Waiting is always the hardest part.

Well we have been preparing for the move to Maine and the only thing left is a place to lay our heads at night which we know God is going to provide on His time. This is the hardest part because we have searched and see the need for Jesus in this state. We also feel a burden that comes from God for the lost in this state. The one thing we must learn is to be patient and wait on God to provide and not try to jump ahead which we all know is human nature. Paul says we must over come the flesh. I believe Paul is the one who knew about over coming the flesh. Think about all the abuse he took we would have to fight back we would not stand there and take it like he did. Paul counted it a blessing! Can we look at it that way? When God does not make things happen on our time we get mad and upset and say God is not listening to us but this is not the case at all. God is making things happen on His time which is the perfect time. We never know how much we mess things up when we jump ahead of God instead we blame God for all the crap in our lives. It would all be perfect if we would just let God do things His way and stay out of it! Well so far it has been a great day and like everybody else pastors and their families struggle with stupid stuff we know God is taking care of but we want to put our noses in it and we have to let God spat us on our hand and say get back. LOL.

Legacy!!!

This is brought to you from a conversation I had with my dad. To start this story off right I will say this. The man I call my dad is not the man who "donated" yeah you know what I am saying. When my mom meet the man I call dad he was not a Godly man he said to me today "I did not start out showing you the right way to be a man" I stopped him right there and told him "you give your self to Christ and showed me how to be a man of God before I died and stood before God and spent eternity in hell". You see the big thing here to me is this man does not have kids of his own but he made the statement today that he now has a legacy and that is me and my kids. How AWESOME is that! To me that says his greatest life work is showing me how to be a man of God and me passing it on to my children. This is what I call a AWESOME dad. Not only is he a awesome dad he is a grandfather to my children a man I know they love and he loves them and it makes to know God put this man in our family to be a Shepard for our family and I know I would not be the man I am today if it was not for him showing me how and loving me even when I messed up. I say all of this for this purpose God works in very odd ways in our lives. It is always the people we least expect to make a difference in our lives that always make the biggest difference. Lets take a trip back to the Old Testament look as Moses in todays terms Moses would be "special" because he speech problems. Look at what all he done,all the miracles God done through him. Someone we would a retard done some of greatest things of his time. Now look at the disciples modern day bad boys but they changed the world! This all comes down to this we ALWAYS put labels on people before we give them a chance but we never look at them from Gods eyes. What if stepdad, stepmom, the crazy old lady in the creepy house or who ever it is always remember to see what God is up to before you place judgement on someone God might have sent to change your life.

WOW!!!!!!

Well maybe now I can get back to keeping my blog updated. Man it has been so exciting around the Welch home since the last post. To update everybody The Pointe our youth group at LifePointe went on our summer camp and god showed up and showed out!!!! like I have never seen before. The band was just so amazing and Anointed of God and the speakers came in and give everything over to God and let Him speak through them. We had 2 young men and 1 young lady give their lives over to Christ and several accepted the Anointing of God upon their lives for leadership, ministry, and music others including adults just fell back in love with our Lord which is so AMAZING!!! God has been working so strong in our home I feel great things are about to take place but it has not been easy it has took LOTS of prayer, tears and nights of just being on our faces before the Throne of the Almighty but I truly know all these things are from God. God has sent me a new friend which I think we may be related because it is like talking to myself. I am very blessed to say that it is not just us that great things are happening for. All of our, I will not say friends because they are so much more so I will say family, God is showing up in their lives and pouring His Spirit out upon them which is something that never gets old. I have to include my Fathers Day story. The kids got up early and fixed a spread of food for me and had some of sweetest cards sitting on my plate and bought me a app store gift card so I could buy music and games THEY like for my ipod which was so nice I have not got to play since I got got them LOL!!! It is ok it bring me more excitement to see them happy and playing together than any gift I could get. You know people say God is not active in people's lives as He was back in Bible times that bothers me. I guess the best answer I have for these people is a question so here we go. Have you ever opened your self to God I mean have you ever poured your self out and took hold of all the things God has for you? Yes I said take hold! what I am saying is God is not going to come to your front door like UPS and drop the package off you have to put forth some effort. God said He wants to bless us so much it blow our minds but He wants to do it for His Glory not to make us rich or famous but to give us the means to take this world back from satan and for us to say Father this is all for Glory!!!!! I hope everyone who reads this is blessed in some way and always seek out what God has for you and take it and use it for his Glory.

God is AWESOME!!!!

It's been awhile since my last post but I'm happy to say it's because the Spirit of God has been moving so strong in my life it has really blown my mind. A few weeks ago myself ad 2 of the most Spirit filled men I know did a podcast about the Holy Spirit and that day God moved in such a powerful way and we could not but to be overwhelmed by this. We took a long hard look at ourselves and what Gods plan was and took ourselves out of the picture and let Him run the show. Yes it was hard but we did it! We felt God pointing us in a direction that was only things we talked about but He said shut your mouth and start doing it. So we did! Tonight we took our youth to our local park located right in the middle of main street for everybody in our little town to see and thats where we held our youth service. Before we started we walked over to the fire dept. and had prayer with them yes as you can imagine they were very thankful but had that look like we had lost our minds. About ten minutes into our service some guy came up and sat with us for bit. How awesome is that?!!! Now he did not stay for the whole service but in our little town word got out fast which is what we want. We want to be different because the way church has been going for the past 50 years or better just aint cutting it anymore. Now I'm not saying church don't work but keeping in confined to four walls with people in fancy clothes and some nut giving his opinion on what the Bible says instead of Preaching what God said to is not working. Thats right God is not John Denver singing sunshine on my shoulders and giving you a pat on the back for giving Him ONE hour of your week to come to His house and sleep. Naw it aint like that He said take His word not your opinion to the ends of the earth so that means we have to move from our comfort zones into this sick and dying world and bust hells gates wide open with the WORD OF GOD!!!! Enough soap box. In the past month as we gone through our discipleship lesson God has moved in the teens lives and it showed tonight as they told us how they can use their God given gifts in everyday life to bring honor and glory to God. All I can say is to God be the Glory! Amen!!!

The Spirit is Leading

In our Youth group at LifePointe (The Pointe) we have going through the Bible to see how Jesus taught His famous 12 to go out and change the world. Through this study the Holy Spirit has moved in my wifes heart and brought an idea to lite that goes beyond anything our little town has ever seen. We will go out on Friday May 28th and invite the unwanted to our church parking lot for free pizza. Not such a big deal? Well this will be done at 11:00 at night in the parking lot and our seats will be the bed of pickup trucks! Everybody I know whats to know how to get youths attention. This question haunts me too. What do we do? Thats not the question we should be asking the question we should be asking is how far are we willing to go to reach the youth of this generation. Are we willing to go out into the War Zone and fight for those out dying spiritually everyday? For most us the answer is no because it will cost us staying out past our bedtime,hanging out with the "bad people" and even worse having somebody see us talking to somebody not on our social level (OH!!!!NO!!! I WILL BE THOUGHT LESS OF). If that is your thinking sorry but you have bigger issues!!!! I am praying to DIRECTLY to the Holy Spirit that He would make a major move through us as He did in the Book of Acts and bring the biggest Revival this little town has ever seen!!! I hope you will join us in prayer as we go and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the midst of Hell and and rejoice with us for what the Spirit is doing and going to do.

Mom

The other day my Mom called and had a question about facebook which she is new to and I am glad she is catching up with tech world. She had made a comment about how much she likes reading my blog and how she is impressed with my writings (not that I can write) her words LOL. That got me to thinking about why I put so much into this then it hit. For years I watched my Mom a single mother give everything she had to give me and my sister the best life possible. She gave 100% at everything she done and still does which very awesome. Seeing my Mom give her best at everything has some how been tattooed on my brain and it just comes natural to give it all to even the smallest of things and for that I want to say thank you Mom. Now I'm not saying everything turns out good or the way I hoped but as I look back not a lot went as Mom planned either but the one thing I can say is she never stopped giving it all and keep joy in her heart. Now for all the guys out there when you think there is nothing you can learn from your mom you better step back and take another look. Your mom like mine is the heart of God loving you in your screw ups and on your greatest day and always there to cheer you on and when you wonder why you give 100% at even the simplest of things you can thanks Mom, I love you.

Lost in Chaos

In life it seems that every day we wake up and go through the same motions. We get caught up in our routine you know you get up at the same time have the same thing for breakfast etc........ day after day. We go through life doing what has to be done and most of the time we go through life doing what everybody else thinks we need to do. This is what I'm gonna call Lost in Chaos. This is chaos that we put on ourselves we feel the need to live by the standards of this world do go do go do go you get the point. Why do we do this? We have seen what it does to people it has drove them to the point of mental and physical breakdown. Yet we still always say yes to any and everybody who ask something of us. Why do we weight ourselves down burdens that 5 years from now nobody will even remember. I want to come at this from a personal level for a moment. Yes I am one of those people who wants everybody to be happy all the time I do not like conflict. I can not say no to people and I always take on more than need be and yes I had a routine to get it all done. Then one day it hit me. What am I doing? I give up my joy my happiness the happiness of my family trying to please everybody and doing any and everything people wanted me to do I became the Yes Man. My life had become full of Chaos, Chaos I put there which was not doing me any good and at that point I was not doing God any good. I realized I had become something God can not stand a people pleaser. I made the focus of my life doing God stuff instead of doing what is pleasing to God. Now I have to take that step back and refocus. The hardest thing about that step back is the sick feeling you get when you realize you broke Gods heart but we serve a God that has so much Love and Grace that when we get Lost in Chaos that He is faithful and just enough to jerk a knot in our butts as my granpa says and get us back on the right path. Even when we feel like a failure for having to step back just remember Jesus took breaks, not because He overwhelmed Himself but to keep from it as a example to us. I hope some how this has blessed you and always remember God loves each and everyone of us.