Ceejay Horrell

I watched in amazement one Sabbath morning as I witnessed a very practical example of how technology is changing the world we live in. The scripture reading was being read, and I was distracted by a silent but very visible exchange between a deacon and one of our youth. Disgusted by the smartphone in the hand of this young man, the deacon was motioning to him to put it away. It was not too long before the deacon’s face changed from one of repulsion to one of embarrassment, when he realized the young man was actually following along on his smartphone’s Bible App.

In just 175 years, we’ve moved from Morse code to the age of radio, TV’s, fax machines, computers, the internet, cell phones and cyberspace. In almost every part of the world these fast-track developments have had their impact. Newspapers contain yesterday’s news, as global events and news is available in real time. When President Barack Obama took the oath on Capitol Hill, almost anyone who wanted to see him could, distance has become a thing of the past.

One of the main contributors to this metamorphosis is the Internet. Every day millions of people exchange ideas, pictures, video conversations and information at the click of a mouse, as if they were physically present. As a provider of Multimedia Solutions, I’m seeing that with the steady increase of broadband internet service, internet technology is exploding with highly advanced methods of communicating both audibly and visibly.  Vendors are employing all the tools available to them to maintain consumer relevancy and seek cost-effective opportunities to acquire and retain customers. This begs the question, where is the church in all this?

Too many of our churches are still trapped in the dark ages of communication, but with the momentum with which new technology becomes user friendly, any church can empower its members to become powerful ambassadors of the Gospel, and the greatest resource available to us is sitting right in the pew.

The other day my (then) five year-old and I walked into a Bell World store and within five minutes he was tugging at my pants leg to listen to a voice recording he made using the IPhone 4 demo. Can you imagine the possibilities if we could marry the life experience of our seniors with the innovative high-tech minds of our youth, working together and using technology to spread our message?!

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, GodTube, Linkedin, and Blogger etc., have all become household names and it’s not unusual for account holders to have 300 or even 1000 followers, giving an entirely new meaning to each one, reach one. Social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

If we’re not deliberately using at least one of these forms of social media, we may be slowly becoming silenced by these new forms of communication, and soon we may be busy saying nothing at all. So where do we begin? The best place to start is with our youth, our youth are not our future, they are our present, and given the opportunity they can not only help provide education about the usefulness of these innovative forms of communication, but they can easily spearhead the effort of integrating them into our ministry.

What a difference if that deacon and young man were both sitting at a control booth, streaming the service.

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. 1 John 5:12 NIV

Several years ago a new report came in about a man and his wife found frozen to death in their car after a blizzard dumped tons of snow, burying their vehicle. A note was found in the glove compartment scribbled by the woman before she died. The note read: “I don’t want to die this way.” Tragically, less than six feet from their icy grave was a stranded bus, whose festive passengers remained warm throughout the night.

The word ‘gospel’ means good news, but the gospel is only good news to those who receive it. Our heavenly Father not only forgives us of our sins but transfers all the good, holy and righteous deeds that Christ ever did to us. This is incredible good news!

If you refuse this gift you will not have eternal life no matter how many good works you have performed. If you accept and trust in Jesus as your salvation then the eternal life God offers to you in Christ is guaranteed! Though you may be a sinner, in God’s eyes you are now considered perfect, blameless and without fault. This gives us peace with God and allows us to stop worrying about our salvation.

I think we could agree that God paid too high a price for us to ignore His incredible sacrifice for us. Why not receive this gift today?

www.ceejayhorrell.com

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 1 John 1:8 NIV

Ever wondered how a worm gets inside an apple? Interestingly enough it does not burrow from the outside, but rather an insect lays an egg in the apple blossom. Sometime later, the worm hatches in the heart of the apple, then eats his way out. Sin, like the worn, begins in the heart and works out through a person's thoughts, words, and actions.

We are not sinful because we sin, we sin because we are sinners by nature, it’s what we produce and it comes out of a natural tendency that we are all born with. The good news is that God can and has taken care of this for us, and the only reason God’s word tells us that we are sinners is to show us our need of a Saviour.

Your heavenly Father has done everything a God of love can do to save us from our sins and His solution for our sin problem was Jesus’ death on the cross.

In The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis tells the story of a woman who gave birth to a son while confined as a prisoner in a dungeon. Confined to this dungeon with his mother for years, the boy had never seen the outside world, his mother tried to describe it by making pencil drawings. Later when he and his mother were released from prison, the simple pencil sketches were replaced by the actual images of our beautiful world.

People have many misconceptions about heaven, some visualize themselves playing a harp on some celestial cloud; others see them themselves walking around on streets of gold. But what does the Bible actually teach us about Heaven and what our relationship with God will be like?

John 1:12-13 says; Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

We become children of God when we believe in Jesus for our salvation, but what does it mean to be a child of God. Romans 8:17 and Galatians 4:7 says; Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory… So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are His child, God has made you also an heir.

Did you get that? We’re heirs! An heir is usually a son or daughter that will one day inherit all the father and mother own. If we are heirs of God and if Jesus is now our brother then this status is elevated to us in Heaven, everything that Jesus is promised belongs to us as well. What an incredible thought!

This was a transcript excerpt from my ‘Unplugged’ series titled Heaven; access the entire program by clicking on this link ‘Unplugged Heaven 07’

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. Psalm 19: 1-4 NIV

Matthew 23:37 says, - how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings… NIV

You know you can rent anything today, cars, houses, tools, plants, videos, babysitters and according to a report by Teresa Wantanbe in the Seattle Times on Wednesday May 13th 2009 you can ‘Rent-A-Family’

A couple and their 2-year-old son greet the wife's 70-year-old mother at the train station and escort her back to their home for an afternoon of Japanese noodles and warm conversation. Grandson kisses grandma and daughter holds her hand as they talk about all living together someday. Grandma's emotions may be real. But her "family" isn't.

They are professional stand-ins, hired by the grandmother at a cost of $1,125 so she could experience the warmth of even a simulated three-hour family visit. The woman's real daughter, a 37-year-old working mother of two, is too busy to see her mother regularly.

Something is wrong with the human family, you might be suffering in isolation but you’re not alone. God can bring surprise endings into our lives. We may be runaways, with our back turned away from God, but He loves us despite our mistakes, we are His family, His children, and He’s in search of each one of us. 

As a boy I kept fish, I would sit for hours staring at my fish tank and dreaming of new ways to decorate and enhance the scenery. Cleaning it was a chore though, I had to be so careful, and my fish would go mad, franticly trying to swim clear of my net, even if it meant jumping out of the tank. My actions were incomprehensible to them, and the only way I could ever have some hope of calming the situation would be to actually become a fish and explain my actions to them in a language they could understand.

That’s exactly what God did for us; Jesus is the ultimate revelation mankind has received from God. He loves us so much He became one of us, so that we could understand Him.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3: 16-17 NIV