My mom and dad left yesterday to go to the Miss Texas Pageant.

The pageant has an arrangement with the company my dad works with for the winner to receive a free apartment for a year.

Pretty cool job. The company gives an apartment, mom and dad get to sit on the front row during the pageant, and then my dad gets to be on stage when they announce the winner.

Not too bad!

We went and hung out last night at the Cheesecake Factory, Centennial Park, and then ended up at some place called Cafe Intermezzo. We had to pay to park about 6 times, but it was all good.

Very funny night…Saw a large group of girls dressed up like Zorro for a wedding party and heard some individual talking about the FOO FOO Fighters. Not sure if she was mixed up with the Goo Goo Dolls or what, but it made us laugh randomly throughout the night.

Last night was a blast. It was cool to hang out with several thousand people from the community. One thing I realized last night was just how diverse Acworth really is. Pretty unbelievable!

I ended up spending most of the time trying to answer the questions spinning through my head. Do I really understand the culture of this city? Am I willing to really get to know the people who make up this community? I better be!

Coolio sums up the importance in his old song “Gangsters Paradise”…

They say I’ve got to learn but nobody’s here to teach me
If they can’t understand it, how can they reach me

I guess they can’t
I guess they won’t
I guess they front
That’s why I know my life is out of luck … fool

I have had enough! I can’t stand that little crying girl from American Idol! I thought she was out of my sight forever, until she appeared on The Morning Show today with Sanjaya.

For the love of God….Sanjaya please stop singing and Ashley please stop crying!

I woke up this morning, turned on the TV, and realized that I totally forgot about the Peachtree Road Race today. Todd and I had originally planned to run, but in the chaos of the move, forgot to register.

Next year - it is on! Almost every church planter (and every person for that matter) I know has been talking about wanting to get in shape… Next year, 4th of July, let’s see which staff or which person can bring it! Some of you guys can use the distance to Atlanta as an excuse…but some can’t.

Let’s see what you got. And don’t worry about finishing last…with 55,000 runners - there has to be someone slower than me and you!

I have learned one thing traveling back and forth between Memphis and Atlanta over the past 4 years… Expect the unexpected.

* Traffic
* Detours
* Being pulled over by the police
* Tons of Construction
* Wreckage from cars and trucks that didn’t quite make it to their destination

I think you will learn this same thing as a follower of Christ. At Freedom Church, we want people to realize that being connected with God is a progressive journey.

It is a road that you travel. Along that road you will experience detours, traffic jams, being slowed down by plenty of construction, and even encounter a few wrecks along the way.

As a result, our goal is to help people continue moving forward down the road. Traffic will happen and our journey will slow down, wrecks will occur and we will get stuck for a period of time. The key is not to never get stuck. The key is to eventually keep moving forward.

Being a Christian is not a list of do’s and dont’s. It is about discovering and continuing on the most exciting journey you could ever imagine. A journey filled with the unexpected.

Learning what it means to be a follower of Christ has been a pretty interesting process. For a long time, my relationship with Him was extremely self centered. My entire focus was in the attempt to grow closer to God by my efforts to “prove” my love for him.

I started eliminating random things from my life (a lot of movies, music, people, etc.) that I thought would show my willingness to sacrifice and my wholehearted devotion. In my attempt to “live for God”, I became part of the “morality police” - thinking it was my responsibility to tell people why they did not love Jesus enough because they hadn’t made the same “sacrifices” that I had. This seemed to work for a while - but in the end - left me frustrated and empty.

I now realize a very important fact about my relationship with God. There is NOTHING I can do (or not do) to cause God to love me any more or any less than He already does. His love for me as one of His children is not conditional on my efforts. If it was - I would be in HUGE trouble.

Don’t know about you, but for me this is still a struggle. The journey is tough - but through the journey - we really get to know God. May Grace be your motivation. We love - because He first loved us….unconditionally!

After church, we went back out to the lake for another round with the jet ski’s.

We killed each other as usual, but today took a different twist. The jet ski that Mark and I were riding decided to die at the opposite end of the lake. With no way to get it in, we had to swim back to the dock while pulling the crazy thing.

After a while, I started feeling something on my legs. I walked onto shore for a second and realized that I had about 20 leeches having a wonderful time filling themselves with my blood. Pretty strange experience. I flicked them off - literally not figuratively and jumped back on the thing and did it again.

Now I am just hoping that I got all of them off…

If there are any cities (preferably in really cool locations) that are experiencing a drought - I have a solution. Georgia has been without rain for quite a while. That is, until Devin, Lexi, London, and I moved here. Since that time, we have had ridiculous amounts of rain every single day.

As a result, if you want to create an environment of rain in your location - just fly us to you for a few days and the problem will be solved.