Getting God Up Front

Last year, I read a great book entitled, A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders by Reggie McNeal.  This morning, I picked it up and was leafing through to see what I had marked up (I'm a firm believer in writing all over a book--that's why you should never let me borrow your book!).  Anyhow, I stumbled upon a passage that has really been working on me.  McNeal writes:

Many Christian leaders are uncomfortable with genuine spiritual realities that involve the powerful and immediate presence of God.  The truth is, many churches are more secular than the culture.  Everything that transpires in them can be explained away in terms of human talent and ingenuity... Only when something goes on in church that can be explained as a God-thing will a spiritually fascinated culture pause to take notice... Today's church service had better get God up front, center stage, and in a hurry, or pre-Christians will not take the church seriously as a source of spiritual help.

Over the past several weeks, God has begun putting in me a greater passion to be connected to Him.  I desperately want to be filled with Holy Spirit and have the Words of Jesus remaining in me.  As the pastor of Journey Church, I want people to experience Jesus and to know that they have been in HIS presence.  Oh God, let it be!