Spoiler Alert is our newest series at Skull Church. We are going through the book of Ecclesiastes where Solomon ruins the ending for anyone who would try to live their life for anything but God. I LOVE the work the creative dept did on this series!

A text-msg question about getting high that I answered @ Skull Church.

Last night at Skull Church we looked at the miraculous healing of Naaman in 2 Kings chapter 5. The story is such an awesome portrait of the gospel. You have this Syrian General who, from all outward appearances, has it all together. He is rich, powerful, successful, and popular. He also has leprosy, a slow decay of his nervous system that will lead to ultimate disfigurement and death. This is a picture of what sin does to the human heart. He hears about a miracle working prophet in Israel, from a household servant, and heads off to see this Elisha guy with a truck-load of cash. This is much like the person who thinks they can earn God’s favor or buy their way into heaven with good works.

When he arrives at the prophet’s home he is surprised and disgusted that the man of God doesn’t treat him like a VIP, he doesn’t even talk to him at all! He simply sends a message telling Naaman that if he were to dip 7x in the muddy Jordan river he would be healed. In the same way that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing” (1 Cor 1:18) Naaman thinks this plan is the stupidest thing he has ever heard, and he almost leaves. In the end he humbles himself and does what he was told. As a result, Naaman’s leprosy was healed and his heart was transformed. He became a God-fearer and we can look forward to meeting him in heaven.

As riveting as the entire story is, to me the most exciting detail is the part played by the servant who referred him to Elisha in the first place. We don’t know her name or anything about her except that she was an Israelite that had been kidnapped and forced to live as a slave in Naaman’s house. Only two verses are given to her in the entire Bible (II Kings 5:2,3) and yet she was used powerfully by God in the healing and conversion of her influential master. How differently Naaman’s story would have gone had she not piped up. She certainly had every reason to NOT tell him about what God could do if he would make the trip to Israel. When raiding bands took slaves they often killed the men. She potentially saw her father murdered before being dragged off to live as a slave. In spite of this, she was filled with compassion and spoke spoke up in love.

We all need to realize the important role we have in the work of evangelism as we do something as simple as inviting people to a church service, an outreach or telling them about an online webcast they can watch where they will hear the gospel presented. Evangelist Greg Laurie, who has preached to over 4 million people in crusades says that says 85 percent of those who come forward at the invitation to follow Christ were brought by a friend. Opportunities to speak up are all around us and we never know what ginormous things God could do through our smallest act of faith.

History might remember the healing of Naaman as one of the miracles that God did through Elisha’s ministry, but in the Lord’s eyes this young chick was an equally important part of the process. In the end, both the one who sets and the one who spikes will receive equal spiritual rewards (1 Cor. 3:6). So look for an opportunity to be used by God today!

Tomorrow night I am excited to have Pedro Garcia speaking at Skull Church. Pedro pastors an exploding, multi-site church in Miami, Florida called CCk that God really has His hand on. The Lord recently opened the door for them to enter the world of broadcasting through a full-power FM radio station called Life radio that you can listen to online here.

God has knit our hearts together and we have become great friends. My favorite thing about him is his intense passion for the gospel. Pedro is one of the most high-energy people that I have ever met, and he focuses all of that energy, like a laser, on reaching lost people for Christ. If you have heard him preach you know what I am talking about. But if you ever went out to eat with him you would see it there too–because he would be just as passionate sharing the gospel with a person he just met in the lobby of the restaurant.

His teaching show can be heard each weekday morning on Fresh Life Radio at 10am. Make sure to join us at Skull Church tomorrow night, either in person or through the webcast, but also pray about who God would have you invite or email a link to.

Last night we celebrated the first anniversary of the launch of skull church. What a year it has been! From all the different series: Fire & Ice, God Rocks the Punk, The Bloody Death of Jesus Christ, and High Fidelity. To all the killer artists like: Kristian Stanfill, Family Force 5, The Myriad, Phil Wickham, and many others. To the hundreds of different, and sometimes crazy, text-messages I have received and answered while preaching. It has been epic. But at the end of the day skull church isn’t about text-messages, decals, graphic, merch, the bands or new media. Those are all things we use and as culture changes so will the way we utilize them. They serve the vision they don’t drive it.

At it’s core skull church is all about one thing and only one thing, the gospel. It is a platform to amplify what happened at the place of the skull, where Jesus died on the cross, for the sins of the world. We are aggressively targeting a lost generation with the good news. And in the last year, through this ministry, we have seen 440 people make professions of faith in Jesus Christ. That is what skull church is all about. The people who have had their hearts rocked by Christ, the lives that have been changed. And we are sure that God has done even more than we are aware of as the messages have sounded forth on the radio, internet, and podcasts all over the country and beyond. If I have learned anything in the 8 years I have been preaching it’s this, God’s Word does not return void. (more…)