We are currently in a Sunday series called extraORDINARY faith. It's about ordinary people experience the extraordinary by taking steps of faith. God wants to do something big in and through us. Will we follow Him and step out of the ordinary?

To go along with this series, our staff has been watching a series of messages from Mark Batterson called Chase the Lion. 12 years ago he wrote a book called In the Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. He's based it on a few verses in the Bible (2 Samuel 23) and the story of Benaiah who chased a lion into a pit on snowy day. He later became one of David's mighty men, which is like an elite navy seal 3000 years ago, and later he even became the commander of the army.

So if you saw a Lion on a snow day, what would you do? Would you pee your pants and run away or would you chase it down to kill it? As we face steps of faith, it often feels like this 500 pound lion. This week in our staff meeting, Mark Batterson shared about the Hunger Games and how they say - May the odds always be in your favor. Mark said don't worry about the odds. If the odds are against you, God is for you. God loves long shorts. It's our chance to see God do only what He can do. We are only one encounter, one step of faith, one opportunity away from a whole new reality. We can either keep living a ordinary life doing the same things, or we can take a step of faith and the ripples of that will go beyond what we could even imagine.

I found these messages from Mark challenging and inspiring. You might want to check out his books, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snow Day, or the new additional book, Chase the Lion.