Mike Edmisten Follower of Jesus. Husband of Nicki. Father of Ryan & Brock. Communicator of the Word.

Discouraging Times = Times of Focus

I've had some discouraging stuff come up recently. Nothing earth shaking. Just a little discouraging.

And interestingly, it's happening when things are absolutely rocking in our church. Coincidence? No way.

When you're achieving Kingdom wins, the opposing team will show up. You can bank on it. The last thing in the world that Satan wants is for God's Kingdom to advance. So he'll take any and every opportunity he can to stop Kingdom progress.

Our church is packing out on Sundays. We have first-time guests every single Sunday. We reconfigured the seating this past week in order to get more chairs on the floor because we were flat out of space.

We're baptizing people like crazy. More people are seriously considering giving their lives to Christ.

Authentic worship is being offered in a way that I've never seen in my time at ACC.

Our children's ministry (which already rocks!) is just getting ramped up for a huge fall kick-off.

God's Word is being preached with passion and clarity.

Most of all, Jesus Christ is being lifted high. He is receiving glory and honor.

And that hacks the devil off. So he'll use whatever he can to bring discouragement. The goal is to shift our focus off the main thing and onto…anything else.

It's not gonna happen at ACC. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next week, next month, next year…never. I have seen what happens when a church loses focus on the main thing. It's a train wreck.

Maybe Satan intends for these little discouragements to get me to change my focus. He'll be disappointed to know that it had the opposite effect on me. It simply caused me to take a step back and evaluate everything. Where we are. Where we're going. What's important. What's not.

The end result? I'm more focused than ever.