Happy Thursday Fam! Hope all is well!
It sure has been an interesting few weeks. Sofiya, Natalie and I had an amazing time on vacation…only to come back to insane weather which caused me to miss an outreach for the first time in years and be off work for the entire week…and now we’ve been living through days of seeing our neighbors and friends suffer through intense flooding. To borrow an old movie title, I guess you could call it the good, the bad and the ugly.
First the good- our vacation was amazing.
We spent 4 days in Cloudland Canyon, enjoying incredible views of God’s creation:
On the third day, we also drove 2 hours to Nashville to be part of an epic prayer gathering at the Tennessee State Capitol. Recently, the state of Tennessee made history when it declared the entire month of July to be a month of prayer and fasting.
The Congressman who initiated the bill, and the Senator who helped advance it- spent the entire 31 days of July traveling to each of the 95 counties in Tennessee holding corporate outdoor prayer gatherings at county governmental buildings. The crescendo was on the State Capitol steps in Nashville on July 31st. They testified that night that politicians all over Tennessee had been repenting and calling on the name of Jesus during these gatherings.
Total God thing- when I got there, a man came up to me and made a comment about Natalie. We got to talking, and after about 30 seconds we realized that we knew each other. It was Siran Stacy, the former NFL football player. 3 years ago, he attended a conference that a friend of mine held in Sarasota and she brought him to the beach to minister with us. We baptized several people together that night, but I hadn’t seen him since. This is he and I at Siesta and one of his old football cards:
Here’s us on the Capitol steps. How crazy that we would run into each other!
Turns out Siran is good friends with Monty Fritts- the Congressman who initiated the prayer bill. Siran brought me to Monty and told him all about the ministry and how great it is.
Monty then asked me if I wanted a signed and sealed copy of the prayer decree, to which I excitedly said “yes!” I just got it in the mail yesterday!
It was signed by Monty, the Governor, the speaker of the house, the head of the senate, and Mark Pody the Senator who brought the bill to the senate for vote. I got to meet him too which was awesome. Both these men are ON FIRE!!
It was such an exciting night! CBN News was even there filming the event. You can see their video and article about it here- ‘Focus on Jesus’: TN Lawmakers, Pastors Unite in Prayer for State and Nation | CBN News
Another interesting thing that happened on the trip was that I had two very vivid dreams. I hardly ever have dreams, so to have two dreams just a few days apart- that both seemed like they were from the Lord, was profound.
The first one was a prophetic dream I got the first night I was there. It was for my former Pastors wife- Brooke Gibson from Church of Motion. The details are not relevant to the reason why I’m sharing, but this was her response when I shared it with her:
The reason I bring this dream up is because her reaction to this dream made me believe that the second dream was also from God. It’s a WAY harder thing to believe though, and I think that’s why God wanted to encourage me through the other dream that He was speaking to me.
This is my journal entry of the second dream. I had it right after the Nashville Prayer gathering. After I got out of bed, I went to write it down and it also just happened to be 9:41am.
This was the first dream I’ve had ever had about the ministry. At the crux of the dream was the “leader” of the drum circle telling me that they were leaving Siesta Beach to go somewhere else. We prayed into this on Tuesday at The House of Prayer, and I will continue to from now on. Please join me!
As for the outreaches, since I didn’t update you last week, I’ll just mesh both weekends into one recap.
Both weekends at Bayfront were fruitful. One weekend a handful of Venezuelans came to the Lord, many others heard, and a number of others received ministry. I also heard that the night we were gone there was a lot of hard ground at first but after it broke through there were many Divine appointments. Great job Team Jesus for keeping the fire burning in our absence!
Two weeks ago, at Riverwalk, it was just me and Mike, but we had many Divine appointments also. The best was this young man coming up to pray to receive the Lord after I gave an altar call.
After we loaded him up with resources, he went back to his family, who were watching everything. Based on how they looked when he came back, it seemed like it was an answer to their prayer. Super cool!
We also met these people who all wanted prayer for a better walk with Christ. I got to do that and disciple them a little bit too which was great:
This past Saturday, it rained like crazy all day so there was almost nobody at the park when we came. However, there were two young women that came up, sat down and listened to me preach for several minutes. Laney came and ministered to them both and it was very fruitful. Here’s her praying for one of them.
Beforehand, we also got to spend some time discipling Trish after we left the retirement home, the girl in the foreground of the picture. She just got radically saved a few weeks ago and she had come out to minister with us for the first time.
Two Sundays ago, we had a very fruitful time on Siesta with many people taking tracts, several people praying to receive the Lord and several others getting ministered to very powerfully. Even while it was raining, there was ministry going on!
This past Sunday, I was on my way to the beach in the pouring rain and I got a notice on my phone saying that everyone should stay off the road because of tornados. With grief in my heart, I decided to turn back home. For the first week in 6 years, we had no ministry on Siesta. So sad!
BIG thanks to all who came out over the last few weeks! You know who you are!!!
Speaking of sad, let’s keep our beloved 941 region lifted up. Sarasota and Manatee County got more rain than in 24 hours than we’ve ever had before, and many houses got flooded. Here’s just a few pics:
If you had any damage like this, or know someone who has, please let us know if they need any help. This will definitely be time for the Church to be the hands and feet of Christ.
Love and blessings to you! Hope to see you soon!
Chris