Archives for March 2009

The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived

March 30, 2009 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Back in October I reviewed Steven Scott’s book The Greatest Words Ever Spoken. Now I’ve been given a copy of his newest book The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived.

I really like this guy’s writings. He has made millions of dollars but yet you can tell he still places Jesus number 1 in his life. In this book he reveals some of the principles that he has learned from Jesus that lead to success and happiness.

Now to be honest many times these books can lean towards the health, wealth and prosperity mindset but I feel Steven does a good job of keeping a balance between the “abudant life” Jesus desires for us and the life of sacrifice He calls us to as well.

Through 17 chapters Steven leads you through scriptures from the life of Jesus that can transform your life. In it you will discover…

New meanings to raise your life to new heights.
How to develop a mission for your life that will produce greater creativity and productivity.
How to communicate with others in a moving way.
How to act in a Christ-like manner.
How to adopt methods that will take you from ordinary to extraordinary.
How to discover your incredible worth to God and others.
How to give and receive love in it’s truest form.

Steven’s writings and illustrations are very clear and easy to understand. I especially recommend this book to those of you who own your own business or are looking to achieve big dreams.

Inside Today’s Experiences

March 29, 2009 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Ugghhhh…I was sick to my stomach today which didn’t make the Experience much fun.

Didn’t help this morning to walk through the parking lot and have to step over literally thousands of worms…the smell didn’t help my stomach feel any better.

Lots of small technical mistakes behind the scenes that drive me crazy.

All that to say that my head just wasn’t in it today…

…amazingly God even uses crappy messages like I gave today to reach people.

3 more people became followers of Christ!

And I had quite a few people stop me to share how encouraged they are that they can overcome their temptations.

I also had a few people ask me why all the text questions aren’t getting answered…or even put on the screens for that matter.

2 things…#1 we are doing a series on marriage, relationships, dating and sex right after Easter so I told the team to not ask those types of questions. We’ll take 4 weeks on just those alone starting April 19th.

The second reason is they only put up questions that they feel I’ll be able to answer on the fly and within only 5 minutes.

Speaking of questions, the two live questions today were, “Is it wrong to ask for a sign when I need to make a decision” and at 10:45, “Why pray if God already knows what is going to happen in the future”?

Both answers can be heard at the end of the podcast of the temptation message.

Again being sick I didn’t feel I gave my best on these so sorry if you really wanted to know.

Next week we’ll have an abbreviated message followed by multiple text questions so bring your phone and get your questions in!

Aaron, Adam and I had a great time making the “Easy Button” video. You can watch it here.

Ok I’m about done…need a nap…see you next week.

Alcohol is More Popular than Sex

March 27, 2009 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

I said last week in this blog that I felt the message on alcohol would quickly surpass the total number of downloads we had gotten of the previous week’s message on whether Christians can enjoy movies and music that are not “Christian” in nature.

By Wednesday that had happened. What I didn’t expect was that last night the message would become the number 2 most downloaded message ever, surpassing the message on sex that I had done in May of 2008. Now only the controversial 2009 vision message is keeping it from the top spot.

All that to say I am really enjoying this series and apparently so are you. This week we’ll look at how to deal with temptation (plus take more live text message questions) and then the following week I’ll do an abbreviated message on the last question you asked for…How Do I Handle Doubts About My Faith…then I’ll take the remainder of that day to take as many text message questions as we can squeeze in.

Don’t forget to invite someone to join you. Once again here is the link to our 2009 Promo Video if you’d like to use it help explain what United is all about.

Random Thoughts on a Thursday

March 26, 2009 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Not the first time I’ve said this…but I’m an idiot.

Was ready to post to the blog and hit the refresh button on the page for some unknown reason, thus causing me to lose everything.

So here we go again…3/26/09 blog post version 2.0 this time less sucky.

Been a pretty good week!

Really excited about Easter coming up.

I’m done the message and I’m believing God for 50+ first time professions of faith!

Another prayer that I pray on occasion is for God to show favor to Lisa and I in unexpected ways.

On Monday we got a check in the mail as a part of settlement for a class action lawsuit.

I vaguely remember getting info about this a few years back, filled out my paperwork and then forgot about it.

Now I’ve got a check to cash!

Funniest thing of the week so far was on Tuesday when Aaron went to clean off the whiteboard in my office with the special fluid.

It’s in a spray bottle and when he hit the button he didn’t realize he was holding it backwards and it sprayed him in the eye.

Now your saying…”Gilbert I thought you said this was the funniest thing? Spraying harsh chemicals in your eyes is dangerous”.

Mmmmm….you’re right. (Insert fake sympathy bullet point here)

Seriously after taking about .5 seconds to make sure he was ok…he was crying like a little girl…I laughed my head off!

The bottle said if sprayed into eyes to flush with water for 15 minutes…uhh yeah right…a good minute later we were back to work…albeit he was still whining.

I’m working on some other stuff right now for the church that has the potential to be huge…very excited about it.

What I’m not excited about is that the NHL regular season is dragging on and on…come on already…let’s get the playoffs started.

Speaking of my sports teams…Gilbert Arenas is planning on coming back for the last 9 games for the Wizards.

WHHHHHYYYYYY?????? At this point the best thing that could happen is to lose the rest of the games and get the #1 draft pick. Why risk that and your health at the same time?

Ok realize that was a few sports references back-to-back. For you ladies who don’t like sports or for any weird guys (you know who you are) that don’t like sports….

…who do you like on American Idol?

Personally I like Danny and Adam.

BTW…Danny and Michael are worship leaders in their churches, while Chris and Lil participate on the worship teams at their churches.

For those of you who don’t like sports or American Idol, I’ve got 4 letters for you…

LOST

Love that show!

Alright…gotta get back to work…see you Sunday…let’s pack the place out…I’m talking about temptation…should be powerful!

Other Weekend Thoughts

March 23, 2009 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

I’m still pretty pumped up about yesterday’s Experience where we discussed Is It Alright For Christians to Drink Alcohol?

Aaron, the worship team and creative team have done a great job of making this a very memorable series.

One unexpected side benefit from yesterday’s message has been the number of people who have told me or e-mailed me about giving something else up for the 30 day challenge.

In other words, they don’t drink alochol, but they are giving up chocolate, coffee, caffine, fast food, Mt. Dew, TV, for 30 days to make sure nothing has higher precedence in their lives than Jesus.

I realized yesterday after I sent out Inside Today’s Experience’s that Easter was one year ago yesterday. This means for the second year in a row we broke our attendance record on the 4th Sunday of March.

Friday and Saturday Lisa and I travelled to Cove Valley Camp for a 2-day leadership retreat with about 40 others from the church to pray and discuss about what the next 6, 12 and 24 months may look like in the life of CFCOG.

Let me just say…buckle up tight, the adventure is just now beginning.

God has such incredible things in store for us to do…the key is staying faithful to Him and trusting in Him more than our own wisdom, the economy, the President or anything or anyone else that may tempt us to stray from the vision He has given us.

Was really disappointed to get home and watch my Terps get crushed by Memphis in the tournament. I at least thought they’d keep it close but Memphis shot the ball incredibly well.

This week should be a good one.

Sometimes when we get done on Sunday’s I think…”Oh no only 165 hours until we have to do all this again”, but right now I can’t wait for Sunday to get here…

We’ll be talking about temptation and I believe God is going to set a lot of you free in amazing ways.

As always do whatever it takes short of sin to get someone to the Experience with you.