Happy Birthday RJ

Hey, I wish I was going to church but part of my perm was defective and had to be redone. It looks fabulous though. Kind of an Aaron Spelling from Beverly Hills 90210 / Justin of American Idol thing going on. If I'm totally off on the Aaron Spelling thing don't worry I won't care.

Lucky you, while I wait for my hair you get to hear about last night / this morning.

Last night we went to the Thai Boat for dinner, Cheesecake Cafe for desert, and Bamboo Tiki Lounge for fun all to celebrate RJ's 28th Birthday. It was a grandish time.

Tasty food. Good music. RJ got to show off his new tatoo.

It seemed strange for me to hear RJ tell Andy about me clubbing a couple of weeks ago - that God always gave me things to pray for. It sounded very inaccurate. It's not like I walk into clubs and the natural thing to do is hear God tell me to pray for things and then do it. This time was similar to all the rest. I prayed about it beforehand and later you just start doing it. I prayed brief prayers for the first few hours, but really they're just OK God, dancing is a good thing, and it's a fun way to do something for you. An active way of praying even if not thinking too much. A couple songs here and there warranted prayer into lyrics. Pretty casual.

At about 1:00 though, it got more specific. I think I start off just recalling truths. The Holy Spirit is right inside my spirit. He will never leave or forsake me. He is present. He is right there in the club. And there was a light pointed at me and hey, the light exposes the darkness. And it just starts snowballing. I start smiling at lot at this point because truth is powerful, powerfully joyous.

And about this same time a girl nearby started getting interested in me. Now for RJ’s sake I will inform you that appearance wise, she was definitely great looking but not, ‘my type’. But I just kept turning her down. The first couple times were easy because I could feign ignorance. But she actually put her hand out and that was harder because it was right there. Do you want to dance? Now I’m not saying dancing with her would have been a bad thing. At that moment though I was praying and it was good, and it would have been distracting to say the least to continue while dancing with some hot girl, especially since I am pretty much pro-star dancing boy and it’s all very effortless (that was eye rolling right there in case you weren’t sure). But it wasn’t a big deal not to dance with her. So I didn’t and continued having fun, and if my attention wandered off, I wandered after it and brought it back (Graham Cooke).

The next morning it was off to GIC to play guitar. It went fantastic. I kept a good head and heart during the practice and then I went down for pre-service prayer and things got exciting. John, the Bass – turned Drummer because of need, had randomly flipped to Psalm 41 which is a call to enthusiastic worship basically. And the church is going on a new series about prayer. And while we were praying God gave me such strong heart prayers for them, and pieces gradually came together and so I asked my Mom if I could pray for the congregation and I asked John if he would read the portion out of the Psalm aloud in the service. So off we went and I asked the congregation if I could pray over them and of course they said yes. So I read out of John 14, ask anything in my name and I will do it. And I thanked the Holy Spirit for being present inside each of us, we loved him. Then I spoke out a piece from Colossians 3. Let the words of Christ live in your hearts and make you wise. Then I asked God to take the Psalm John was about to read and make it alive in our hearts as we were about to sing prayers to him.

I can’t speak for the whole congregation but I definitely got a giant YES for me. Those songs pierced my heart and I could barely keep from crying while playing guitar. And we got to have communion. How great is that?

God is great.