Tuesday Morning Shout Out
I blinked Sunday night and I opened my eyes to see its already Tuesday morning!
Just a quick recap of the weekend…
We had an incredible time celebrating all of our volunteers at Renovation Saturday evening at “Flora’s!”
We love to throw parties at Renovation… I think Jesus was a party thrower and go-er… and we take one night a year to love on and say thank you to all of the important people who make Renovation what it is. It is one night where the Staff gets to serve the “servers’ and we have a great time doing it.
Michelle S and Michelle G did an incredible job of planning the decor and Nick wrote a great remix of I Gotta Feelin… that I am still singing. It was a Everything Buffalo theme… wing tasting contest… Duff’s beat Anchor Bar by a land slide! Our Buffalo Guide Scott Stockton taught us some interesting things about Buffalo architecture… of course we had Renovation Bingo and some great food!
The best moment of the night for me was when I asked how many were on the launch team at Elmwood… we had a few and then I asked how many are new? The majority of hands went up and the look on our “old-timers” was priceless… they started clapping for all of these new leaders and servers that God has raised up in just the last 12 months… awesome!
Sunday we closed out our series The Battle WIthin.
We took on the enemy of Anger.
Quite a topic for Mother’s Day… Anger says “you owe me” and we discovered that the way you fight off anger is through forgiveness.
We learned that forgiveness is not so much for the offender but for the offended!
Only in forgiving can we be set free from anger.
We said all along that each of these enemies… Guilt/Jealousy/Greed/Anger gets their power in the dark and only when we expose them to light of God’s truth and bring them out of the corner do they begin to lose their power over us.
Each one of these enemies is best understood in the light of a debt to debtor relationship…
Guilt says “I owe you”
Jealousy says “God owes me”
Greed says “I owe me”
Anger says “You owe me”
We said that there is only two ways a debt can be dealt with:
1. It is repaid
or
2. It is cancelled
Sunday we learned that Forgiveness which is simply “canceling a debt” on lodges the anger that is in our heart.
Forgiveness based not on what the offender has done to us but what God has done for us… as Christ forgave me… cancelled my debt… so I will forgive others. Not easy I know but powerful and transforming.
Here is the prayer that we had on the screen that might be helpful…
Heavenly Father, _______ has taken _______ from me. I have held onto this debt long enough. I choose to cancel this debt. _______ doesn’t own me anymore. Just as you forgave me, I forgive _______.
