Bono, Jack Miller, and Andrew Pendley

The merging of thoughts:
1.) My Guilt
Recently as i've been preparing to teach a discipleship course on "Experiencing Grace" I've been accused by my enemy. "Rob, you should teach how to build skyscrapers... you've come closer to that than to 'experiencing grace'...."

2.) This morning while driving Andrew toward school we listened to a brief portion of a Jack Miller lecture on experiencing the grace of God. I think there was some part of me passively saying, "Son, here is a guy who knew Jesus. I wish I did. Listen to him and know the Jesus Jack Miller knew."

3.) Then i remembered a quote i came across last night (in a good article on U2's music)

As Bono stated on Larry King Live, “I cannot live up to the songs that I write and that we play in U2. I’d like to say that I do and I want to [but] I’m not like that as a person. That’s why I’m writing those songs. That’s what I aspire to become.”

Bono has said that he was drawn to Martin Luther King and Jesus because they were men of peace and he wasn’t.

And i remembered hearing in a Rolling Stone interview with Bono that he was very given to violence as a youth and still struggles mightily with it.

SO... (here's how an scattered guy experiences grace)

It doesn't have to be hypocritical to teach on something you are seeking... it can be HOPEFUL. And somewhere in the process i realized... that it was Jesus who binds all 4 of us together. Bono, Jack Miller, Andrew Pendley, and me.

First Community Groups Meeting a success. Over the past 2 years God has graciously grown this ministry to where we currently have 6 groups meeting weekly that involve over 6o people at CCC. Last night we met to begin the process of strengthening and unifying this ministry as one of the key ministries in our church. We discussed ideas of better support in the forms of more teaching resources, more encouragement from the pastors, how much better the website has gotten for communication, and how essential these groups are in the life of CCC. We looking for ways to get more people involved and praying for new leaders as we hoep to have new groups begin in 07.

"If you want to kiss the sky, you better learn how to kneel."

This line from Mysterious Ways has always sounded so cool and rung so true to me. It has been my privilege to pray Fridays at 9am with several CCC folks. We've been asking God to "come down" (Is. 64) and visit with us in our corporate gathering. And has He!

This fall one of the 9am "classes" will be a prayer class, with a laboratory right there! This is a great opp for you to learn to pray.