I'm really bad at this!  It's hard to keep up on the weekends.  But I have no excuse for Yesterday.  I got out of the habit.  I even neglected to do the dishes... bad Paul.

Anywho. 

Love is a many splendored thing.  Love lifts us up where we belong.  All you need is love. 

-Ewin McGregor, Moulin Rouge

Though these words were obviously stolen from some pretty great songs, all pertaining to loving a girl, I find these words (which were annoyingly stuck in my head as I began this post) to be very true, and I wish the world would get a hold of this. 

Though I'm not sure what kind of english the first song quote was using, I get the idea that this means many people find love to be magical, or splendid, spectacular, amazing.... you get the idea.  Love lifts us up where we belong.  Not just love for a girl does this.  But when we are loving even the people that are hard to love... we find that we are where we belong, in God's eyes.  And really, all we really do need is true, real love.  Love encompasses all the laws and the prophets, it encompasses all of the fruit of the spirit.  If we are flowing in pure love... that's all we would need, as everything will fall into place, and it would lift us up to where we belong. 

Though I know these are very romantic songs, I believe human kind, deep down, understands love.  It's not easily explained, but for some reason when we sing about love... it comes to life.  I know I'm a musical person, but its more than just a music concept.  In order to write a song, you have to be completely engrossed in the topic you are writing about, it consumes your mind.  And when a writer sits down to write about love, their deep down gut feelings about it come out to the light. 

Now many people have been burnt in the past, so their ideas on love are very negative.  But even that shows the nature of love, a love lost can break us down completely in our hearts, mind and even our bodies.  And I think it's a perfect view of what's going on inside the hearts of those who don't have Jesus' love inside of them.  They are breaking down, losing their minds, some without even realizing it.

What have I learned from this?  Just as the writer who sits down to write a song about love, we should engross our minds with love every day, and allow Jesus' love to shine from us and to bring the meaning of love to light just in our daily dealings with people.  Because if we don't, the people around us, and ourselves will break down, as would a couple that has broken up would.

This morning, and yesterday mornings devotion was merely Angie and I praying about our situation, and for God to give us wisdom through out the day.  But I agree.  I am a slacker.  I missed two days in a row... well almost till I made this post! 

We are finding that the leaders that were there for that meeting were actually more upset about what went down than we were.  I won't say some of the things other people have said, merely for the fact that this may be found somehow by the wrong people who are looking for reasons to lash out at us. 

We know now that the things said are not the view of the vast majority of the people who have any say in our ministry, in fact as we're finding, the "conspirators" are basically the only people who haven't said sorry for what happened, one of them even approched me yesturday and, to use a political concept, built a straw man so as to try and divert me from what's going on.  (if you don't know what a straw man is in politics, look it up, it's a common trick)  Even the guy they had bring the concerns up called Angie and apologized.  It's obvious what is going on, but it's a lot less obvious what's going to happen.  If they don't stop, this church is going to see some sort of a church split.  And we've been told that this war has been going on well before we came into the picture so we shouldn't feel like we are at fault. 

In any case, there are lots of causes to be concerned, and thus, lots of reasons to be in prayer.

I looked for devos for worship leaders and the first one was all about learning to deal with bumps in the road.  Meaning, when things are just not going right, keep the goal in mind and the bump will soon pass. 

Timely as ever!  Life here just has not been easy.  Yeah we have basically our dream job, but alas, now I must get another job in order to stay afloat financially.  Our car is out of commission, and we are using the youth van to get around, which some people in the church are getting antsy about.  And two of our youth leaders which had problems with us, decided to take leave.  So it feels as though the general church feeling on us is heading toward the negative side.

But this devotion helped me out in thinking about this, because in reality it's just going to take time.  The fact that they are unsure about us gives us an opportunity to show them who we can be, so they'll forget the little stuff.   But if we dwell on the little stuff as they are right now, neither us or them will get over the "bump in the road" and it may cause our ministry to die quickly. 

So my prayer today is that God help Angie and I to keep our focus on Him and His ministry, and continue to press on toward a successful ministry, and ultimately a successful life.