Louie Giglio – How Great Is Our God

I just watched the video of Louie Giglio’s message called How Great Is Our God. And I’d like to share with you my opinions and impressions from the message.

Giglio uses great illustration about our universe and the way God created it. He also makes it really clear and plain to people who aren’t in love with the science (students are the main targeted audience). I like that he makes the contrast of how small and “unimportant” we are in the scope of entire universe, yet on the other hand how wonderful and “important” we are in God’s sight as His image-bearers.

Although there are three things I didn’t like about his message:

1. Sometimes I thought he was going too far in the illustrations he made. What he said was still biblical and true (I agreed on that with him), but I’m not sure whether I would choose the same way of presenting it.
2. Also, for the majority of time he was using background music as he was speaking. For your information, I am not a big fan of it. Why? Cause I believe in the supreme power of preaching that doesn’t need any emotions-affecting-background-music improvement. Because we want people to trust in Christ on the basis of their decision, not on the basis of their current feelings. I myself could have felt the effect of the background music on my processing of the message. It should be the Holy Spirit affecting us, not the music (although HS can [and I believe sometimes He does] use these kind of things).
3. I didn’t hear the Gospel to be preached. He was talking about how significant we are for God (for He took a great care when He made us) and how great He is, but I think he missed the most important thing where His greatness is revealed the most – the Gospel – how Jesus Christ took on himself our likeness (nature of “insignificant” servants) and was willing to lay His life for us (and thus made us the most significant of everything else that was ever created!) – so we can have the significance we were once made for but fell short of. And he missed that…

So what is my conclusion? Watch it if you want to. It’s wonderful to know how our Lord and God has created the world we live in and our bodies we move in. It’s awesome. But keep in mind at least my third argument. Without Jesus’ death on the cross none of it would ever be possible!

Serving on-the-go

This is a kind of late update, but anyway. Let me tell you what I am up to these coming days. Few weeks ago I’ve been invited by a Lutheran church in Košice to come and be their speaker at KEcy klub. It’s an after camp ministry for kids that went to an English camp in the summer (but not only for them). I’ll be talking about “Who are you a fan of?” Or another sub-title is “On whose side are you on?” The Bible verse I’ll be using is Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money”.

It is my first experience of traveling somewhere for the purpose to serve. So far I have always served here at home and never traveled in order to serve. It's gonna be different this time even because I know maybe two people in Košice and so I will serve to people I've never met. But I am really excited about it. Therefore there are some things I would like to ask you to pray for (if you can still make it since this post is kind of late:) Please pray for:

• safe traveling (I’ll be traveling all together over 500 miles – and that’s a lot for Slovaks:)
• arrival on time (we’ve got lots of snow here and the train might be delayed and it would not be the best if I were late)
• the talk not to be boring (I’ll be speaking to teenagers in the age between 15-18 yrs old)
• God using me for His glory

Later this week I will write about how it all went…

Marek

House

A week ago I started watching a new TV show - House. In today's episode there was this conversation that, I thought, was funny and worth sharing. But you really need to watch it on your own in order to get the same experience. It's first season third episode.

House: Make a note. I should never doubt myself.
Another doc: I think you'll remember. You know, it would hurt you to be wrong every now and then.
House: What? You don't care about these people?

That's what I call a healthy self-esteem:)

House of God Forever

A music video our our new band that we haven't named yet:) But it was lots of fun recording and (especially) editing :D

Btw, yes we know that the lyrics aren't related to what's going on in video in any way...but hey, it was recoded at our church...so goes the title: House of God Forever....:)

Voice: Kristian Lundgaard and Jeni Williams
Video and editing: Marek Tomašovič

Enjoy! :)

That's a ministry!

About a month ago I read how one can minister in a prison (even if you're a part of the prison). This is an excerpt from the article that was published at DesiringGod.org, that you can read HERE:

This prison (Angola Prison in Angola, Louisiana) is the largest maximum-security prison in America. It is one of the most famous prisons in the whole world. It has only murderers, rapists, armed robbers and habitual felons. The average sentence is 88 years, with 3,200 people in one place serving life sentences. Ninety percent of the inmates will die here. This is a place of hopelessness, so if Angola can change, the rest of the country’s prisons can’t say, “We can’t do this.”

There is a local extension of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in the prison and about 140 prisoners are enrolled. There are six churches in the prison and they train their own pastors. They send trained “missionaries” to other prisons to plant churches. They do this without using any tax money. But O the money—and lives—it saves!

Violence in the prison is rare. Courtesy and respect is pronounced. The ministry team of women who were visiting at the same time we were said they were treated with more respect from prisoners here, than in many places on the “outside.” Public profanity is not allowed.

The 42-inch church bell hangs high over the chapel in a prisoner-built tower. They rescued the bell from storage where it had been put after falling and killing a man. Some of the prisoners say: The bell killed a man and we killed a man, but now the bell and we serve the Lord Jesus.

I preached with all my heart to those who could fit in the chapel, and to the rest by closed circuit television. G.B. (and three others on Death Row) told me they’d be watching. I pulled no punches:

For 90% of you the next stop is not home and family, but heaven or hell. O what glorious news we have in that situation. And believe me it is not the prosperity of Gospel. Jesus came and died and rose again not mainly to be useful, but to be precious. And that he can be in Angola as well as Atlanta. Perhaps even more.

Does this game work? :)

Dominik and I as we're trying out a game for Dorast (we had to make sure it's playable:) And it was! :D

John Piper on prosperity Gospel (new one)

This is a transcript I made of Q&A that John Piper gave at Angola Prison, LA on November 19, 2009:

Satan has two ways to destroy your faith. 

One: pain
Two: pleasure 

He can kill you either way. He can make you so painful you curse him. Or so pleasurable your forget him. I think pleasure kills more people in this world, way more, then pain. Way more! Have you ever heard anybody say: I got to know Jesus more deeply in the bright sunny days then I did any other day. You never hear anybody to say that. What is hear every day of your life, almost, is: When the lights went out in my life I found Jesus. When the things got hard in my life Jesus showed up. So I just don't buy the prosperity thing. I don't buy that you have to be well, you don't have to be out of prison, you don't have to get a good job, you don't have to get a good wife. None of these prospers things are the sure signs of God's blessing. Blessing comes in forms you never dreamed. And if you're a child of God I'll tell you in what form it comes in: every form!

All things work together for good for those that love God according to his purpose. So you keep loving God and you know that everything is working…everything's working. 

Source: DesiringGod.org