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Background
I have been aware over the course of the last 10 days that God has been pursuing me. A pressure, churning, and expectation has been growing inside me that is undeniable.  So Dawn & I began a 40 day season of prayer and fasting to begin to pursue God for the experience and encounter that is coming.  As we have begun to seek God, we have been challenged by God to widen the circle and call Destiny as a church to participate in this important season of encounter.  Then over the past 3-4 days we’ve become aware of at least 2 national kingdom leaders who have called the national church to 40 day fast.  We believe this is a kiaros [set] time in God’s kingdom for a release of His passion and presence into our lives through a season of experientcial encounters with Him.

The Battle for Breakthrough
The lead up to the birth of a child is really quite remarkable.  The nine months of internal development notwithstanding, the most important time is the experience of delivery which begins when the water breaks (Ps. 42:7). Once the waiting has ended for right opening (dialation), it is time to push until the baby is born.  

What a great picture of the breakthrough God is pushing us toward! In order for our breakthrough to be manifest, we must allow God to “catch” us in His pursuit and wrestle with him as Jacob did for our transformation and blessing.  That’s why it is a battle - we have to be willing to fight from our side for the same thing God is fighting for on His.

40 Days of Passion and Presence
This is a season about pursuing God’s passion toward us and His presence in and around us.  Passion can be described as a shared experience that is evidenced by an intense emotional response.  Jesus new passion (Acts 1:3).  Say what you want about Jacob’s lying and cheating heart, he was a man of great passion and that is why God loved him and hated Esua (Mal. 1:2-3).  Passionate people do not settle for ideas or theory, but are driven by the pursiut of something greater than themselves into an experience and encounter.  God may we take on the passion of Your heart.

This season is equally about pursuing God’s presence in and around our lives. Where God’s tangible presence is there is an impartation of who He is into our lives and a release of the supernatural around us.  In His presence, something is created out of nothing (Gen. 1:1-3), His glory is revealed (2 Chron. 5:11-14), which brings about transformation in our lives (Gen. 32:22-30, 2 Cor. 3:18).  We must have His presence in, over, and surrounding us!

Fasting and Prayer
To facilitate our responding pursuit of God, we are calling a season of fasting and prayer on both the individual and corporate levels.  We must seek Him . . . if we do, WE WILL FIND HIM!

We are suggesting a Daniel fast for those who are willing to pick up the call for a prolonged fast during this season. Whether it is for 1 day, 3 days, 5 days, a week or the entire season, the Daniel fast is a great way to pursue God.  For shorter increments of time, such as 1 meal or 1 day, you might consider a water only fast.  Either way you choose to participate, understand that it is not legalistic self work that will count for anything with God, but rather the faith based pursuit of God and His agenda in our lives that gets His attention (Isaiah 58, Mt. 6:16-18).

During this time we need to be aware of His pursing.  When He comes to you, make the time to BE WITH HIM. When you feel His pursuit, wait on Him with your time and passion (Ps. 27:14, 33:20, 37:4-39, 59:3, 130:5, Isaiah 40:28-31).

We have prepared a weekly prayer emphasis that you can download here to help us build our corporate pursite of God.  Pray through the weekly focus and scriptures for yourself, your family, church, city, state, nation, and the earth.

Lastly, we invite three corporate times we have set aside to pursue God together. We’ve called these gatherings “The Passion Place”. 

The first meeting is on Thursday, September 11 from 7 to 8:30pm.  This is particularly signification considering the prophetic words that have been given (listed by Dutch Sheets) about the 7 years of war that would come to the US subsequent the horiffic attacks on 9/11 2001.  This 7 year period will be followed by a season of the release of God’s presence and passion over us.

The second and third meetings at “The Passion Place” will be held on Tuesdays, September 23 and October 7.  These nights will be filled with an encounter and experience with the passion and presence of God. 

And so we put out the call to you:  It is time to Battle for Breakthrough in these 40 Days of Passion and Presence.  Join us as we yeild to the pursuit of God and respond passionately by pursuing Him!

When we hear the word “passion” we often equate it with the emotional demonstration given by those who possess it.  In other words, we often define what passion is by what gives evidence to it.

Act 1:3 characterizes the last few days of Jesus’ life as His “passion”.  The original language here indicates a feeling [emotion that comes from a shared experience] or experience.  In this way, Jesus’ last few days were his most shared experience as we all now can share in his death, burial and resurrection (Romans 6:4).

It was through this experience that Jesus demonstrated His passion toward His Father and toward us.  His ability to follow through with this extreme sacrifice where He laid His own life down for sinful man was empowered by His explicit trust in His Father.  This is proven by the intense emotional statement He made on the cross . . . “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?”

His emotional motivation and response alone, however, did not secure our salvation.  It was His obedient action through a shared experience with both His Father and the future multitude of people who would believe on Him that He endured the cross and finished the work of salvation.

Passion is more that emotion or feeling.  Real passion produces real actions that are born out of shared experiences, either between you and your God, you and those around you, or both.

God help us to life passionate lives that “take the Kingdom by force”(Matt. 11:12).

The first half of 2008 has been a time of reflection, redefining, and redirection for us.  We’ve started to identify some of the key principles around which God wants to build our future as a church in Lexington.  Even our vocabular has started to change as we understand that we are entering a season of activity, action and acceleration.

As we make an approach to the pivotal month of September, we are gearing up for the movement and momentum that are the evidence of what we’ve been dreaming and talking about these past few months.  Summer will be gone and the time to move will be upon us.

First, we are impressed by our desparate need to come together before God to become “holy unto the Lord”, consecrated to His purposes, listening to His voice, and making our voices heard in the heavenlies as we release His will into the natural realm through declarations, prayer and intercession, and soaking in His glory so that we become carriers of His manifest presence in our city.

Second, we have waited purposefully until now to begin implementing the DCC service teams that we began talking about over 2 months ago.  To refresh your memory, we are going to start forming service teams to provide the basic functional services we need to establish our corporate meetings.  The emphasis is two-fold: teamwork (relationship building) and service (becoming a “living sacrifice”). The teams we will initially be launching will be:

• Facility Team (setup / tear down for our meetings)
• Media Team (audio / projection / video / website)
• Hospitality Team (meeting refreshment table / relational events)
• Children’s Team (kid’s church / nursery)
• Prayer Team (prayer chain / prayer coverning)
• Worship Team (worship for meetings)

Finally, we will be offering a teaching series to begin to lay again the foundation stones of Hebrews 6 into the fabric of our church.  God is serious about us being prepared and ready to move forward, which will require that we are settled and stable on the right foundation - the stones that He has picked to be laid at the base of whatever we build.

These are truly exciting days when talk becomes action and action will become impact for the Kingdom of God in the earth!

Life is about relationships, not money or houses or wide screen tvs.  God’s creative purpose in creating man was to have relationship with him.  And the relational mandate wasn’t just vertical;   man was commanded to “leave” and “cleave” to his wive… and Cain was expected to be his brother’s “keeper”.

The real question isn’t whether God wants us to be in relationships, but how do we establish and maintain relationships at multiple levels of depth, trust, and vulnerability?

While the Old Testament was written to provide examples to us, I always tend to want to look to the life of Jesus for the ultimate patterns on how divinity lived in humanity.  Jesus provides a great pattern for relational levels in that He had lots of aquaintences (the multitudes), had a large outer community (the 120 of the upper room), had a closer group (the 70 He sent out), had a small group who really shared His life (the 12 disciples) and had still yet an inner circle who constituted his only real friends (the inner 3 - Peter, James, and John).

We all know that aquaintences are not hard to come by, neither is the outer sense of community.  The further in the relational circles of Jesus you go, the more commitment, trust, and vunerability were required, but also the more personal benefit was received.]

The close friendship that was represented in Jesus’ inner circle of 3 is the most necessary relationship in our human experience if we are to have the kind of feedback and adjustment that it’s going to take to get us to our highest potential in life.  We cannot make it there alone.  WE ALL NEED AN INNER CIRCLE OF FRIENDS!

Proverbs 13:26 tells us that a righteous man is “cautious” about who he becomes friends with.  Here are a few friendship factors from the scriptures that should be part of your friendship filters:

• Exodus 33:11 - Friends do business “face to face”
• Judges 11:37 - Friends share in your pain
• Job 16:20 - Friends intercede for you
• Job 6:14 - Friends are devoted and faithful
• Psalm 41:6 - Friends trust and share life with you
• Proverbs 17:17 - Friends love you the way you are
• Proverbs 27:6 - Friends are able to adjust you by their strategic input

Let’s be sure to develop an inner circle of friends who will do for us what Peter, James, & John did for Jesus!

The first few months of ‘08 have taken us on a great journey filled with some big moves, big risks, and now the opportunity for big returns.  We are standing right in front of our first big Gate of ‘08 - The Gate of Relationship.

It’s important for us to recognize the context of this Gate so that we can understand the significance of our opportunity.  We’ve realized that Destiny is transitioning from the initial phase of our church, which was characterized by an atmosphere of comfort safety, to a building phase characterized by words like commitment, relationship and challenge.

As we stand at this Gate, we’ve come through a leadership and location transition and now stand looking for security, commitment, and the promise of a collective future in each others eyes. 

And here we are face to face with the real crux of this Gate.  Having good leadership, vision, structure, and location are all important factors in building a church.  But, truth be told, it’s not leadership or vision or structure or location alone that build churches - PEOPLE BUILD CHURCHES - People who have “bought in” to the identity and destiny of the church and are willing to become actively responsible for its future.

The Gate of Relationship will require us to commit to God’s purpose for destiny by way of a real relational commitment to each other.  Relationships are the essence of life and the channel through which God’s kingdom comes on earth.  We must make a conscious choice to walk through this Gate together, to believe in each other, to honor each other, and to celebrate each other.

Waiting on the other side of the Gate of Relationship is an explosive release of supernatural empowerment, provision and growth.  Let’s link arms and walk confidently through the Gate!

It seems quite surreal to turn on the news today to hear pundants and the politically correct media outlets discussing a landmark 300 page decision by the California Supreme Court paving the way for gay marriage under the guise that it is a basic “liberty” protected by the constitution.    

Apparently, not just a few pages of the front end of this activist ruling are dedicated to specifically debunking the case that would almost inevitably be made that the courts 4 to 3 decision would be labels as activism rather that jurisprudence.  

As our society proceeds down this slippery slope to redefine marriage (which, contrary to the majority’s opinion and ruling, is not listed within the constitution anywhere as an unalienable liberty) one can only imagine the next arguments beginning to form from the camps of the polygamists and others with non-traditional views on marriage.    

My heart is saddened at the futility that covers the prevailing minds of our time, the kind of mental relativism that Paul warned the Ephesians to not walk in (Eph. 4:17).  We really must pray for mercy on our Nation that her spiritual eyes would be opened so she can find her spiritual moorings again, the same moorings that gave her the strength to fight for her identity and freedom those many years ago. 

Welcome to the Destiny Community Church blog.  We’re excited to utilize this great tool to help us build community from the inside out. 

We invite you to sign in and start sharing your thoughts with us about whatever is relevant in your life.  This is a place where you’ll find encouragement and challenge side by side. 

And, don’t be shy!  Read along as others begin to post their thoughts and leave your comments to give them feedback.