Blake Goss

Yesterday morning was another amazing morning of worship. It’s always a cool thing to be leading worship from the stage and look out and see volunteers pulling down pipe and drape because we needed more space to fit people. JR continued with our state of the union series and spoke to all men and husbands about how God teaches us to love our wives or future wives. He prepared like crazy and did an amazing job. I’m a rock n’ roll guy at heart, but yesterday we found the way to strike the heart of Freedom Church…..country music. After we rocked out to some Keith Urban with a banjo we celebrated with an Easter After Party and then when I got home I passed out from exhaustion. It was an incredible day.

 Set List 3/30: 

• Solution- Hillsong United
• Everlasting God- Lincoln Brewster Version
• Somebody Like You- Keith Urban (and yes, we did break out the banjo)
• It Is Well- Freedom Live Version  

JR challenges us as a staff to do everything we do with excellence. Every week at staff meeting we discuss who we have learned from that week in our area. Last week I had the honor of learning from literally one of the best worship leaders in the country, Lee McDerment from Newspring Church. It was awesome to be able to sit down with him and soak in as much wisdom as I could possibly consume. He challenged me spiritually, musically, and even psychologically. At Freedom Church we know that order to be the best you never quit learning or asking questions. It’s cool to see in the short amount of time Freedom has existed the people God has allowed me to meet and learn from. 

 Wednesday- Spent all day building some portable staging for our bassist and lead guitarist. It’s some hard work, but we are saving tons of money doing it ourselves which all part of the fun in the church planting stage. Wouldn’t have it any other way.  After that we had a gig in Greensboro, Ga. 

Thursday- Have a meeting with Newspring’s Worship Pastor, Lee McDerment. Pretty pumped and honored to get to spend time with him. After getting back in town from South Carolina…..band practice.

Friday- Finish up the staging then leave to go out of town again until Saturday. Gonna spend some time with my amazing wife.

Sunday- Freedom!!! Can’t wait!!! 

 fun stage building with my grandfather who is a master builder. I want his sweet jacket.

Sunday day we kicked off our brand new relationship series called “State of the Union.” JR did an amazing job linking together the power of the resurrection with marriage. By far the best message I’ve ever heard about Hope. God showed up and did things that could only be explained by His presence. 10 people accepted Christ and the energy felt by the whole church was crazy. Can’t wait to see relationships and marriages be restored and strengthened in the next few weeks.

 March 23: 

• Beautiful Day / Happy Day- U2 / Tim Hughes
• Let God Arise- Tomlin
• Alive- Freedom Live
• Shout Unto God- Hillsong United
• Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)- Tomlin 

 Here’s another really awesome psalm I read the other day. Sometimes the best worship for me is just taking time to look up at the sky and try to comprehend how huge our God is. To understand that our Savior created every bit of the heavens and it stretches for eternity and that His love for us stretches that far. That’s what this scripture is talking about. It talks about how the heavens pour out speech for God. Basically, the sky itself tells of God’s greatness by just looking at it. I especially like the part where it says that there is no language where the skies voice can’t be heard. No matter what language you speak or nation you live in, you can look up to the heavens and we all see the same language being spoken. It’s God’s unbelievable creation speaking to us about how much He loves us. He is so much bigger than anything we could ever dream of or desire. 

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;  the skies proclaim the work of his hands.2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. 3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 

Sunday morning was definitely an energy filled time of worship. Everything was centered around our desire for God to be the “God of this City.” This song really hit home with Freedom because it’s the passion that Freedom speaks about week after week. We exist to reach the 90,000 in our area who are far from God. The words to this song say, “Greater things have yet to come, and greater things are still to be done in this city.” That is the cry of Freedom Church for the city of Acworth. It was even cooler cause we had video of the city of Acworth on the screen while we were singing. Unbelievable things have already occurred at Freedom and we celebrate those things joyfully, but we still believe that greater things are yet to come. Freedom is so pumped to live out those greater things that God is going to do. We are going to be a part of it, not just read or hear about it.

 Set List 3/16:

• Broadcast- Fee
• God Of This City- Tomlin Version (originally written by Bluetree)
• From The Inside Out- Hillsong United
• Sing, Sing, Sing- Tomlin 

Last night Mackenna, Ian, and Tyler (all band members) spent the night with Emily and me. This blog is being written from the smallest bathroom in the world and there are 5 people, 2 dogs, and 2 macs in this tiny bathroom. Weather men are saying that in 3 minutes the heart of the tornado is passing through Cartersville (where we live.) It’s super exciting in here and didn’t want you to miss out. By the way, if something happens to us…..we’ll need a new band, because 4 out of the 6 of us will be with Jesus.

1. Today are we are heading out to Newspring Church in South Carolina to attend the Unleashed Conference. This conference is gonna be amazing and I’m excited to get to meet and learn from Lee, their worship pastor. 
2. On a side note, i came across my favorite word in the bible today. It’s the word “nard.” 

We just finished up our “face the music” series by rocking out to Daughtry’s “Crashed”. Throughout this series our church grew a ton, people got saved, and as a result Freedom Church is moving to two services. We have been blown away by what God has done through this series and have unbelievable expectations for what’s going to happen with our Easter and “State of the Union” series coming up. Keep checking in to hear about how God is moving at Freedom Church

Set List 3/9:

• Glorious One- Fee
• Crashed- Daughtry
• Solution- Hillsong United
• All Because Of Jesus- Fee

This week in my time with God I’ve started to read through the psalms. I’m going to read through all of the psalms from the beginning and really desire to seek more truth about what God teaches us about worship. David was the man when it comes to worship. God called him “a man after His own heart.” If there is anything I desire God to say about me as a worshipper it’s that I would be “a man after God’s own heart.” I desire to spend my whole life seeking to have the very heart beat of God. To love others as He does, to be as passionate as He is, and to worship as He does. David was also the man cause he worshiped in his underwear. I can’t wait for the day when JR has the whole band worship in our underwear. You laugh, but it’s Freedom Church where anything can happen. Anyways, here’s an amazing passage I read recently 

 “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” Psalm 8:3-4  

We serve a God who literally set the sun, moon and stars in place with His fingers. Just think about the vastness of that for a second. And not only is our God mindful of us, but He desires us and pursues us with the deepest passion. What an amazing and mighty God we have the honor to worship.