Aren’t you loving this series, “I Believe in God, But…?” This week, Don’t Cross Me hit a nerve for many: an unedited, un-tempered look at the indisputable fact that God wants an All-Access Pass to our lives. He wants it all…our hearts, our minds, our hobbies, our marriages, our kids…our money. When we try to welcome Him into some areas of our lives and block Him from others, we become divided and unstable, and we often don’t know why.

Many of us look at our lives and see a lack of power, fruit, passion, victory…so we pray for God to do something, to fix the problem. This weekend was a reality check: breakthrough and blessing will come when submission and surrender take place. When Christ-followers give Jesus access, He transforms us in ways we could never have dreamed possible!

Here are three critical questions we studied this weekend. Spend great time fleshing these out with Jesus:

Three Critical Questions:

1. Why does God want total access to my life?

• A. You are designed for it. God made u to love you, to be near Him. He wants to bless you, guide you, comfort you, and the way that works is for us to receive His love and grow in intimacy. That only happens if our lives are in proper order. Put simply: when we live recognizing that there is One God and One Lord, and We’re not Him. He doesn’t want to just be the Lord of all. He wants to be YOUR Lord.

• B. It’s best for you. You were made to rest in the leadership of another. Not only did God design us to follow Him, He crafted us so that in doing so we would be at our best by resting in His leadership and worshipping Him alone!  What that means is that when He’s at the center of your life with complete access and total freedom to lead, He has the power to move in and transform every area of your life! It’s acknowledging that He’s God, He knows what is best for you and you do not!

2. Why wouldn’t I want Him to have total access to my life?

• A. Pride – On some level most of us think we can handle life on our own, maybe in some ways even do a better job than God. From the earliest pages of the Bible and the story Adam until now, we nurture pride, we esteem self-reliance and independence. “I’ve got this…I can handle my life. I believe in God, sure…and I’ll take His help, but I’m good.” In the OT there is an indicting little phrase that was used to describe the tragic lives of those who worshipped pride and not God. It says they “Did what was right in their own eyes.” That doesn’t have to be you!

• B. Protection – We’ve been hurt, and in our pain we’ve learn patterns of protecting ourselves from pain, from people and from God. So, without ever saying it perhaps, we begin to pick and chose the areas we’ll place under the Lordship of Jesus. And in the others, we tell God KEEP OUT. But that leaves us trying to share the throne with God…with a divided, torn heart. We want God to hear and answer our prayers…and He longs to heal us, provide for us, protect us, bless us… but as C.S. Lewis once said, “He cannot bless us unless he has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death…There’s no bargaining with Him.” He always wants what’s best for you!

3. So How Can I be Whole Again?

• A.   Admit - Just like the 1^st step in AA, admit that you are powerless and your life has become unmanageable with you as your own lord. Admit that you need His help if you’re ever going to be whole again.
• B.   Humble yourself - Ask God to forgive you for rejecting His leadership in your life…for treating as common that which is priceless.
• C.   Surrender and submit to Him - DAILY. When you humble yourself, He doesn’t shame you, He embraces you…healing begins & breakthrough starts.

Last night 321 leaders and emerging leaders of Quest Community Church got to gather together to pray for Code Orange Revival. I loved seeing our leaders pray and cheer on what God is doing in Charlotte, NC through Pastor Steven Furtick and the phenomenal team at Elevation. (If you haven’t gotten to take part in Code Orange Revival yet, there’s still time…the 12 night revival is broadcast live on the web every night and there are still 5 nights to go!)

My good friend, Pastor Perry Noble of NewSpring Church in Anderson, SC, got to speak at the revival last night and spur Elevation on, honoring God and the work He’s doing through Pastor Steven and their great church. It was a rare moment. In the Bride of Christ, we’re called to spur each other on to good works, but all too often churches finds themselves fighting against each other instead. We should be THE most honoring, encouraging people on the planet!

Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. – Hebrews 10:24

Uprising pastors and leaders…when was the last time you spurred on what God was doing in another pastor, church or ministry? Go for it! Send them a text, tweet about them, write them a letter to cheer on God’s work in their life and community, commit to pray for an event on their behalf…invite them to The Uprising this April. It’s the whole reason we launched The Uprising to begin with…to spur on pastors and leaders, to help them accomplish all God is calling them to do in their communities!

You’re invited to join us Thursday, April 19 in Lexington for The Uprising. Bring your team (you won’t believe what it does in your church to have them with you!) Invite a pastor from another church. In fact…buy them a ticket. Invest in their ministry in a tangible way. Let God do a new thing in you as you invest in His Bride. (Tickets are available NOW for just two more weeks at our Super-Early Bird rate of just $59.)

It’s an honor to serve Jesus together in their great cause. Let’s spur each other on in new ways this week!

What a beautiful weekend! As we continued our new series, “I Believe in God, But…,” we tackled the discrepancy between faith and worry. If more than 90% of Americans believe in God, then why does worry kick our tail so much of the time?

So many people are weighed down by worry when it doesn’t serve us at all! It can’t change what has happened in the past and it doesn’t predict what will happen in the future. It’s time to fight back! I love that over and over again in Jesus’ most famous sermon of all time, He tells us “do not worry!” It’s not a suggestion. It’s a command!

The reality is simply this: 1. Life is hard 2. Worry is suffocating…and 3. True faith can’t survive in the gap where worry thrives.

Jesus offers us unbelievable peace if we’ll choose to trust Him and actively leave our worries at the cross. The peace that Jesus gives – true peace that displaces worry in your heart – is of supernatural origin. It’s not a man-made peace that comes as the by-product of a problem free life. It’s the peace that ONLY Jesus gives and is only experienced IN HIM!

Listen to these great verses:

“I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the Peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.” – John 14:27

“I have told you all this so that you may have Peace in Me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33

• Worry says, “You’re all alone with no one to help. You are on your own.” Jesus says, “I am the maker of heaven and earth, and I am watching over you.” (Read Psalm 121 again as a reminder!)
• “Worry does not empty tomorrow of it’s sorrow, it empties today of it’s strength.” – Corrie Ten Boom
• Worry will take as much rope as you give it & before long, you’ll be tied in knots with the rope you supplied.
• We don’t introduce ourselves and say, “I’m a liar…I’m a thief…or I’m a big-time luster,” but for some reason we act like it’s okay to identify ourselves as “a worrier.”
• Worry is the opponent of trust!
• When we listen to worry, we don’t listen to Jesus who alone can give supernatural peace!

Vision Weekend is a perfect launching pad for the year…not just for our church, but for our lives, our growth, our transformation. One of the key reasons we kick off the year with Vision Weekend is because it’s fresh, there’s an air of optimism and possibility, and there’s this clean stretch of road in front of us…asking God, “So what do have for us this year?”

There’s a universal sense that people want a better year than last year…even if last year was good. Everyone wants an advancing year. And I love this series, “I Believe in God, But…”, because we all want to be single-minded, with what we say and what we do going together.

While we’re quick to spot hypocrisy in others, when we’re honest, we recognize it in ourselves too. This series will deal with the gap, the discrepancy between what we believe and the way we live. Don’t you want that? I do! I love that we’re all going to see the hypocrisy gap closed in our lives!

Here are some of the ringing lines from the weekend…

• God will not bless the life of casual belief that is meant to be authentic faith where He changes you to be like Him from the inside out.
• God never wanted to be a checkmark on a list. He never campaigned for your vote.
• Jesus Christ died on the cross to win your heart. He gave up His own life to become the Ruler of yours!
• God loves us too much to bless a check-mark, impostor-style belief in Him.
• The world doesn’t need to see perfect people but people that mean it!