One Year Ago Today

One year ago today I secretly flew to Las Vegas. My wife knew, and the leadership team at my church in Virginia Beach knew, and maybe two other people. I came to Vegas to pray about whether I would really move there to start a new church on the Strip. I already felt like I knew it’s what God wanted me to do, but several people told me to not make the decision without “getting Vegas soil under my feet.”

I spent three days here in Vegas praying, and it sucked. I had gone to Vegas hoping to have a magical feeling, with rainbows and flying unicorns in the sky, all letting me know I should move there and how great it would be. But the whole time I was there I fluctuated between having no feeling and a feeling of dread.

I happened to be reading through Ephesians at the time, and one day it was the verse that talks about “standing your ground” when “the day of evil comes.” When I read that my first thought was, “Yeah, I’ll need to remember that for the tough times after I move to Vegas,” but then it was like, “No Vince, you idiot, it’s right now, it’s today.” Because I was so tempted to do what I wanted to do – stay in Virginia Beach and not move to Vegas, but I knew what I was supposed to do. So I thought, “Vince, you need to man up, be obedient, and stand your ground.”

And that’s what I did, and here I am in Vegas. The rest is, well, the future. So … we’ll see.