We launched the new Broken Voices web site today, and with that a new and improved blog hosted right there on the site. For all future posts and updates head over to www.brokenvoices.org and click on Blog. We look forward to continuing the conversation as we move ahead!

If you follow our RSS feed, make sure to update it when you get to the new blog!

Today we have launched the new brokenvoices.org and with it a new feature we are thrilled to share – Broken Voices TV. Watch a preview below and then head over to the main site to watch the entire episode!

We don’t have words to really express what happened tonight.  It’s late so we will write more tomorrow but here are a few pictures from a night our team will never forget. 

Just hours away from opening doors at “The Warehouse” in Woodstock, Georgia. Out in the main area the team is working hard to pull everything together. Backstage there is a beautiful quiet that seems to come before God is about to do something powerful.

I really don’t know why but we are not just excited tonight, we are truly feeling the stage being set for God to move in a huge way. Pray for Him to do the incredible, and to make April 29th, 2009 a story changing night in the lives of many students that come through these doors!

I cried when I watched this video and I just had to share it with you. Everyone has a unique voice, a dream worth living out, a gift worth giving to the world around them. You may know that about yourself but feel like you are standing alone. Or maybe you’ve just lost hope and have given up all together. The truth is that you are not alone and there is someone who hasn’t given up on you. You have a heavenly father who is cheering you on. He isn’t sitting behind the judge’s table waiting for your next mistake – He knows your name, your story, your hurts and your dreams. He made you, all of you, so know this:

success or failure, his love NEVER gives up.

I feel like I’m writing to myself more than anyone else.  I need this truth today and will need it again tomorrow.

What about you, do you ever feel like someone who has been given up on? Or is there anyone in your life who you have stopped believing in?

Over the last couple of months we’ve had the privilege of  sharing the Your Life Matters event with 8 high school campuses around the Atlanta area. Enjoy some highlights of our time in the video below. Coming up: April 17th – Pope High School & April 24th – Walton High School. 

We were privileged to bring the “Your Life Matters” event to Kennesaw Mountain High School this morning and all we can say is WOW. It never stops amazing us how we leave these events feeling like we received far more then we gave, and this morning was no exception. Before the event started their entire leadership team prayed over us. We were able to see faces connecting to a message of hope and purpose and had the chance to talk with several students afterwards – hearing some amazing things they are dreaming about and thinking through.

For those of you who were in the room this morning, thank you for letting us be a part of what you are doing there. The dreams, ideas, passions and burdens you were thinking through this morning – pursue them with everything in you. We need you.

After the event we got to meet a man known by the students there as “Pops.” He was an elderly man, walking with a cane and on a first name basis with the students. When I asked him why he was there, he smiled and reluctantly began telling me how he wakes up at 3 AM every day, pulls out a list of every student’s name at Kennesaw Mountain and prays for them by name.

He told us, “most of these kids don’t have anyone praying for them, so I do. I know God knows their names but I think he really likes to hear them.”

With everything in me that craves attention, to be noticed, to be known, here is a guy on his knees every morning believing and begging God to move in the lives of students. We were speechless.

God is alive and active, His story of redemption is growing – and mornings like this we get a front row seat. Thank you for praying for us, I truly believe you will not understand this side of heaven the impact YOU are making. And if you are struggling with your role in the story, what if you just started to join Pops? Find a group and pray for them by name everyday, It doesn’t have to be thousands of students, it could be 5 people. We are learning that when we pray on for others and things outside of “our world”, it quickly helps the story to not be just about us.

“Since all the world is but a story,
it were well for thee to choose the
more enduring story, rather than
the story that is less enduring”. 

It’s early Monday morning, one of my favorite times of the week. Everything feels new, but there is a dark side to this new beginning. It’s so easy for me to begin letting the things that I do define who I am. On the days this week that I create or do something that I feel is meaningful, I will feel great about myself. On the days that I struggle and don’t produce much, I will not.

I’m so excited about a new chance to dream and work, a chance to create and plan, but there is the bold truth I must start and end on this week…Nothing we accomplish, nothing someone says, nothing we achieve will define who we are. Love defines me this week, and that same love defines you. Whether you have a week full of success and progress, or a week that feels like failure at every turn, we are loved. That is the truest thing about us this week. We are free to fully go for it this week knowing nothing we do will change that love.

“Nothing can separate us from God’s Love”

I’m writing more to myself than anyone else, this is just so easy for me to forget. What about you, how do you prevent “doing” from defining you?

I sat down to interview our friends Tim & Kristi today. They are packing up their life, including 3 young kids, to move to Northern Iraq in May. They are moving there because they feel called to take the gospel to the Kurdish people. It’s a crazy story! We filmed them today and will be sharing more of their story soon. However I wanted to share one excerpt from our time today that we found to be so moving. Enjoy…

Matt:  “Tim, there are people who think what you and your family are doing is great, but they feel stuck in jobs and situations they don’t want to be in. What would you say to the person working at the “coffee shop”, longing for God to “use” their life?”

Tim:  “Life is in Jesus. Not in a place, a thing, or a job. He has representatives and people that he loves all over the place. Without them we have a bunch of people heading overseas and nothing happening here. People in America are dying. They are dying every day. They are walking into the coffee shop dead, and they are walking out dead. People need Jesus. We are Jesus to those people. He is in us and he is in those people working in the coffee shop.”

“I think it begins when we start walking out the door in the morning thinking to ourselves that people are going to meet Jesus today. They are going to fall in love with him and they are not even going to know it.” 

“I worked at a phone company this past year and I had a manager named Matt. Matt loves me because I’ve been kind to him, because I’ve been gracious to him. He loves Jesus – he just doesn’t realize it’s Jesus. I think you can be anywhere and help people fall in love with Jesus before they even realize it.”

Have you ever felt stuck in what seemed to be a situation lacking purpose?