Welcome to the Victory Blog

Earlier this month, nearly 150 women joined Pastor Colleen and her special guest, Ann Platz for an interactive time of sharing about some of the issues that are closest to the hearts of women. They began the evening with some delightful hors d’oeuvres and refreshments in the lobby. Then, after some praise and worship, Pastor Colleen and Ann began to share some of the things God had put on their hearts. Here are some of the highlights:

God has a plan and a purpose for each individual woman. That purpose was in His heart long before we were even conceived. Understanding that truth is foundational to our identity as women. Every woman is called to do things just as great as those Esther did. Yet this is often hindered by our perceptions. We need to allow God to destroy our faulty perceptions and replace them with true ones.

Learn to cultivate being a good listener. That means: look in people’s eyes; engage, be attentive, respectful and honoring. Then, when you speak, everyone will want to listen to you. Simply learning to listen well will have a tremendous impact on how you are received. It can quell hair-trigger situations and open many doors that wouldn’t open otherwise. Practice on your husband or your children (if you have them) and see the difference. This has to come from a heart that is sincere and full of honor towards others. But, that’s not really that hard to do. Once you understand your value in the eyes of the Lord, it’s so easy to see how much He loves everybody else, too. Then, out of that, you honor people in the way that you engage them.

This is missing in our society because women are not leading in this. We need to start leading in honoring others, in being gracious, to our children and our husbands, and to strangers in the line at the grocery store or in traffic. Women have tremendous influence in this world. We all have a sphere of influence. Why not decide to put on a cloak of honor for the next month and respond to everyone around you based on that? Ask God to give you a love for people in every circumstance. Consider this: Manners will often take you places that money and education will not.

Women need to embrace femininity. Femininity is the softer side of God; it is the mothering heart of God; the privileged place of the female. It’s part of God’s purpose for women. A woman who embraces femininity, who embraces her purpose, commands respect. A “purposed” woman is focused, confident, more of a listener than a talker, on mission, understands what she’s to do and where she needs to go. Esther is a great example.

In addition, Pastor Colleen and Ann addressed questions from some of the ladies in attendance about: recapturing femininity, identifying your purpose, the importance of and finding mentors, mothers being in the home versus in the marketplace, dealing with a husband’s addiction to pornography and the pitfalls of multi-tasking. Their answers were full of wisdom and insight that ministered deeply to those who asked the questions, as well as many others.
Well, that’s a brief look at the latest ChickChat. We’re sorry if you missed it, but hope you can make it next time! You won’t want to miss another one. So, be on the lookout early next year!

(Click on the thumbnails to view photo gallery of this event)

Through iCare, our ongoing campaign to reach out to others, you are saying:

iCare about…

…those in my community who are suffering the devastating effects of poverty, abuse and homelessness…and, that means there needs to be a safe haven – a place to run to, recover and regenerate.

Over the last couple of months, so many of you have taken this local iCare pledge to heart. Through our iCare Transitional Housing project, we are now partnered with Mary Hall Freedom House in their Open Arms Project – a transitional housing initiative for women right here in Gwinnett County.

In the initial stages of our project, we are furnishing 34 apartments; and, thanks to your generous giving and help, eight are already complete; providing a safe haven for eight or more women immediately!

Last month we asked for volunteers to help us as we sorted and assembled furniture. Just a few short days after our request, more than 75 of you showed up to help load the furniture unto trucks and, once inside the apartments, the furniture was moved in, curtains hung, cabinets filled, dishes and cookware put away and we even provided things like towels and toothbrushes. With your outstanding help, we had eight completely furnished and decorated apartments in move-in condition within five hours.

We can’t thank you enough for your continued generosity which provides the resources we need to make outreaches such as these possible. And, we would like to give a very special thanks to the many volunteers who participated in transforming these empty apartments into places of safety and rest for many special women.

Now, that’s eight down; just 26 more to go. Stay tuned for more opportunities to show how much we care.

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We have a lot of new people coming into our church all the time. Because of that, and the fact that we have about 98 different nations represented (and at least that many different opinions about every issue), I’ve been asking God what He would like to say to our church that would help bring us together. He answered by giving me a word about His calling on our church.

Every church has a unique calling; different churches are called to different things. I feel like God said there are five things that He’s specifically called this church to do. We are called to be:

1. A church of reconciliation. Reconciliation means to bring something that has been divided or separated back together again. We are called to first reconcile lost people to God; and second, to reconcile people to each other (the part that has been left out of most churches). We are called to a life that is no longer about living for ourselves, but for others instead. As new creations, we no longer regard anyone according to the flesh, including their color! Everything we do now has to do with reconciling people to Christ and to each other. Honestly, there’s a lot to overcome to live that way. Too often, we just don’t get it…until we get a heart for reconciliation–seeking to understand, to see others’ perspectives, to reach across the barriers of separation and begin treating others, not based on what they have or haven’t done for us, but based on Jesus and His love for us. The only way to bring this kind of true reconciliation is through the blood of Jesus at work in our lives.
2. A church that preaches and lives according to the uncompromised Word of God. Unfortunately, there is a great void in the area of preaching the Word of God in the churches of America today. We’ve gotten more concerned with pleasing and attracting people. People don’t want to be challenged. But God’s Word has tremendous power to transform. If we want to experience that power, sometimes we need to be pierced, to hear things that we don’t want to hear from His Word.
3. A church that transforms the world around us. We have a dilemma today. We’re finding that rather than the church changing the world, the world is changing the church. Throughout history, whenever this has happened, the church has lost its influence in society. We’re called to be the salt and light of God in this world, but when we’re bickering and fighting, just like people in the world, we have no flavor, no transforming power.
4. A church that releases God’s will through prayer. If you’re one who has criticized our current president or our new president, it’s time to stop speaking words of death and start praying and speaking words of life. Things are not going to get better by speaking negatively about them. The more you pray for people, the nation, etc., the less critical you will become about them.
5. A church that models love and forgiveness. The number one message of Jesus in his life was forgiveness. That should be the main thing people get out of us when the meet/interact with us — regardless of how they treat us. We’re called to be an expression of God’s love. That means setting aside bitterness, resentment, offense and unforgiveness.

The message of our church is to bring people together so we can do the will of God. But, our enemy wants to divide and conquer us. To keep this from happening, we have to put our thoughts, opinions and feelings on the altar and pursue a heart of reconciliation. I’m calling on every one of you to put out the fires of division, strife and discord and to walk in love. If we can be that kind of church, imagine what kind of power we’ll have to bring transformation to our community!

Last week, our country’s democratic process awarded us the opportunity to take part in a moment of great historical significance – the election of our nation’s first African American President.

As I watched the election coverage, I was deeply moved by the faces, streaming with tears, in celebratory scenes from across our great country. The enormity of this moment for all Americans was clear as even news anchors found themselves moved with tremendous emotion and unable to speak. For the first time in the more than two hundred years of our nation’s history, America came together to elect a person of color to the world’s highest office. I was especially excited because the vision of racial reconciliation has been so close to my own heart and so much a part of the vision of our church – I could see the endless possibilities sitting before us.

I truly believe that we have entered a new season of change, and we have both the privilege and responsibility to support President Elect Barack Obama in prayer. I am a very strong believer that Obama has the potential to do some very good things for our country. However, I also recognize that what God would use to bring our country together, the enemy would use to bring greater division. It is with this recognition that we must, as Christians, take our call to prayer with utmost seriousness and, as the church, get behind our President to support him in prayer. It is through prayer that we have the opportunity to turn our nation in a positive direction.

Scripture is clear regarding our responsibility to pray for all in authority. We cannot allow ourselves to get caught up in criticism rather than prayer. When we fail to pray, we become a part of the problem rather than the solution.

This past weekend, I spoke a message to challenge us all to prayer for our new President and our country. For those in our congregation who did not support Barack Obama, the challenge from the Lord was to view our President in a different light and to get behind him, even if they don’t agree with him on some issues. For those in our congregation who did support Barack Obama, the challenge from the Lord is to understand that there are some sobering issues that he supports which violate Scripture, and we should pray that God would move on his heart in these areas.

If you weren’t here this weekend, I urge you to visit our website to listen or watch the message. I also ask you to pray daily about five key areas that will impact President Elect Obama’s leadership and the course of our nation, which I discuss in greater detail in the online message.

1. Pray for protection for our President and his family.
2. Pray for his heart to be turned toward righteousness and justice.
3. Pray for the governing of our economic system to be fair and equitable.
4. Pray that God would surround him with wise and godly counsel.
5. Pray that the President would govern in such a way that brings our country back together.

In closing, I believe Barack Obama has the opportunity to be a great leader in a very critical time for our nation and the world. I will support President Obama with all of my heart and prayers; and my prayer is that he will become one of our greatest Presidents ever. I invite you to join me in that prayer.

This week, we witnessed what is probably the biggest election in our lifetimes. Many of us are happy and many are sad at the results of this election. I’ll have more on that to say later. In the mean time, let me reiterate that our trust is not in the President of the United States. As Psalm 118:8-9 says: It’s better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It’s better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes [leadership]. Regardless of the changes that are in store for our country, it is Jesus that we must put our trust in.

One of the things I’m convinced of is that over the last eight to ten years, the church has drifted away from its influence in society. We’ve started to put a lot of trust in government to solve our problems. Unfortunately, because of that, the church has lost its influence in our society. And, as a result of that, our culture has begun to degrade to levels that I’ve never seen in my lifetime.

Because of this, I wanted to introduce a good friend of mine to you who brings a message about what is really happening in our society and how far it has fallen. That friend is Dr. Michael L. Brown, founder and president of ICN Ministries (RevolutionNow.org). He has a word that is shocking, challenging and timely. My hope is that his message will sound an alarm to the church that will awaken us to the plight of America and the need for a Jesus Revolution in the church, our nation and the world. Here’s some of what he had to share with us:

I’ve got some bad news, some really bad news and some great news to share with you. The bad news is that America is in a terrible mess. We are in a terrible moral and cultural crisis. The really bad news is that the church is in a terrible mess; a terrible moral and cultural crisis. You don’t have to go into the world to find the sex scandals, teen pregnancy, pornography, rampant divorce or families falling apart; they’re everywhere in the church. The great news, however, is that if we submit our lives, our hearts, our minds fully to the Lord and make ourselves available and avail ourselves of God’s power, we are the solution to the problems in America.

Jesus said, You are the salt of the earth… and, …if the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! The great problem in America today is that the salt (that’s us, the church) has lost its saltiness. We are no longer the moral conscience of our nation. Most of the nation hardly takes us seriously because we seem to be hypocrites – saying one thing and living differently. The light within our nation is darkness. Rather than the church changing the world, the world is changing the church. We cannot set others free if we ourselves are bound.

What God wants to do in America starts with the people of God – not with any politician. The problems in our society are so deep that there is no political solution. It doesn’t matter who gets elected. We cannot put any trust in the political system. Yes, we have to vote according to our convictions to uphold what is right and to elect people to office that will do so – but we can’t put our trust in that system. There is only a gospel solution.

Today, I want to sound the alarm about things that are going on. As an example, there are homosexual activists, some of them very well-funded, and the things they are standing and fighting for will undo the very foundations of our society.

Now, let me start by pointing out that the average gay/lesbian person has no concept of a homosexual agenda. They think it’s just something the religious right just made up. Their agenda is that we just let them live a normal life and not bother them. But there are gay activists with a specific agenda that is being aggressively promoted in places like our schools, targeting our children – even first graders are being exposed to diversity training (which is nothing more than homosexual activist training) including discussions and materials about sex-change operations, gender identity confusion, etc. In many schools, gender has become the enemy. The rights of parental authority and free speech have been stripped by the courts.

This didn’t just happen overnight. There’s been a progression:

1. 40-yrs ago gay activist began coming out of the closet.
2. They began to say, We demand our rights.
3. They then began to demand that conservative Christians would recognize those rights.
4. They began to take away the rights of conservative Christians.
5. Now they are trying to put you and me in the closet.

We have so fallen asleep. We’ve got to wake up to reality. We’ve been so passive that we haven’t even realized that we’ve been pushed into the closet and the door is closing. We need a revolution – not the way the world does it with anger, but by overcoming evil with good. We lay down our lives and overcome hatred with love.

Revolutions start when people get to a breaking point. We’ve already crossed the ‘enough is enough’ line in our culture. We need to wake up and realize we are not primarily here for what’s good for us. We are here to make a difference. We need to start living out the Scriptures as though every word is real. We need to step back and think about what we can/need to do. We have a higher goal – the kingdom of God. We’ve got to recapture our prophetic zeal and remember that we’re here with a mission. We do this by going after God and His Word. We are God’s agents of radical change in society. Won’t you take up the challenge to make yourself available to Him?