TXT3

“God Is My Best Friend” was the message this week as a part of our “God Is  . . .” series that we’ve been in as a part of the One Prayer movement.  I could blog about great friendships I have, tell a funny story about friendships of the past, or even get spiritual and talk about my friendship with Jesus.  Instead I chose to give you this gift from You Tube.  Now you’ll be indebted to me forever.

Applications for this past week:

• Spend time with God.  (I know that is a no-brainer, but if He is your best friend make sure he has quality time
• Breakfast with your best friend and talk about what God is doing
• Write a letter to God explaining how you feel about Him.
• Hook up with your best friend and clean some stuff out of each other’s closet/garage to take to Goodwill
• Have a date night with your spouse (best friend) and take along some spiritual questions
• Confess sin and set it aside because a holy God is in you.

How was life different twenty years ago?  Just think about the technological changes.

• Video cameras were carried on your shoulder and recorded on to VHS tapes that weren’t edited.  Now your video camera fits in your pocket, records to a 1/4 inch card, and edits into movie quality on your computer.  The ability to video is so accessible that 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
• Speaking of home computers . . . remember the green screen monitor?
• Twenty years ago the internet wasn’t on the average person’s radar.  Today, I registered my Genghis Grill card online over an internet page on someone’s cell phone.
• Cell phones weighed 37 pounds and cost $18 a minute (that’s an exaggeration, but it’s pretty close to the truth)

What’s next?  Who knows, but currently IBM is working on several projects.  They say . . .

• We’ll be able to access healthcare remotely from just about anywhere in the world.
• Real-time speech translation – once a vision only in science fiction – will become the norm.
• There will be a 3-D internet
• Technologies the size of a few atoms will address areas of environmental importance
• Our mobile phones will come close to reading our minds.

Some of that stuff seems overwhelming.  Change is great, but it can leave us scrambling to keep up.  If you feel overwhelmed this week, remember that the eternal, UNCHANGABLE, and indescribable God is present.  He’s waiting to spend time with you and bring the hectic pace to a sensible rest.

Application ideas for you to try from last Sunday night’s message:

• God is indescribable, but His creation gives us a brief glimpse.  Go outside and spend some time in His creation worshipping Him.
• Have a family devotional out at the park
• Make a list of some of the words that describe God.  Pray those back to Him throughout the week.
• Spend time with God now.  Don’t put it off until tonight or tomorrow.

Have you ever seen a 2 year old who was sarcastic, cynical, and thought that she was the greatest thing God ever created?  I haven’t . . . yet.  Reflecting back on tonight’s message makes me a bit fearful of what that precious little girl could become!  Lucky for us, her mom is pretty solid.  Jesus told people that when they looked at Him, they were seeing God.  Walking out of the worship center I passed a mirror that had the words “When they see you, who do they see?”  I want the world to see Jesus when they look at me.  I want my 2 year old to graduate high school and think that her dad was the most authentic Jesus follower she’s ever seen.  I’ve got a long way to go!

One of the blog suggestions was “How to talk to friends about God who may not want to hear it”.  That is a great question and very hard to answer in a general format because everyone of your friends is a unique individual in a unique stage in their life.

If a friend asks me to stop inviting him to church, should I respect their wishes?  Probably so!  That is a hard thing to do, but we aren’t in the business of saving people . . . that is the Holy Spirit’s job.  I’ll let the Holy Spirit work on my friend, but there is one thing that I can’t do.  I can’t stop talking about Jesus.  My friend is going to hear about Jesus, what He’s doing in my life, what’s happening in my church, etc.

The only way my friend isn’t going to hear about God is if they stop hanging around me.  I hope that doesn’t happen!

If God exists and He is good, why do bad things happen?  There are books written on this, so a blog isn’t going to cover the multitude of answers, but let’s dive into one.  Bad things happen because there is sin in the world (God didn’t bring that, we did).  Sin leads to chaos, pain, brokenness . . . and bad things.  We live in a broken world and that won’t change totally until Jesus comes back, but we don’t have to live with a broken life. 

That is the message of Easter . . . no more broken life, no more emptiness, no more loneliness.  Sin has been beaten like a rented mule and been rendered powerless.  No more night, no more gloom, no more wandering around in the dark, lost and confused about life.  Daylight is coming . . .