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.

• 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.

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!

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 . . .

 That just might sum up the “Blurry” series!  How often do we get caught up in “doing church” that we forget to connect to Jesus in minute by minute worship.  We are more concerned with high attendance week in Sunday School then we are applying the Bible study to our life.  We go to church to get instead of investing in people around us.  We talk about our church rather than Jesus.  We join a church based on the ministries our family can receive rather than the ministries our families can get involved in.

 We get so good at church (and maybe a ministry like Havner said) that we leave Jesus and his purpose for our life out out of the equation.

 P.S. I know you’ve been wondering and yes, that is Vance Havner in the picture

2. Ask someone to “come and see” what God is doing at TXT3

3. Tell your story with someone.

Three things to do if we are going to love people.  I decided to type those out, because I think most of us are still thinking about the video blog from Penn Jillette.  Pretty powerful stuff.  There are a couple of things that have stuck with me this week as I’ve reflected on it (and I should say that this was my first experience with Penn Jillette and I’m in no way an expert on what he thinks or has said).  First, it is interesting that Jillette refers to the man who gave him a Bible as a “good man.”  Ironically, there is no such thing as “good” without some sort of moral reference point.  That is one of the logical problems with atheism.  God’s character gives us a definition of what is good and acceptable.  Without that we are left to our own ideas of good or we define good by what the majority of people (i.e. a country) deem as good.  That might sound like it makes sense, but ask a Jewish person who lived in Germany during the 1940s if “good” can be defined by a country’s laws.

The other thing that I’ve pondered is what happened to Jillette in his life that soured his openness to God.  He’s more than an atheist.  He’s an activist.  He spends a lot of time denouncing the God that he doesn’t believe in.  He says that religion causes a lot of problems in the world.  That is certainly a debatable point.  Why the closed eyes to all of the great things that the followers of Jesus have brought to the world? 

I don’t know the answers and I doubt I’ll ever meet him, but today is certainly a day that I can pray for him!

• Join a cell group. They start March 22nd. (If you haven’t already, fill out this form so we can be prepared for you)
• RSVP to go bowling next week after TXT3 (Send an email to kclark {at} fbcgt(.)org with how many you’re bringing)
• Invite people over for dinner, a movie, or a creative get together at your house
• Combine last weeks message with this week’s by reading all the New Testament passages with the phrase “one another” in it.  You can search for them at www.biblegateway.com
• Grab a bunch of guys and buy some inexpensive tickets to watch the #1 ranked Texas Longhorns play the #5 ranked  Baylor Bears in baseball on Wednesday, March 11th.  If you do this, I’d suggest eating dinner at Freebirds (you’ll want the Hancock location in Austin)!

Text Answers

[Brett profusely apologizes for forgetting to talk about the answers you all sent in on Sunday!]
This week’s question was: Name a place or a group of people where you feel deeply connected.

• church.. sometimes
• dinner out
• Sunday morning life group.
• the church
• my wed small group!
• home
• my accountability group of 5 girls
• i feel deeply connected to the people i show horses with
• home
• with my friends <:) TERA >
• small group
• running group
• Wednesday small group
• small group
• the youth group at fbcgt
• camp, retreats
• with my christian buds and the country
• Family and church
• FBC ladies bible study
• My friends:)
• co-workers at school and my family
• To my small group bible study here at the church.
• my girlfriends
• with family
• friends and family
• family
• with my accountability group of 5 girls
• with women seeking seeking God
• Life group mens night out.
• Small Group on Wednesday’s
• my answer is with the people i show horses with
• My family & my church singles group.
• with cats
• with choir

Music

Majestic, Lincoln Brewster
If We Are the Body, Casting Crowns
Hosanna, Hillsong
Overcome, New Life Worship

Video

MeChurch

It’s community.  Why do people join gangs?  Some are in it for the money, but most are in it for the security and belonging.  Your average gang member probably wouldn’t use those exact words, but there is a lot of truth to it. 

It can be a cruel world.  No one wants to face that alone.  Give me some other people who will walk with me.  Surround me with some people who’ve got my back when I’m in trouble.  I want some people that I can share life with and have a sense of belonging.

Am I describing a gang member or the average person’s desire?  The answer . . . both!

When the church begins to care for people like Jesus does, we might just pass gangs as the place to connect and find life!