I LOVED PORTLAND

I love them, I loved them, I loved them, I LOVED THEM! Siestas, thank you so much for your powerful prayers for a God-show at the Portland Living Proof Live. We had a whopping 7,300 women (astounding numbers to us from that area of the county) from the beautiful Northwest who hit that place SERIOUS about worship and Bible Study. The Holy Spirit was so thick in Memorial Coliseum at Rose Quarter that I got chill bumps the second I hit that platform. I can’t remember if that particular thing has ever happened before. Honestly, the hair stood straight up on my arms. All the events are memorable and special to me in one way or another but sometimes Christ seems to go out of His way to show Himself present. I think maybe He did it this time to show His great affection to these mighty warriors of the faith who must feel substantially outnumbered at times. They were the kind of group that, when I tried to wrap up the lesson at 9:00 PM on Friday night, they yelled for us to keep going. We’d already been going strong for two solid hours. It was unbelievable. I will never forget them. I LOVED THEM. And, if you were there, Girlfriend, I loved you.

I wanted to share with you a little something that I shared with them. I wasn’t the only person from Houston, Texas in Portland, Oregon this weekend. The Houston Rockets also descended en masse upon Rose City to go into playoffs against the Portland Trailblazers, best out of seven. In fact, they were playing right next door to the arena where our event was being held and the basketball would officially hit the floor on Saturday just six hours after we vacated the premises. My group seemed a bit amazed at the coincidence but I assured them that the line-up was not at all unusual. Yao Ming and I are BFF, and, as we each plan our year, we often schedule our events together. In fact, I reminded my group of the huge mural on the side of their basketball arena right outside our event door with the Trailblazers’ Big Three on it and shared what Houstonians see on the side of our arena and on numerous billboards around town:



One reason we schedule our LPL events to end at noon is so that I can freshen up, change clothes and head on down to the arena where the Rockets then play in that particular city so that I can give Yao a hand.



We (Yao and I) did pretty well last night but, now that I’ve fallen so in love with Portland, I don’t want to make a big deal of it. After all, the one huge thing we learned this weekend is that, if Christ is going to be formed in us (Galatians 4:19), we better be crucified to these big, fat egos of ours (Galatians 2:20). That’s why I just wear basic black and white on the court. I don’t want to draw attention to myself.