Want to see what I spend my free time doing with my son lately? Actually, most of this was his original creation, but we had a blast shooting. At one point, I was literally doubled over in laughter out in the middle of the street—I couldn’t stop laughing. Click here to view the video.

Whenever I teach on the thread of hope God’s woven through history in the messianic prophecies, I find myself saying, “How can anyone seeing this not believe?” But then I know most people don’t take the time to see it. I’m praying many people with real questions will take the time to check out this series. I’m loving teaching this again, but I always find I have to leave out so much. If you were not here for the first message, be sure to listen to it online. I talk about the amazing God of History who has written some aspects of world history in advance in ways that few could deny—all to show us that God is the one behind all this, doing it so those who truly will seek him can find him. Check it out at www.gatewaychurch.com messages online.

One of the great things about launching this deepen service, is it will allow us on Sunday mornings to do an even better job going after struggles in issues that people have who are just discovering faith or developing faith. I’m pumped about our upcoming series called Thread of Hope – Prophecies of Messiah. People ask all the time, how can you know, the Scriptures are from God? Why is believing that Jesus is the son of God, any different than believing the homeless guy claiming the same thing? We are going to take four weeks leading up to Easter to look in depth at the way the old testament prophets foretold. What God was going to do thousands of years before Jesus ever arrived! I will be trying to answer the skeptical “yeah but” questions along the way. Don’t miss it as it will really boost your faith, and be sure to invite friends who feel like they need reasons to believe. It’s going to be a great series.

I heard Bill Maher talking about four Amish teenagers arrested for violence. They broke windows, they overturned buggies. They got caught because the graffiti on the silos said, “Ye Suck.” It reminded me a little of my blogging lately. So I’m going to try to get more frequent! I’ll blame it in part on some of the new things happening around Gateway that I’m really excited about.

We’re now two weeks into launching Deepen, our Sunday 5 p.m. service–for those who want to dive deep into the Scriptures and worship to help them have a deepening impact serving the world around them. If you missed the first one, it brought me to tears. We’re studying I Thessalonians–a letter to a church full of people who just came to faith in a city that has a lot in common with Austin. Tony, our worship leader, did a phenomenal job leading us, and I kept thinking of how amazing that just a few years ago, he was closing down Sixth Street, using his musical gifts to promote drunken hedonism. As I looked around the room at those worshiping God, so many of us were in the same place, blowing their lives apart in the name of fun or success! I was overwhelmed at what God is doing here in Austin among us — the same thing He was doing in the wild partying town of Thessalonica in the first century! Go God—keep it up!