brothers and sisters. Pray for my spiritual protection against the enemy, my flesh and this world. Pray that I may be fully armored each day. For I've been feeling the attacks of the enemy penetrating through my heavenly armor. Perhaps I have not worn it properly or learned to use the tools of spiritual warfare properly.

One last thing...I praise God for this verse that gives me hope. I heard it on Easter Sunday morning from the preacher who came to speak at Boon Church. He was speaking on the great "resurrection chapter," 1 Corinthians 15.

"Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain."
(1 Cor. 15:58)

This verse gives me hope. But yet as Paul says,

"If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." (1 Cor. 15:19)

My hope is placed in the belief that there is more to come. There is heaven where there will be no more tears of pain, no more sorrow, no more injustice, the hunger pangs of our souls, suffering and sin. But if we find out at the end of our lives that Christ is not who we believed Him to be, we are mere fools, placing our trust in something that wasn't real. And we should've squandered all our living on whatever we wanted to. But there is a hope.

Do we look like we're living for another life to come? Or are we just like everyone else, going after the same things, making the same money, going for the same goals, seeking the same possessions, but just slapping a Christian label on it all and saying that's what makes us different? May we not be. May we look like those who are so sold out for Christ it's clearly evident we don't live for the earthly pleasures in the here and now and are looking for our eternal reward.

Let us live for Christ and look like those who if at the end of their lives found out that there was no Christ, we would be pitied by all men because we did not live for ourselves, but lived for Him who is above. Give us this kind of faith. Give us this kind of love, Lord. I want to be counted as one who walks the walk and doesn't just talk the talk