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Start Your New Year with Stonecreek

Happy New Year! Start your new year off with Stonecreek Church as we begin a new teaching series, "Consumed," Sundays in January at 9:30 a.m. & 11 a.m. We are excited to offer every adult in attendance a free five-week "Consumed" personal study guide as a companion to this series. Make plans to join us this Sunday, January 3rd!

Bombarded with the alluring promises of savvy marketers and easy credit, we're continually offered promises of beauty, significance, security and happiness. Unsatisfied, we strive to accumulate more and more to fill the void. But there is another way. Discover how being consumed with the One who designed us can change everything.

Primal Christianity

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Mark 12:30 (NIV)

Mark Batterson will take you on a journey to recapture the heart of the Great Commandment for your own walk with God. If you have been looking for a resource that will help you recapture the intimacy with God your heart longs for, then look no further. In Primal: A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity, Batterson invites us to rediscover the compassion, wonder, curiosity, and energy that turned the world upside down two thousand years ago. To obtain your copy, visit RandomHouse.com.

Merry Christmas!

Retooning the Nativity from Igniter Media on Vimeo.

Christmas Eve Candlelight Services at Stonecreek Church

December 24th is always and enjoyable night at Stonecreek Church! Join us for one of four identical Christmas Eve Candlelight Services at Stonecreek Church at 2:30, 4, 5:30 or 7 p.m. Tickets are free, but required. Childcare is available for ages four and younger with reservation. Reserve your free tickets online, here.

The Giving Table | Fighting Food Insecurity

Through The Giving Table project, you can provide groceries for a family of four suffering from food insecurity for three days. Simply download The Giving Table shopping list, purchase every item on the list, and bring your filled grocery bag to Stonecreek Church. For your convenience, we've printed the grocery list on specially designed The Giving Table grocery bags available for pick-up at Stonecreek Church.

We will distribute the collected bags to our ministry partners at North Fulton Community Charities, MUST Ministries of Cherokee County and The Place Ministries of Forsyth County. The Giving Table is a ministry of Stonecreek Church. Join us as we seek to fill 1,000 grocery bags to meet the needs of those in our community suffering from food insecurity.

GREAT IDEA! One individual offered his clients a percentage discount off of his regular service fees for every grocery bag his clients filled. He maximized his business relationships to engage his clients' office personnel by participating with him in The Giving Table. What is your great idea that could bring freedom to a family in your community?

Intentional Acts of Christmas

Christmas can be a world-changing event again!

Between now and Christmas, Stonecreek attenders will "pause" from the normal busyness of Christmastime and give away over 5,000 Intentional Acts of Christmas! In conjunction with this challenge, Stonecreek is pressing "pause" from its normal Sunday morning gathering December 20th so attenders can "go be the Church" by spreading "Intentional Acts of Christmas" to our community.

What about you? "Pause"... and join us in extending the life, hope and love of Christmas to people in our community through giving an "Intentional Act of Christmas."

Visit www.stonecreekpause.org for ideas, share/meet needs and quick opportunities to tell us what you did!

Restoring the Heart, Restoring Marriage

Chris and Mary Guiney share how God is restoring their hearts and their marriage in this Blue Jean Story from Stonecreek Church. Check it out...

Blue Jean Story | Restoring The Heart from Stonecreek Church on Vimeo.

Bluejeanstories.com | Living in Freedom

Dawn Edwards shares how Jesus captured her heart and rescued her from years of abuse and betrayal into a new life and identity of freedom. Experience more stories and share your own at bluejeanstories.com.

Blue Jean Story | Living In Freedom from Stonecreek Church on Vimeo.

Compassion Child Meets His Sponsor

In 2007, live at Stonecreek Church, I had the opportunity to introduce Compassion International program graduate George Jowi to the person who sponsored him through Compassion's child sponsorship program. It remains one of the most significant moments of my life!

At a recent gathering of over 12,000 ministry leaders, Compassion worked with the people at Catalyst to surprise Jimmy Wambua with an introduction to his sponsor of 19 years. Hear Jimmy share what sponsorship meant to him and experience the introduction... begin at minute 3:45.

Catalyst 2009 Compassion Moment from Catalyst on Vimeo.

Join me in releasing a child from poverty in Jesus' name. Sponsor a child through Compassion International, here.

Stiff Knuckles and Sore Hands

So long as there is some thought of personal advantage, some idea of acquiring the praise and commendation of men, some aim at self-aggrandisement, it will be simply impossible to find out God's purpose concerning us. - F.B. Meyer, The Secret of Guidance, 1896

Lord, there is so much yet to be yielded to You. My grip is so tight that my knuckles are stiff and my hands are sore. My thoughts of myself and what I imagine of myself are elevated above my thoughts of You. My aim is misguided and my eyes are on the wrong prize. Lord, You are beautiful. Your face is all I seek. I yield. Be glorified in this moment of surrender. May my aim be to carry Your Presence and not my presence to the hearts of people as I follow... You.