Several NewPointe staffers went to Tennessee a couple weeks ago for a conference at this church. Great speakers, great time of prayer and reflection. Great experience.
During a couple of the main sessions, they showed the video below. Check it out. Would love to hear your thoughts.
…at the NPCC Dover campus…
Hope you got to experience an incredible Easter at one of our campuses. Thanks to all of our awesome volunteers who made it happen. Three locations, seven services, 5,734 people in attendance.
Bubba Joe made an appearance in KidStuf on Sunday. Signing autographs, strutting around—totally full of himself. Looks like he needs a lesson in this month’s virtue: Humility.
Bubba showed us his American Idol audition. This won’t help matters much…
About a week ago I officiated a the wedding of a NewPointe couple. I love the hope and promise that weddings bring. I’m sappy in a way—I look at a couple like the one I married last week and I begin to dream dreams on their behalf. A wedding seems to promise so much—but often times, down the road, seems to under-deliver.
So I got to thinking about what it takes to make a marriage last. The answer, really, is simple: true love. And I’m not just talking about falling in love and “being” in love with each other. True love is biblical love described in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 (a passage I always read at weddings). Here’s a bit of what it says:
Love bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.
Love…belief…hope… so where’s the hope? What is the optimism that we should carry with us into marriage? That good things will always happen? No. That would be contrary to everything we know to be true. That being a glass-half-full kinda person leads to better things? Maybe—but that’s not Paul’s point when writing to the Corinthians. Maybe it’s if we believe hard enough, the thing we want most will be sure to come our way. Nah…what Paul has in mind is much more profound.
The hopeful kind of love that Paul teaches is an optimism that rises from a profound and deep belief and hope in God. Three thoughts shape Paul’s optimistic outlook:
Because of the Father’s love, the Son’s victory, and the Spirit’s power, genuine love—true love can believe, and hope, and endure…and that’s what gives us hope…hope for a better future, hope of real change in our lives, and the hope of a marriage filled with all the things we wanted it to be when we said, “I do.”
