Between the Promise and the Payoff

There are some people who just inspire - being around them makes you want to be better, push harder, go further.  Steven Furtick is one of those people.  He's a 28 year old kid who leads an amazing church called Elevation in Charlotte, NC (not even 3 years old and around 5,000 people attend each week and they baptized 1,000 people in one weekend!)

I've followed his story for the past couple years and have prayed for his success.  What I really liked was he was confident and humble at the same time.  He got a promise from God at 16 - committed himself to honoring Christ and being faithful and now, 10+ years later he's seeing the promise payoff.  And he understands that the process in between those two points is sometimes lonely, difficult, and filled with doubt.  

Don't believe me?  God promised all of us that He would never leave us or forsake us.  Yet, how often do we doubt or despair because of our circumstances which appear to indicate something more like "God's nowhere to be found"?  If God's promised, shouldn't we be faithful in belief - faithful in the process of waiting for Him to make good on His promise?  Yes we should.  Even when we can't see it, when it doesn't make sense, when there seems to be no possible way things could work - we need to be faithful to a God who's faithful to us.

I've already seen God come through in my life.  When we were officially homeless and didn't have enough support raised to move to NC - we didn't lose hope and God provided - abundantly.  When I didn't think anyone would come to a new church - people did.  When I didn't feel like we were reaching anyone - people believed and got baptized.  All too often I've doubted God's promises and yet He's still kept them.  Amazing!

God's got bigger plans for Discovery, we're just not there yet.  But we need to be faithful in the process.  Faithful in blessing the community, giving to others, serving people not even connected to the church or to Christ, praying for individuals, neighborhoods and this city.  God will do His part.  The question is, will we do ours?