How to pray for one hour

At New Life Community Church we are in the midst of 21 days of prayer and fasting. Part of this includes each New Life location hosting 24hrs of non-stop prayer from 7pm on one day to 7pm the next. At New Life Lincoln Park where I am our 24hrs starts tonight. We have over 30 people signed up for 1hr blocks to pray for one another, our church, and our city.

Praying for an entire hour?!? Wouldn't you fall asleep? What all could you possibly pray about for that long?

Praying for an hour may seem intimidating at first but for the person prepared the time in reality flies by. At the end the prepared person would be checking the clock on their phone with astonishment asking, "That's it? That was an hour?"

Here's how you get ready to pray for an hour:

5 simple steps to get the most amazing study Bible on the planet right now (for free)!!!

One of the most important things for someone who loves Jesus to be engrossed in is the Bible. Not to merely read it but to study it, learn it, and live out its message. That type of study takes time, work, and resources. For the last 10+ years the best tool I've found and used for my own study is Logos Bible Software. It is the most amazing resource that actually saves me time and makes the work of studying fun and easy.

I'm incredibly pumped about a new resource that Logos has recently released, a brand new study Bible called Faithlife. There really isn't anything else out there like it and it has the potential of empowering the church for Bible study like never before. Check out this short video that gives an overview:

50 Days of Prayer

We've been doing strategic planning at New Life Lincoln Park this summer and one of the things that has become apparent is that we want to become a church that highly values prayer. We don't want to be people who pray just because it's one of the Jesus things to do. We want to be people who have prayer as part of our core DNA. We are not going to be a church that does a bunch of stuff and then asks God to give it an OK. We are going to seek Him, follow Him, and join Him in what He is doing!

The only way to become a people like that is to develop a daily habit, a daily discipline of prayer. In light of this, today at church we kicked off "50 Days of Prayer"

"It's tough being the one there holding a father and mother when they just lost their son"

That's what my friend Matt DeMatteo shared yesterday with our pastoral team after Johnny Vargas passed away. Around 1am I received this string of texts from Matt:

 

Johnny's death came from a gang related shooting (Tribune link). He was only 19 years old.

Come out to an indie music concert night!

Save the date for the indie music night at NLLP (New Life Lincoln Park), with opening act Seminary & Lill. 

Who is Seminary & Lill you ask? That is our amazing worship band at NLLP! They'll be opening up for these two great artists!

This is going to be an amazing night! Don't miss!

Hearing God: Living attentive to the God who speaks

At New Life Lincoln Park this Sunday we are starting a new teaching series called, HEARING GOD: Living attentively to the God who speaks. This is the gist of it:

We've all heard of angels and loud voices resounding from the heavens, but most of us have never actually heard God speak audibly or sat down and talked with an angel over nachos. It seems you can't turn three pages without seeing God talking to someone in the Bible, but does that kind of stuff still happen today? Often people describe the voice of God like a prompting or a whisper, but in a world that shouts for our attention how are we supposed to make out which "voice" belongs to God? In the next five weeks we will be talking about how God speaks into the world today and how we can tune our ears to listen.

If you're in the Chicago area, we'd love for you to join us this Sunday (or any Sunday!). We get together in the morning at 10am and again in the evening at 5pm. For the most part it is the same service at both times, so pick whichever time is best for you. The address is 1110 W. Lill Ave, near DePaul.

Hope to see you there!

Recording the Christmas album

To say our worship team at New Life Lincoln Park is amazing would be an understatement of an understatement. So many great voices and talented musicians, and all with hearts focused on Jesus. 

For Christmas this year they have taken it upon themselves to record an album to give away to our congregation! What a cool gift! I was there last night during one of the recording sessions and was again blown away by their talent. 

Here's a few clips of them recording, which are also a teaser to what will be on the album. Come out on Christmas at 10am to be part of our service and you'll get a copy of the album for free!

Very thankful and proud of our worship team!

The worship team at New Life Lincoln Park is AMAZING!!! They are an incredibly talented group of people who all love Jesus immensely, and they had both these things in full display last night when they put on ROCKTOBER! It was an all-out rock-out fund-raising Halloween party! 

Because of traveling for work I wasn't able to get there till late, but I could hear the music as I approached the building.  A huge song list was available for people to choose from, and songs were priced out at $3, $5, and $10 (I think that was the price range). The bands then took turns performing the purchased songs, with all proceeds going to New Life Centers, our church's non-profit organization. At the end of the night $400 was raised!!! 

Here's a few pics from the night:

This Saturday is ROCKTOBER!!!

The amazing worship team at New Life Lincoln Park is throwing one awesome party this Saturday night to help raise money for New Life Centers. You WANT to be there!!!!

Here's all the info (click the image to enlarge it):

Exciting new part of the Moss fam's journey

In the last couple "Week In Review" posts I've mentioned that big news was coming in regards to what's going on with our family. Well, here is:

No, we are NOT expecting another child. =)

This past Sunday at New Life's Lincoln Park campus, Pastor Mark announced that I would be stepping in to take over for him as Teaching Pastor.  Jeannette & I will be joining with Rick & Sylvia Allen to lead the location and bring the gospel to the Lincoln Park area. My primary responsibilities will include teaching/preaching on Sundays, but also to provide leadership in various areas of the church and to help build up the community.

We've been attending NLLP pretty consistently since February. To say it's an understatement that we are excited about this would be an incredible understatement. The people at LP are AMAZING! There are such great people serving and making things happen, and we are humbled and grateful to be able to join in with them.  

Yes, I'll still be working at Logos and teaching at Moody, to answer the expected questions. Logos is my primary job and I love it, being able to travel the country helping people get equipped for Bible study. I'm fortunate to be able to do both. Going into next semester I'm rearranging my teaching schedule at Moody to only be teaching one day (Mondays), so we're going to see how that goes. 

Because of a couple previous commitments in the church and other things, the official transition/start isn't until around Thanksgiving. Between now and then though I'll be teaching most evenings during the 5pm service and also a couple times in the 10am service. 

We are excited, pumped, freaked out, little nervous, but are so ready and anticipating great things to come!!! Without listing all the names here, there are so many people who have carried us through to this point in the journey. "Thank you" seems inadequate, adding "we love you" still not enough. But I feel both very deeply.

Thankful for yesterday, in awe of today, dreaming about the future.

Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
I will seek You in the morning
And I will learn to walk in Your ways
And step by step You'll lead me
And I will follow You all of my days

DEFIANCE: Turn Your World Upside Down

Today at church we are starting a new teaching series called DEFIANCE: Turn Your World Upside Down. It's going to a great few weeks of digging into the Bible's letter of 1 Thessalonians. 

Here is our explanation of what it's all about:

Our culture invites people into a life of doing whatever you want. People live with no real thought of implication or consequence. To jump in and go with the flow would be pretty easy. But God calls those who follow him to a greater standard. Following Jesus today means going against the flow, because living a holy life flies in the face of our world system. It's anything but easy and yet it's what our returning King calls us to do. So join us for our newest sermon series: DEFIANCE – Turning our world upside down!

One of our incredibly talented artists/video guys in church, Juan Zavaleta, made this awesome teaser video for the series:

Come on out to New Life Lincoln Park as we get this thing rolling: 1110 W Lill, Chicago, IL 60614

Services are at 10am and 5pm (I'll be speaking at the 5pm).

Week in Review #7

An entire week back in the city with no traveling! Huge wow!!!

Revisited: I Lost My iPhone!

I've been blogging and processing life on this site for a few years now. According to the "stats" for the site, this post has been viewed more than double than any other post I've done:  "I lost my iPhone!"

Apparently a lot of people could relate and were feeling the pain.   =)

Since it was originally posted a year ago today, I'm sharing the story again: CLICK HERE

Rock Solid Living

Very excited that we're doing a series on the 10 Commandments this summer at New Life.  I've been wanting to do this for a couple years, so pumped it's happening. 

The 10 Commandments is one of the most important parts of the Bible, and also probably one of the most misunderstood.  This is the paragraph we're using to promote the series:  

iPads, Kindles, and Nooks bring us all the words known to man: novels, histories, poetry, biographies, and so much more.  But the original tablets carried by the prophet Moses brought to us some of the most important words ever written. This summer we'll explore the 10 Commandments. Together we'll discover how real-to-life these ancient words are for today, how they provide a solid foundation for daily life. 

As the church moves through each commandment this summer, I'm going to blog through them week to week (At New Life Lincoln Park I'm going to be speaking the Sundays we cover commandments #1-4).  

The series kicks off this Sunday, so come check it out!

Pray for the violence to stop in Little Village!

My friend Matt DeMateo works with New Life's location in Little Village, a Chicago neighborhood with high gang activity. The violence in Little Village has been out of control these last 6 weeks. Matt sent out the below call for prayer this morning. Please read it over and then join in with the prayer effort for Little Village:

Picnic Video

This is a video I made to promote our church's picnic coming up this next Sunday:

Mile Deep

Our New Life location just ended a discipleship campaign today called MILE DEEP. We had 137 people participate at various levels throughout since we started in February. This is the video I edited for the service today when we acknowledged people:

New Life's Urban Like Skills was on ABC 7!

Check out this great video that highlights New Life's Urban Life Skills program that my friend leads:

Just Do Something

New Life is starting a new series called "Just Do Something" that I created the artwork for. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out:



This is a description of the series:

Too often we are waiting around for the right time, place, or season to do something for God. Sometimes we are bound by complexes, issues, and lies that make us feel unworthy to be used by God. Through this series you will discover that God wants to work through you no matter what your stage of life is. Join the adventure and experience the thrill of living for and doing something with God. The teaching will be based on the first chapters of the Gospel of Mark.

Pretty excited about this. Come out on a Sunday to check it out!

Speaking about Sabbath

I was able to speak at church yesterday and was ecstatic to be able to dive into the topic of "Sabbath & Stress." Here's the link to the message: New Life Sermon Achieve.

There are two things about Sabbath that are not only genuinely special to me but also carry a lot of weight in my understanding of what it means to follow Jesus.

The first is that Sabbath is meant to be a reminder of CREATION & REDEMPTION. Just like celebrating communion is a sign to remind us of what Jesus did on the cross, Sabbath is a sign to remind of us of these two core truths:

CREATION: God is in control, not just of the universe but also of my life.
REDEMPTION: I am not a slave or a machine, my identity is based not in what I can produce but in my relationship with God.

How often do we forget those two things? The significance of CREATION & REDEMPTION should be real to us when we realize that God wants us to remember them WEEKLY!

The second thing about Sabbath is that God gives me permission to take one! God literally wants me to every week take a day when I don't work, when I don't produce or create, and simply exist. God wants me to take a day every week when I focus on connecting with Him, with family, with others, and with creation! How amazing is that! It's not a day about being "bored for the Lord" - it's meant to be the most important day of our week when we celebrate and experience that we're alive!

I told everyone yesterday that I was again the target of God's sense of humor. He always gives me the topics to talk about that I most need to hear. I don't practice Sabbath very well, at least not on a regular basis. But...this message got to me in a real way. Sabbath is going to become a regular thing in the Moss family! It needs to be.

And it needs to be for you as well!