Highlights & Prayers 

• Bebo Norman's Hope and Potential Concert May 13th put on through a partnership with More than Music Inc. to benefit Southern CO Youth for Christ Juvenile Justice Ministries went phenomenally.  With roughly one thousand in attendance, we raised just shy

  over $15,000 net for this great cause!  

  Southern CO Youth for Christ through the myriad details of sponsoring, planning, promoting, and producing a successful benefit concert went very well.  So much so - we are doing this again next year!  Hmmm...who should headline next! 

From the Heart  "The Drive"

By Stephanie Pauline

According to the Bible, "Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, the assurance of things unseen."  The Bible also says that in Jesus' case "It was for the joy set before Him that He endured the cross."   It says that "love never fails".  It says "Though outwardly we are wasting away yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day, for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us a divine glory that far outweighs them all.  So we set our eyes not on what is seen but what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal."  God once whispered to me in my deepest heart of hearts that He never questions "why" he should love me, even when I have tested Him...He just loves because I Am His. 

One day, not so long ago, I was driving in my car on the short trek of less than 15 blocks to my friend Maxine's house here in The Springs.  My little girl was in the seat behind me, and I was just thoughtlessly driving along.  I had spent several years questioning God; asking him "why" about an area of pain in my life.  Suddenly, my mind was caught up in a series of images, and statements.  Flashes of moments over the last five years; moments God had revealed Himself and His will to me.  ALL of the verses and impressions of the above paragraph sounded in my soul.  That and "Love loves because it is love.  It is reason enough in itself."  Words I have said in concerts across the country, describing love - as both verb and noun.  In the many flashes, I met also the myriad moments I had cried out on my knees to God.  The depth of my longing once again was unleashed on my heart.  

I remembered how in a deep moment of prayer I became indubitably aware of just how very kind and gentle God's voice has always been when He speaks to me.  Then I saw myself walking around the lake near my house one night, a couple years prior, pleading with God to show me how to love like Him - how to lay down my life for love.  Then my mind flashed to a breaking point, soon thereafter, where I so clearly failed to love.  I saw myself another time asking God to let me be his friend.  Then - FLASH -another deep moment of prayer when I was at my wits end pleading "why" and God unexpectedly had replied to me saying "I thought you wanted to be my friend."  When I incredulously questioned Him on that, God had added "Then why won't you share in my suffering?" How joyous I had felt after hearing even that from God.  I didn't understand His words at the time, and clearly I had been gently chastised, but I knew my God was still there.  Still moving and loving.  Present in my world, loving, and relating to me.  I had thought I needed an answer  - some solution, but all I had really needed for deep joy was the awareness of God' presence, and that His power for good was still there with me.  My mind flashed to thinking about the joy of my salvation.  How it is receiving God's love and gift of life by faith, undeserving yet loved, that I am free to feel that joy and live and love out of freedom.  I thought about how the Bible says that "we overcome through the word of our testimony" and that "faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God."

In a divine moment of coalescence, all those thoughts came rushing into one in the center of my vision, and I was left with this alone.  "It is for the joy set before us we endure the cross." 

The power to love, to endure, and to live in the true sense of the word comes in knowing God's goodness to US.  Personal, real, present, andunfaiing.  Jesus power to go to the cross came from Him knowing that JOY was set before Him by His Father.  None of us can do this, at least well, without assurance of that JOY that is on its way in each of our lives on this side of eternity (Psalm 27:13) and ultimately, on the other.  God loves us.  God wants what is good for us.  God can use anything for our good and for His glory.  There is no end other than God's.  He is THE BEGINNING and THE END.  No matter how bad the story may seem to go in the middle, God Is going to write the final chapter.  The Bible says, that in the end He will wipe the tears from our eyes.  If this pain has an end, then in the light of an ever expanding universe and eternity, this need will be an immeasurable fraction!  The Bible says there will be none that stand in judgement of Him, we all are without excuse. We will all see that He is good, and just and loving, and it even says that every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.

I was half way to Maxine's - pushing the gas, just past the stoplight that had just turned green.  I was trembling and crying for joy; full of new strength and NO LONGER asking why. 

Thank you God.  I give it ALL for the joy set before me, and for the joy that you let me taste, even now, in small, but beautiful moments.  Soon.

Thank you for your investment in me and in More than Music Inc.  I pray that you are more than blessed by me and this work over time.