Inside Today's Experience - Gilbert Thurston

Another great day.
Had another person start a relationship with Jesus today.
The amazing thing about that is we’re currently doing a series on how to share your faith.
Amazing how God can speak to people’s hearts even in messages that aren’t necessarily evangelistic in nature.
In fact, a big misconception of churches like ours is that we must only preach seeker friendly, evangelistic messages every week in order to have as many professions of faith as we do.
The truth is in now a little over 1 year of existence, I’ve only done 1 message that was strictly the Gospel message and geared for a response at the end.
Every other week messages are about growing in your faith.
In other words, I assume that everyone will want to be a follower of Jesus so here’s what it means to follow Him more closely.
Now of course I present this in such a way that it does make sense to non-followers, but for the most part we tackle some pretty serious discipleship stuff.
At the end then I usually say something to the effect of, “Ok now the first step to applying today’s message is starting a relationship with Jesus if you don’t already have one”…then I present how to do that.
Ok didn’t mean to start this with my philosophy of preaching but there it is.
In any case, nothing out of the ordinary today with set-up.
Had fun at our team meeting today giving a quiz on our core values.
During it I said, “We say there are 2 things which we say are not optional, what are they”?
One of the teens said, “Clothes”?
Haha…gotta love those teens!
All in all people did pretty good at least knowing the gist of each value.
Huge difference though between intellectually knowing these things and living them out.
Making great progress though!
Very funny yet potentially embarrassing thing happened to Lisa today in the lobby.
I went out and her and Meghan were laughing so hard they were in tears.
I’ll let Lisa decide whether to fess up to what happened.
Band as always did a great job.
So interesting watching Jeff use a bow on his electric guitar for the one song.
I continued the “Just Walk Across the Room” series by talking about the 3 D’s we all need to do to help people who are far from God.
They are…Develop friendships, Discover their story and Discern appropriate next steps.
You can listen to the full message here.
As I mentioned in the message, over 300 names were written on the walls last week.
I prayed for each one by name before today’s Experience.
As I mentioned in the message, 3 things happened as I did it.
First, the reality that these are real people that we know that are bound for hell unless we do something about it.
Second, that reaching 90% of them is not enough.
As I said, “That’s 30 people…anyone want to volunteer any of your people for hell?”
Last thought was actually a feeling of righteous anger that so many people waste their lives on things that don’t really count for eternity while real people, like on these boards, die and enter into a Christ-less eternity.
Whether you attend Exponential or not, let me ask you a question…What are you investing your life, time and resources in? Is that going to last for eternity?
If not, then stop wasting this one and only life on things that don’t really matter.
Ok shifting gears somewhat…one of the best things about Facebook’s new list feature is I can get pretty instant feedback on the Experience.
Came across this earlier from a 1st time guest of ours…”Had a great morning with family and friends at a new church. Cried the first 3 songs. Praise God! Got my love for Christ back this morning”.
Awesome…that’s why I love what I do!
Next week we’ll look at how to verbally share your faith with 2 simple short stories you can tell.
In the meantime…have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Leave a Reply