Josh Pitka, His Best Friend God, and the Mega Church Journey

There is a God who loves you and can heal you – physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially… Truly there is nothing impossible for Him – if we yield to the process of restoration – God will do it!

But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand. - Isaiah 64:8

The Lord; your Creator; your Father; the One who knows you – even your mind and your heart and all you’ve been through – better than you know yourself… he can even take your broken life (which he likens to clay) and remake you; remould you; reshape you… He can and will heal you.

The only thing he won’t do… is force you.

You’re a free-will agent… just like God Himself… made in His image and likeness (see Genesis 1). And He will not force you… He cannot force love. Because He is love He will not force Himself. He won’t save you unless you call to Him… He won’t heal you unless you open yourself up to Him.

God is good. We are always the ones that hurt ourselves and hurt each other.

But He will make every move possible to save us from ourselves and our destructive ways. He made the ultimate move toward you by choosing to freely give you pardon and forgiveness of every wrong you’ve ever committed, by sending His perfect Son Jesus to take your punishment for you. All justice for your wrongs has been served by Jesus on the cross. All accusation can be made null and void. All condemnation can be lifted. You can be free!

All you gotta do is receive it. And if you follow Jesus He will lead you and heal you.

Only you can make the decision. Only I can choose to follow Him daily.

It is a process. A wonderful life of falling more in love with Love every day.

I hope that you will decide for 2012 to be your year restoration and hope and love and faith, as you’ve never experienced before!!

19 And no one considers in his heart, Nor is there understanding to say, “I have burned half of it in the fire, Yes, I have also baked bread on its coals: I have roasted meat and eaten it; And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?”

 20 He feeds on ashes; A deceived heart has turned him aside; And he cannot deliver his soul, Nor say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

Isaiah 44:19, 20

It is amazing to me how many times I’ve fed on spiritual ashes, delicious, candy coated, entertaining, yet empty of any nutritional value… ashes.

How many times as a youth I got high or drunk (before I met Jesus) only to wake up empty pocketed with an empty soul…

How many times I watched movies or played video games for hours on end only to feel spiritual void and empty of anything truly substantial.

It’s amazing to me how in other cultures idolatry still consists or making, literally creating a ‘god’ with human hands and then falling down and worshiping it. Declaring to a block of wood, or gold or silver, or whatever earthly material it’s made of, that YOU ARE MY GOD!… crazy!! Worshiping the work of ones own hands…

But I think we do it even more in North America, especially with the entertainment industry. Sitting around for hours on end watching and eating and soaking in mind-numbing entertainment… consider these statistics:

Television Statistics According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube.  I.

FAMILY LIFE

 II CHILDREN

Compiled by TV-Free America1322 18th Street, NWWashington, DC 20036

Television is just one avenue (probably the main one) that societies worship. Would we rather be entertained than develop real, meaningful relationships? Would we rather feed on ashes because it’s easier than hunting for meat?

Idol worship is fun… and easy… and everyone is doing it… but it’s empty.

Let’s be a generation that seeks after God with all of our hearts, because the invitation is too good!

20 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. 

21 “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

Revelation 3:20, 21

Overcome what? I won’t write out Revelation 3:14-22 in it’s entirety, but I encourage you to read it… because I believe it speaks to a generation that is being overcome with apathy and a false sense of security in the stuff they have rather than the God they know. Get to know Jesus personally, His presence, grace, truth and love is better than any entertainment… no matter how tasty them ashes are!

Minute by minute children are starving and dying…

Minute by minute people feel hopeless and think about taking their lives…

Minute by minute people are murdered, raped, and plundered…

Minute by minute wars and rumours of wars are raging all over the earth…

Minute by minute the battle rages on:

The battle for people’s lives,

For their destinies,

Their futures,

The futures of their children and posterity.

All the while the enemy of our soul is singing to us, “every little thing… is gonna be alright.”

But it’s so evidently NOT alright.

There is justice to rendered!

There are battles to be won!

There are souls to be saved!

There are marriages to be restored!

There are prodigals to be reconciled!

Every minute that goes by was another opportunity to make impact… to love… to give… to serve… to accomplish… to realize… to grow. To rest in the grace of God and listen for your next heavenly assignment.

I’m not sure about you, but as for me… I don’t want to waste another minute simply existing – I WANT TO LIVE!!!

“Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 3:12-14

I think many people want to go higher, and be better, and get smarter, and change… but aren’t reaching higher, and focusing on what it will take to get better, and constantly learning, and making the tuff choices. It is CRAZY to think things will change if you aren’t… So reach higher today, and see a little more budge and change and develop because of a tuff choice you’ve made.

Everyone likes to have ‘good feelings’ - It’s a clear universal truth about humanity.

“I want to feel good…”

“I want to be happy…”

And there is nothing wrong with that, nothing at all.

Where it becomes dangerous is when we live our lives and base our decisions solely on ‘what makes me feel good today’ or ‘what makes me feel good in this moment’. It’s dangerous because #1 there are many things that ‘feel good’… even ‘feel amazing’ but they are outside of the will of God for our lives. We know as followers of Jesus this truth: THERE IS NOTHING GOOD FOR ME OUTSIDE OF THE WILL OF GOD. So the point is that EVEN if ‘feels good’ it doesn’t mean it IS good. And if it’s not good, it’s probably bad.

The second reason that living from your feelings is dangerous is that you run the constant risk of missing out on God’s best for your life – ie. walking in your destiny. Put another way, you could miss your calling, the very reason God created you.

The sad thing and the great thing about writing this blog post is that I do this all the time… but I want to do it less and less frequently. At least I recognize it and am working on not living by my feelings – but living by faith.

Living by faith is simple: following Jesus and obeying Him with your entire life.

Living by feelings is simple too: following yourself (your own feelings) and obeying the inclinations of your own flesh and mind.

Every single one of us do both of the above. We all have mixture. But the more you decide (and I use the word ‘decide’ purposely) to follow Jesus and not your own feelings the more you will succeed in every way that truly matters, and the happier you will actually be.

So if you’ve made it this far and wondering about the title of this post – here goes:
My heart has been stirred for about 2 weeks to do this ‘Elevation Global Choir’ thing (the deadline is actually extended until this coming Sunday at midnight)… but I didn’t recognize it because I knew it would be a tonne of work – and I didn’t really think I had the time. Also, and more importantly… I didn’t feel like doing it.

I felt the Lord asking me to get ’50 submissions in’ of people that went to Dunamis Church or people I knew and actually WIN the contest which would be awarded to the person who got the most entries in. The prize was an all expense paid trip to Charlotte to visit Elevation Church, attend a conference for a few days, and chill out with Elevation’s worship team (actually I wouldn’t go but send a few of our worship leaders). Alas, I was lazy (which usually goes along with living by my feelings, because who really ‘feels like’ shoving their good feelings aside and go with God when it’s hard or challenging?) and I didn’t act. I thought God would leave me alone… He didn’t.

He eventually worked on me enough to wake me up a few nights ago and say, “50 entries in 8 days”… but I know I can do it in 4. It really comes down to a decision on my part to work (it usually does) - to delegate – to grow – to lead – to emerge… all the things I want to do and I know would make me truly happy, but alas, they are hard. To make the decision doesn’t feel good, in the moment at least.

So I have this personal epiphany 2 nights ago and want to phone my girlfriend at 12:30am and tell her all about it…that I’m going to change and continue to grow and learn and emerge… but I felt like God was saying 2 nights ago… “SON, JUST CHANGE”… so I’ll just change and blog about it now instead, and hopefully spark something in you!

I’ll end with this: there are a lot of people saying a lot of things and making a lot of promises. I feel like the Lord would say, ‘stop talking so much and do it’.

50 in 8 … 50 in 4..?!?! Challenging?… Yes. Doable?… well I won’t find out unless I push myself and actually just do it! (like Nike)

I’m just going to change – today.

ps. we walk in our destiny by choice, not by chance… …so make the decision today to follow Jesus – and emerge into your God given calling! This is who you really are anyway, don’t let your fleshly feelings get in the way.