A Beautiful Mess

I've been reflecting a lot the last couple of days about where Awaken is at and what we have seen of recent weeks. Over the last couple of months we have begun to see the vision of Awaken play out. We are losing people! But you have to understand this has always been our strategy from the very beginning. The vision God gave for starting Awaken Church in Virginia Beach was to reach the transients of the military, see them come to Christ, see them discipled, prepared, and then sent out.

Over the past couple of months we have seen this come to life. We have seen 4 families move on from here to all parts of the country to be re-stationed. In the next couple months we are getting ready to send out 2 more families from the area for job transfers and military re-stationing.

This is 6 families in about a 6 month time that we will have the privilege of pointing towards Christ and then sending elsewhere to have an impact with the gospel. One of the recent ladies that was just re-stationed accepted Jesus a year ago through one of our Community Groups, and baptized last February in the ocean at sun-rise to signify her new life in Christ. Over the year she was a part of a Community Group, a women's group, and served within our corporate worship time. A couple of weeks ago we prayed during one of our worship gatherings and commissioned her out as a missionary of Awaken to her next station (her picture is above).

This does not count the deployments we are seeing with guys and girls taking the gospel all over the world and to their crew members. One of the ladies on her deployment has been asked by the chaplain to lead a Bible Study on board their ship.

As we continue to see people sent out God continues to grow us both numerically and through the fruits of people's lives changed. Just this past Sunday we baptized three more, two of which are recent decisions for Jesus! Praise the Lord for letting us reach people far from Jesus.

Another young guy searching out whether he should plant a church asked me last month how has it happened. My only thoughts were "it is a beautiful mess" and I told him God's Grace!

Pray with us that God may continue to bless this beautiful mess.