"Spirit of Adventure" MO Trip Pt. 1

Why have some big adventures in my life come through the state of Missouri? This is a state where my spirit of adventure was revived back in November when I took a spontaneous trip to IHOP. When I was in highschool I was an adventurer, traveling all over the place presenting the Gospel. From driving a vanload of kids down to Dayton at the age of 17 (why again did parents let me do that?) to the many secular venues I infiltrated with the life of the gospel, I adventured.
Somewhere along the line, that part of me took a backseat. I don’t think that it was a bad thing because my character needed desperate attention. My rebellious and pride-infected self was in danger of uprooted everything I had become, and threatened my future.
YMC helped destroy that rebellion and pride in me and build me up in ways I never could have dreamed. But something felt so dead in me in the fall of last year, and I was desperate for a personal revival. So I pursued an Awakening in Kansas City, where God turned me from friend to bride and renewed my sense of adventure – the very thing that birthed Firestorm in its beginning days.
Now I’ve been invited to Aurora, Missouri by my long-time friend Pastor Ken Hogue, and I’m excited! Ken and I have had many adventures together with Firestorm. I can remember extraordinary times with God, including one time when a couple of our members were singing in the sanctuary on a non-service night and one of them went out in the Spirit. We were drawn there one by one, and the presence of God manifested in a super-intense way. I’ll never forget that.
I’ll be speaking at a summer camp this week all 5 nights, and this will be one of the more stretching adventures yet. Young people will be gathered in that room who want an encounter with God, and I’m a minister who wants to find out what Holy Spirit wants to do and grab ahold of it. I’m looking forward to great things.
The vision of Firestorm, which is now 8 years old and has just seen its final original member graduate, still burns inside of me, and will continue to drive me with evangelistic and prophetic fervor. A youth pastor of mine once said that I have the gift of an evangelist and pastor, which is a rare combination. And let me tell you, I feel the tension of those gifts in me often. I have an intense desire to stay and disciple people, and an intense desire to go out and evangelize with the full Gospel. The best way that I can describe a call that I know is on my life is this: I am to pastor young people and take them evangelizing with me, teaching them how to do so. And while these past few years the pastor in me has been the focus, once again I feel the evangelistic fire rising once again; this vision of Firestorm will always burn in my heart.
I speak tonight on "The Answer of Fire". Let fire fall!