Wed. Night Impact

We had a fun Wed. night at Impact. We had a competition between the boys and the girls of who could get the most here. Morgan Canon represented the girls and Chase Brady represented the boys. The winner got to throw a pie in the face of the other. At the beginning of the service, when the music was starting there were a couple of more girls than boys.
Our worship was pretty good. One cool thing is that we had a new guitar player playing this week who just happens to be a junior higher. Bobby did an awesome job, and I heard he even did better in high school.
I spoke about passions and the passion of Jesus. The reason Jesus came was to preach the good news about the kingdom of God (Luke 4). This superceded everything else. Yes, he was loving, he came to save our sins, and things like this, but primarily he wanted to focus on the kingdom of God. I showed 3 things he was passionate about as a result of his main purpose for coming to Earth.
First, he was more focused on truth than miracles. He knew miracles would give fleeting belief. Truth is eternal, and that's why he always focused on truth and only used miracles to grab somebody's attention or when they showed him they had faith. But he almost always told the people he healed not to tell anybody. (I wrote a blog about this a little bit yesterday).
Second, he came for the unbelievers (Luke 5). Jesus was questioned about why he hung out and ate dinner with the tax collectors and the sinners. Jesus said that he came for the sick not the well. He came for the people who didn't know God. He came for the poor, the oppressed, and the sick. If he was passionate about these things, then we should be too.
Third, I talked about how his passion brought about action. He was passionate about God's house. He was passionate about people taking care of others. And when he saw people not respecting the temple, and religious leaders taking advantage of people, it made him so angry that he started flipping tables and running people away.
So I ended with what we should be passionate about. If we are truly passionate about God, then we'll sing songs and not joke around during the praise time. We won't pass notes or make paper airplanes during the Bible study. We'll be concerned about the people who can't take care of themselves, and that's the call that I want to give to the kids. Be passionate about what Jesus was passionate about.

By the way, when everything was over last night, there were 37 boys and 22 girls. So Morgan got a pie in the face. The funniest thing about it was that David Jackson was standing directly behind Morgan, and when Chase threw the pie in her face, it went all over David. It was hilarious. Here's some pictures of it (even though they're not that good because they were taken with my phone).