July 20
10Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
11They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony…” (Revelation 12:10-11, The Jesus Bible)
Greetings family, I have some wisdom to share with y’all today! I pray this message helps you find hope today, strength for tomorrow, and lasting insight for generations to come. I felt the tangible, powerful, miracle force of the Holy Spirit last night, and I just want to share, because there’s a chance that you can feel the same power as well.
Before I get to that experience, let me make two things clear: this is a fan boy’s experience of attending their favorite group for the first time. And this post will be seeped with praise for my favorite Pastor and his church.
If you have been following this blog at all for the past three years, I hope you know who I will be referring to already. If you are new here, let me give you a quick back story. I never knew the power of good worship music until I started attending Bayside Community Church. Before that, my church worship experience had been limited to Baptist and Methodist Hymnal singing, which if you have ever been a part of, is no fun, and barely gives the glory God deserves when singing praise. But, thankfully, my parents introduced me to Bayside where they do a wonderful worship experience. Well, for many of their “Worship Wednesday’s” and just their basic worship they would do a song titled “Resurrecting” and that song really spoke to my soul. And the more it spoke and stirred my spirit, the more I started paying attention to the message in the song, and the little credits at the end of the song-when a worship team covers someone else’s work. Those two words were always there: Elevation Worship. So “Resurrecting” led me to the “Here As In Heaven” album, which is the album that really elevated this group. On the album “Here As In Heaven” the very next track after Resurrecting is “Evidence”. That mighty track has Pastor Steven Furtick preaching, and I kept listening to that song over and over, loving his words. While on deployment, I suddenly went from just listening to Elevation Worship’s music to seeking the words of Pastor Furtick. I listened to his sermon’s every week while on deployment, and I have been listening to him every week since, and sharing that wonderful experience with y’all on here.
My adoration with Elevation Worship has grown with their popularity over the last three years. Their last four albums have garnered them award after award, and has grown their fan base exponentially. Well, yesterday, Elevation Worship (EW) came to our hometown of Savannah, GA for the first time and I made sure my family and I were in attendance.
It’s hard to describe the experience that worship night felt like. I can honestly say that I about leapt out of my shoes with the way the opened the show. Lasers pulsating with bass pounding so loud I could feel it in my molecules, EW kept up the suspense-building for their opening number for nearly a minute and then when they finally hit the stage and began their set with one of my favorite tracks of theirs (“What I See”) I literally jumped to my feet and did not sit back down until Pastor Holly Furtick instructed me to do so. I would have stood for that entire concert. The respect I have for Pastor Steven Furtick, his wonderful wife, and the life-changing music they have shared with the world, are reasons alone that I was ready to stand the entire concert. And they’re singing praise about Jesus and God. How anyone was sitting through that show was mind-boggling to me. I had made a promise to myself that I was going to worship like no one was watching, and boy did I. So much so that during one of the songs, I can not remember which one now, Mrs. Z had to put her hand on me to get me to simmer down some. I pounded my hands so hard during “Graves Into Gardens” that I thought I had bruised my palms. And with each hand clap, each shout, each hand lifted high, I was shedding the baggage of the enemy, and giving it all to God. I walked out of that arena last night feeling a lot lighter, refreshed, restored, resurrected.
Hearing EW’s performance in person was everything I could have hoped for. I am going to have to stretch this experience out over two days because my kids are up and active, but I will close with this. God is real. The Holy Spirit is active. As I mentioned in my last post, our whole family has fallen victim to what I assume is this nasty strand of Norovirus sweeping around the world and put a damper on our vacation last week. Well, I have been still dealing with the bug for almost a week. It had left me weak and unable to hold much food down. Working over the last four days (a two-day drill with the National Guard and my two nights of patrol with Savannah PD) were a struggle, to say the least. On Monday, I began to wonder if I needed to give our tickets for the concert away, but I pushed that thought aside. This was Elevation Worship and the Furtick’s first appearance for a tour in this wonderful city. I wanted to be part of that historic moment. So I mustered up, and rallied our family, even our reluctant older kids to attend the show we have been looking forward to for months. When I left the concert, I felt fully healed, like my gut had finally been cleansed. In all honesty, it did not last, as I have relapsed this morning, but in that arena, in a building full of thousands of worshippers praising Jesus and God, I had no issues. I was healed. If only the entire world worshiped God with the same love and passion that was displayed last night, I think all of our issues would cease exist. We have a God that’s bigger than all our problems, and Pastor Furtick reminded the crowd of that last night, but more on that tomorrow. For today, I am closing with the list of cities Elevation Worship is coming to, complete with dates and hyperlinks. If you are able, I can not stress enough what an incredible job this group did on their show. We sat in the cheap seats, and luckily, Savannah’s EnMarket Arena is small enough that the cheap seats enabled us to be rocked by the RATTLE! throughout the entire show. Look at the list below and get yourself into the house of worship closest to you! Have a blessed Thursday!
July 21-Nashville, TN
October 04-Tampa, FL
October 07-Duluth, GA (Atlanta)
October 08-Birmingham, AL
October 10-Lubbock, TX
October 11-Dallas, TX
Common Sense Reborn 