Hell is stirring

When Saul became the apostle Paul, he began what was an incredibly hard life. Even during the course of his salvation he had to endure blindness at the sight of Jesus. (what a scary concept to loose your sight) Whats more incredible is that he endured: shipwrecks, snake bites, beatings, stoning, and imprisonment.

If I had a laundry list like that I don't know that I'd have Paul's outlook on life. Most of us do something like this: "why God why!!!!!!!!! why did my tire blow out on the way to work?" (then we go through our list and remind God of it) "I mean, come on! I tithe, I serve in church, I don't cuss, or even drink! You owe me!"

(as a quick disclaimer, I'm not trying to trivialize your problems, a flat tire is never fun, I'm just attempting to draw some perspective)

I imagine myself meeting Paul one day, and him walking right up to me and saying "sissy", then turning around and laughing. What I mean is the things I complain about are so insignificant compared to the trial he faced. Listen for a second to the attitude that the apostle Paul had when dealing with suffering.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, 'for your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered,' No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angles nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor heigth nor depth, nor anything else in all creations will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" -Romans 8:35-39

Wow! In the mist of all that he had endured he still couldn't see anything coming in the way of the love of Christ. I have noticed in my life when things go bad I often question does God love me less today? My prayer for myself is to see things like Paul did. Another thing that's interesting is that Paul viewed suffering as a mark that he was doing the right thing. Persecution was simply apart of Christianity to him. In light of that here's some suffering that's going on with Life Church Canton:
-I'm dealing with some health issues
-a launch team member just had a septic tank back up ($2900)
-a launch team member just had a motorcycle wreck
-a launch team member just had a miscarriage
-a launch team member's whole family has been sick
-a launch team member just had a child total their car in a wreck
-a launch team member is dealing with added stress with work

Most of these things are costly, and very hard to deal with, but something we have realized as a launch team is that Hell is stirring. To me this is significant, and I have 2 reasons:
1. In Matthew 16:18 Jesus mentions that Hell actually has gates. Gates are defensive mechanisms. I believe our job as Christians are to storm the gates of Hell, and I believe that's exactly what were doing, which is why we see such opposition.
2. In Acts 19:15 a demon tells some itinerant priests "Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but what are you? This indicates that if you're not a threat to Satan then he's not much a threat to you, because if he doesn't even know you, you must not be living that kind of life that effects him.

Life Church is on mission, and we know what were called to do. As we build our launch team I think we have stirred the gates of Hell. One of the greatest honor's I could ever accomplish is that the demons know my name.

Please continue to pray for our church, we will need it to do battle as we seek to change our city!