Changed

2 Corinthians 5:17
^" This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!"

I cant stop thinking about this verse today. When I became a Christian at the age of 15 my life was completely changed. At the time I was just a little girl with serious abandonment issues. I remember I would come to church and my youth pastor would say this simple sentence to me "Dana, I am so glad you are here!" and that simple sentence would bring me to tears. Every week he would say the same thing and every week I would cry. During that first year of me becoming a Christian my life was completely changed. I didn't become a perfect Christian (I am still not) but my life was set on a completely different course. I fell in love with Jesus, I realized that Jesus loved me even though I was a completely broken person. I realized that he had a plan for my life and I wanted nothing else but to fulfill that plan. I was a changed person, not a perfect person, but changed.

As we are closer then ever to the launch of Catalyst Church I cant help but to remember that 15 year old girl who gave her life to Jesus at a tent revival meeting on a rainy summer night almost 15 years ago, and wonder about all the other 15 year old girls who are desperate for their own life changing encounter with God. Those are the people we want to reach. The broken, the hurting, the abandoned. We want to be the hands and feet of Jesus and show them that God sees them and that he loves them. We don't want to grow a church full of church attenders, we want to grow a church full of broken people that have a life changing encounter with the living God and will never be the same again.