Ok so here are my 2 cents on this.  First, I don’t think Ken Ham did followers of Jesus a favor by limiting this to Creationism being strictly defined by the Young Earth argument.  In fact he is in the minority even amongst Protestant pastors according to the last time Gallup poll.   For a debate like this it would have been much better if he went with “intelligent design”.  In other words whether you believe in the Young or Old earth, all creationists believe that behind every creation there is a creator.

But here is the real point I want to make.  My faith is not dependent on is the earth young or old.  My faith is not dependent on the flood of Noah or the dozens of other things that these two gentlemen debated.  My faith is based on “Did Jesus rise again from the dead or not?”  You see as I discussed in this message and as Andy Stanley has said so well, “Christianity isn’t based on teachings but rather on an event”.  No matter how good the teachings of Jesus are or the rest of the bible for that matter, if Jesus didn’t rise again from the dead then our faith is useless (1 Cor. 15:7).

This then is the question all of us must investigate and then answer for ourselves.  I don’t care if your an atheist or a person who attends church each week.  I don’t care if your an evolutionist or a creationists.  Did Jesus really rise again from the dead?  If He did then we must take His teachings and the bible seriously.  If He didn’t then none of these debates really matter because our whole existence is pointless.

So again I’d encourage you to investigate this for yourself.  I’d recommend you read,”The Case for Christ“.  In this book an investigative reporter interviews scholars, archeologists, medical doctors, historians and others to see if there is enough evidence to not only see if Jesus lived, but if  He died and rose again.  It’s worth the read and then you draw your own conclusions.

Listen to the message at the following link

The Day I Almost Died

At this point the biggest hurdle is overcoming the emotional aspects of what happened.  Twice now in the past few days loud and unexpected noises have sent my heart racing.  One was a gunshot on TV and the other is funny now that I think back on it.  Yesterday as we were setting up for church, I was bent over hooking up a light when our drummer decided to begin his warm up.  He started with just a single hit on the snare drum and that set off somewhat of a panic attack.  I had to leave the theater we meet in and walk around the lobby areas to calm down.  So thankful that Chad was there to talk me through it and pray with me.

I really wasn’t planning on talking about the incident much in yesterday’s message but when I got up to speak I was a complete mess.  I was crying harder than a 14 year old girl at a One Direction concert.  Finally I was able to compose myself and preach what I know is something God really wanted everyone to hear.

I have decided though that this week as we wrap-up our “Don’t Waste Your Life” series that I’m going to scrap what was planned and instead talk in more detail about the events on Friday and some of the spiritual lessons that can be learned from it.  I think it will be therapeutic for me and my prayer is that people can learn from my experience without having to go through it yourself.

In the meantime, keep praying for all involved.  From what I understand the 2 shooting victims will be fine.  Keep praying for our police who are greatly under-staffed. And I do appreciate your continued prayers for me as I continue, with Jesus help, processing all that happened.  Last night I finally got a good night’s sleep…in fact I slept 10+ hours…that felt good.  Also, I’ve been praying a lot and from having done so much counseling myself I can see the symptoms in myself like, PTSD, irrational fear, etc, so I’m going to call a counselor friend of mine to see how we might speed up the emotional healing.

Hope to see you on Sunday as I share more.  Paraphrasing the words of Joseph in the Old Testament, “I want to take what Satan meant for evil and turn it around and use it for good!”

Again I don’t want to give details of where, when, etc, but the gist is this.  I witnessed an attempted double homicide and then was myself chased in my car by the gunmen.  This was a very high speed chase where at some points I was doing 70+MPH on 25MPH streets going the wrong way.  I eventually outran the potential murderers and hide in an apartment complex parking lot until an officer came and got me.  Even now many hours later my heart is still racing thinking about it.

As the officer and I were talking, a call came in saying an arrest had just been made for a gunmen in a car.  The officer then asked me to jump in his cruiser to identify whether it was the same vehicle.  We went in what would normally be a 15 minute drive in about 5 minutes, sirens blaring when needed.  Honestly I think I was just as scared during this ride as I had been on my own.  Turned out not to be the gunmen that had chased me.  Although they put him in the back of my cruiser for a bit.  He asked, “So did you see me do it?”   I’m going”, Nope didn’t see a thing”. 

The officer then asked me to step out and said, “We don’t want you in the vehicle with him he’s dangerous”.  So then I had to go sit in another cruiser, this time in the back.  I waited there for awhile until a detective came and picked me up to return me back to my car.  From there then I had to go downtown to give a statement.  That was another couple of hours. 

That’s all I want to share for now.  I don’t plan on giving specific details but there were many lessons I learned throughout the ordeal.  I’ll share those in the coming days and weeks.  For now please just pray for those that were shot, that the gunmen would be apprehended, for the many wonderful police and detectives that serve and protect and for myself to emotionally deal with what has been a very traumatic experience.

Many people wonder if being funny is something that people are naturally born with or if it’s an acquired skill.  In my opinion it’s a combination of both.  Some people are naturally funny but any one can be (or be better at it) if you understand what makes something funny. In fact it’s as simple as this equation…

Expectation + Surprise= Funny

Take the joke I used to begin this post.  As you begin reading it, you see the words “My grandfather died peacefully in his sleep…”  In your mind without even really thinking about it, you had some preconceived notions of what that means/looks like.  In other words, you had an expectation of how the story would go.  The surprise though was that he actually died while driving a bus full of kids.  Because you didn’t see that part coming, it makes it funny.

The reason this works is that we as humans do a great amount of assuming whenever we hear someone speaking.  Our minds just automatically begin filling in details that may or may not actually exist.  We do this to try to make sense of what we’re hearing.  So being funny is just taking what the hearer is already assuming and taking it abruptly a different direction.  In the sample joke, you assumed that dying peacefully in his sleep happened in a bed.  You never would have assumed a bus so when your assumptions get shattered the story becomes funny.

So as you’re telling a story, the greater you can get people to assume something in the first part of the story, the funnier it will be when you break down those assumptions in the second part.  Here’s another example, this time from horror author Stephen King.  One time a reporter asked him, “How to you come up with such imaginative ideas for your stories?”  To which King replied, “I still have the heart of a little boy…at home in a jar on my desk”.   Did you see it?  Expectation + Surprise= Funny.

Now obviously, delivery, timing, body language, etc, are also necessary to being funny but it all begins by first knowing the anatomy of what makes something humorous.  So now it’s time for you to try it. Here’s the beginning…

The Polar Vortex returned to the US this week…

Think about what the expectations/assumptions are from this sentence and then how can you shatter them.  Comment here or on Facebook with your completed joke or Tweet it to @gilbertthurston

Let’s start this conversation by acknowledging that in many of the major world religions there are some basic morality issues that all have in common.  Things like, don’t lie, cheat, steal, murder, etc. are widely held beliefs even amongst people who choose to not follow or practice a religion.  However, the argument that all religions are the same and that no matter which you choose will ultimately get you to God is simply false.

• Some claim there is no God, others that there is one true God and others believe that there are 1000’s of gods.
• Some say that we are made in the image of God, while others believe that one day we can become God.
• Some claim that at death we cease to exist, others that all go to be with God, others that heaven or hell await all, others that we will be reincarnated and still others that we will go to a place of utopia.
• Some say there is no such thing as sin, others that only God can forgive sin and still others that say we must do good deeds to overcome the bad that we’ve done.

The above is just 4 issues of many where it’s impossible to say, “Oh all religions teach the same thing”.  Obviously they don’t, so now we get back to the issues we’ve talked about in previous weeks.  If you haven’t already read my posts on intolerance and how Christianity can be mathematically proven. Please do so now…don’t worry…I’ll still be here when you get back.

Going back to 2+2.  The only correct answer is 4.  You can’t say that there are other correct answers or that if someone else gives a different answer that they are equally right.  No!!!  2+2=4, it always has and always will.  So when it comes to religions, all claim to be the truth, but as we have seen, all claim something different.  So then it comes down to, can any of them be proven as correct?

The answer if yes!  Now all will claim that they can, but only Christianity can back that up.  And it’s done in 3 ways…

1.  Personal stories of life change:  Now this is actually not a great way because all religions can share stories of how people’s lives have been changed.  This one is very subjective so it’s the least reliable way to prove anything.  In fact, this one actually doesn’t prove anything at all but I wanted to throw this out because many people will try to use this as to why their religion is the correct one.  The problem though is just because you are sincere about something doesn’t mean that you are not sincerely wrong.  If you’ve been taught all your life that 2+2=5, it doesn’t matter how sincere you are in that belief the fact is you still have the wrong answer.

2.  Archeology-  This is where you begin separating Christianity from all the other religions (with the exception of Judaism, their Torah and our Old Testament are the same).  For years the stories of the Old Testament and New Testament have been labeled by many as nothing more than fairy tales.  But yet each year as more and more archeological work is done, the digs result in finds that back-up the times, places, people and events that the bible records.  Many critics of the spiritual claims of the bible now readily admit that as a history book the bible is pretty accurate in what it records.

3.  Predictive Prophecy-  This goes back to my post about math and the astronomical odds of all those prophecies in the bible just merely being chance.  Again if you haven’t read that post, please do so now.  Ok, now that you’ve done that, let me point out that Christianity is the only world religion to have something like this, with the exception being Judaism and Islam.

Again the Jews Torah is the same as our Old Testament and there are other prophecies that were predicted and fulfilled in the Old Testament times that we both acknowledge was the handiwork of God.  However, the Jews somehow take the hundreds of prophecies that Jesus fulfilled and say, “Nope He’s not the right man, someone else will need to fulfill them”.  Now to be fair, most Jewish people have just been told by their leaders that Jesus isn’t the promised Messiah and haven’t been presented with the facts like I laid them out.  In fact, I’ve helped led a couple of Jewish people into a relationship with Jesus just by simply reading some scriptures to them and then asking, “Who were they referring to?”  They say, “Your Jesus.”  I then ask, “How do you explain that?”  Of course they ask, “Explain what?”  I then say, “Well everything I just read to you was from your Torah”.  All along they assumed I was reading from the New Testament, when in fact I was reading from the Old.

Islam also has a few predictive prophecies in the Qur’an.  Muhammad on multiple occasions told his Muslim troops that they would have victory in battles, which they subsequently did.  However, what good general doesn’t tell his troops that they will have victory?  Also, Muhammad predicted that he would return to Mecca.  However this is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It would be like me saying, “I’m going to go to Florida for vacation this summer”.   Now it’s possible that it might not happen, but largely the outcome of that is influenced by me.  In any case, these types of prophecies that Muhammad made are not even close to the statistical improbability that we’ve seen that Jesus fulfilled.

So are all religions the same?  No.  Which means they all can’t be equally true.  Is there a way for one of them to be proven true?  Yes.  But you still have freedom of choice.  I pray that you choose wisely.  For further study I suggest the book, “The Case for Christ” which details an investigative reporters own personal journey in determining if there is enough scientific and other data to prove the bible and the claims of Jesus.

• I hurt my knee at some point in the last few days but I’m not sure how…can barely bend it.
• Getting old sucks.
• On a positive note, it’s a good reason not to go out and shovel snow!
• My heater for my Koi Pond burnt out so I’ve been having to go out and chip ice ever few hours until the new one arrives.
• I have 2 key meetings today regarding ECTV.
• One is about a potential new location for us and the other is about some strategy stuff.  Please pray both go well.
• Can’t believe how much interest yesterday’s post about the Richard Sherman controversy got.
• Just to be clear…the point of the post wasn’t to condone his behavior…the point was how quickly American’s reacted to his reaction and how we must be careful of that or we end up becoming guilty of the same kind of rants he displayed.
• Lisa made fudge yesterday for the snow day….mmmm good!
• I spent a good chunk of yesterday preparing the 2013 giving statements that we are required to give to anyone who financially supported us last year.
• So thankful for the hundreds of people who gave so our little church plant can try to make a difference here in Harrisburg and beyond.
• Especially thankful for those who don’t even attend our church but so believe in our mission of “Helping people taking life-changing next steps in their journey towards God” that they give to support us.
• Here is a link if you’d like to join them in partnering with us.
• Yesterday I ordered 3 books for the price of two.   They are “The Creative Habit”, The Willpower Instinct” and “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs”.
• Almost all books anymore I do on Audible.
• Ok, just had to take a break to go out and shovel snow…Lisa decided to head into work so  I needed to clear her a path and uncover her car.
• Not sure what is up with my knee but it hurts something fierce.
• And with that…my mind isn’t thinking of anything else…so I’m out.

Immediately after the game, FOX reporter Erin Andrews interviewed Sherman and this happened…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7n7PiwYKag

The reaction was immediate as Twitter and Facebook blew up calling Sherman a thug, classless and many other things that simply can’t be repeated nor, should they ever be said. Now before going any further, let me be clear that I am not a Seahawks fan and quite frankly have never really cared for Sherman as a football player.  However, I think that Americans have gotten this one wrong.  Sherman, in the heat of the moment, spoke out with passion that he feels he’s the best and that the 49ers were wrong trying to target him on the biggest play of the game.  Many fans berated him for his rant as they then immediately went on a rant of their own telling the world how bad this person is.

Now to be clear, Sherman is a trash-talker, it’s a part of his game.  This interview I feel was just an extended part of it while the adrenaline was still running high.  Just a few minutes later watch how composed he is as the excitement of the moment has worn off…

From what I’ve read this is a very intelligent young man.  He graduated second in his high school class and then graduated on time from Stanford with a degree in communications.  I don’t necessarily agree with everything he does on the field both physically and verbally, but I do feel that the reaction most American’s have had to this just goes to show one of the problems we have as a country.  We react to every little thing like it’s the biggest thing.  We’re quick to make judgments in the moment instead of thinking through things.  Now I’m sure humans have always been like this but with the advent of social media, we instantly share stuff without really filtering it through a proper thought process.  Again the irony of this situation was that people were ranting about someone else’s rant.

For those that call yourselves followers of Jesus who engaged in this type of behavior, let me challenge you with a parting thought from scripture…

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, ²⁰ because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. -James 1:19-20

Take note of the “slow to speak” part.  In today’s culture we could include, “slow to tweet”, “slow to re-tweet”, “slow to post as a status up-date” or “slow to share on your wall”.  Think before you react!  When you don’t not only is it a bad reflection on you but on Jesus as well.  Even if you’re not a follower of Jesus, being quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry are still pretty good words to live by.

So there it is…my thoughts on the Richard Sherman controversy.  What do you think about all this?  His rant?  America’s rant?  My thoughts?

Oh and my prediction for the Super Bowl:   Bronco’s 27      Seahawks   17