Da Gym

Well this weekend i had the opportunity to just relax and experience a great time of worship and bible study. I got to attend the Gym service which is our "overflow" service at Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale, for those who don't know. The worship was done very well and i thoroughly enjoyed having time to just worship the Lord without worrying about my guitar or vocals. This weekend the message was brought by Pastor Doug Saughter. Doug's message was about "Pain" and how much it can really effect our lives. He went on to describe the incredible amounts of pain he has been through caused by a torn ACL. He also described a lot about patients with Leprosy. It was very interesting because i never knew that the boils and rashes on their bodies came from their lack of feeling in parts of their body. If a patient, cause by the disease, lost feeling in his hands, he/she would have no idea that they might be touching something extremely hot. This is what causes the burns and boils that they have on their bodies. So scientists or doctors have been trying to figure out a way to keep that from happening. So what they did was, they created an alarm that went off to warn the patient that the object they were touching was causing harm to their body. But what they found was, the patient would turn off the alarm or just disregard it every time that they were doing something they thought they could get hurt doing. I just thought this was so interesting because we as humans can just be so stubborn. Another really interesting part of the service was when he went on to talk about how those without this disease have feelings or nerves that trigger when we are harmed to let us know so that we can do something about it. When some part of our body is hurt, the muscles, tendons, nerves all help to restore that part of the body to bring it back to full health. He related this to the body of Christ. And how us as the body of Christ, when someone or some part of the body is hurt, we need to bring attention to that specific part and be their to restore it. We need work together and surround the body and build it back up to full health. 

The message was just so different than what i am usually used to hearing every sunday. It was great to hear about something that we go through so much but i don't think is talked about enough. I loved his analogies and explanations of things. I really was encouraged to look at my pain as a reminder of those who are also hurting, and how God uses pain as a tool to bring us back to him. 

B