What I Did On My Summer Vacation… God’s Heart For People
August 6, 2006 various texts
It is good to be back, after my vacation time last month! I’ve been back at work this past week, and of course the first question everyone asks is: “How was your vacation?”
It was good. We went to the Calgary Stampede, Calaway Park, and Capital Ex. We did a ton of work landscaping our yard – planting plants, planting a garden, building a fence around the garden, putting in an irrigation system to water the garden, installing lighting, laying sod, laying rock, laying mulch, and finishing building my deck. We found some time to just hang around and play, and of course there was also my big fishing trip that my brother takes me on each year. Except this year my brother couldn’t come at the last minute, so I went with all of his business associates! The salmon weren’t as plentiful as usual, so we watched the sea lions, saw a humpback whale, and fed the bald eagles. And, for those of you wondering, yes I did catch something! Not quite 30lbs, Chinook Salmon.
This is the third year for this trip, and it has been very restorative for me. We stay in a remote place – no cell coverage, no internet, no newspapers, no email, no television, no landscaping jobs, just nature and people. It has been a time that God has used to reconnect me to Him, to the way He sees things, and to bring me into a different perspective about how big God is, how big the world is, and how my big God is able to handle this big world.
This year the same thing happened, but in a different way. I just said that the only thing in this place is nature and people, and the stuff that people bring with them. My brother was unable to come because of the death and funeral of his mother-in-law, and so I ended up spending almost a week with 11 other guys, most non-Christians, with the alcohol flowing freely and the coarse talk abounding, and there is pastor Steve in the middle of it, hoping and praying and wanting to be like Jesus to these men.
After a miserable day of bad weather and few fish bites, I sat on the deck of the boat talking with a guy named Greg who was sorry that my brother couldn’t come because of the death in the family, and this led quite naturally into a conversation about death. I shared the security we have as Christians that death is not a final end, that there is a place where there is no more sickness or pain or tears, and in turn he talked about a difficult funeral he had just been a part of for a very close friend. As he shared the story, I heard bits that were plain evidences to me of the presence of God with them, and I pointed those out and was able to encourage this man, and in turn I too was encouraged. I don’t know what the end will be to that story, but I’m trusting God to use that conversation for His glory.
For me, the biggest impact, and the place where I really got reconnected to the heart of God actually happened when I returned home. I got in late on Saturday night, and came here to church on Sunday morning because Bill Atchinson had asked me to baptize him and that was a great honor which I did not want to miss. It was a great service – Ray and Randy led worship, Brian Wiens ran the service, Bill’s testimony was incredibly encouraging, Julian Dabbagh preached a great sermon, and as I was chatting after the service Matt Beddoes grinned and said, “I lost the bet.”
“What bet?” I asked.
“I bet that you’d take off as soon as the service was over so you could get back to your holidays!”
But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to. I experienced such a huge contrast that Sunday morning with my week on a remote fishing lodge with those 11 guys – here at church there was deep and true joy, rather than mere happiness. Here at church I felt love and acceptance, instead of cutting remarks and jesting insults. Here at church I knew so much more goodness and life than that which comes with alcohol and betting and money and juvenile humor. As I participated in worship that morning, I felt the Spirit of God taking me back out on to the ocean looking out at this majestic humpback whale, in this huge ocean, a tiny speck in this massive planet full of life and beauty, with its vastness and with God in control of it all, and then I saw the reality of how, without Jesus, the lives of these men were really desperate, empty, hopeless – underneath the bravado were stories of broken marriages, hurtful family relationships, and of a well hidden need to be loved unconditionally. I saw their lives and the lives of all the people who are far from God through God’s eyes – and I felt the sadness of God. Romans 8:22-26 came alive for me, which says:
“22For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he has promised us. 24Now that we are saved, we eagerly look forward to this freedom. For if you already have something, you don’t need to hope for it. 25But if we look forward to something we don’t have yet, we must wait patiently and confidently.
26And the Holy Spirit helps us…”
As Bill left the baptismal tank, and as we rejoiced in his story, I said “we need a lot more of this.” I felt the joy of eternity in Bill’s decision to follow Jesus, and it stood in sharp contrast with the lives I shared on my trip, and I felt God’s sadness for a world that is lost without Him, that is adrift, that is seeking pleasure and security in things that will not last, and that don’t even know what they are missing. Julian’s sermon reinforced all of that as he talked about loving God, and loving each other, and of how Zacchaeus received the love of Jesus and was completely transformed.
That story ends with Jesus speaking these words: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." (Luke 19:10).
If we are to be like Jesus, then that too must be our mission. You see, you and I have the hope to offer, we have the solution to the problem, we have the love of God for people. God has entrusted that message to us, and called us to go out into the world, to all the places where people are lost and hurting, and to take the message and live the message in a way that offers freedom and forgiveness and salvation to a people whose senses are dull, whose spirits are dead, who are in need of the love of God.
Not only has God entrusted that message to us, He has equipped us with everything we need to have success in the sharing of that message. And, if we will take that trust and that equipping, step out of these church walls and perhaps out of secluded lives of retreat, the promise of Jesus is that the gates of hell will not stand against us.
When we get the chance to step back and see our lives, our world, our church through the eyes of God and through the priorities of God, it tends to adjust our perspective. Maybe we’ve missed the obvious, gotten distracted by lesser priorities, had our vision clouded. Sort of like the time that the Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After their tent was all set up, they fell sound asleep. One hour later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says, "Kemo-Sabe, look towards sky, what you see?"
The Lone Ranger replies, "I see millions of stars."
"What that tell you?" asked Tonto.
The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute, then says, "Astronomically speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially millions of planets.
Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo.
Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning.
Theologically, it’s evident the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What’s it tell you, Tonto?"
Tonto is silent for a moment, then says, "Kemo-Sabe, you dumb dumb. Someone stole tent."
As I reflect on what God has been telling me over the past month, I’m coming back to the central point in all of Scripture – God really does love humanity, and is desperately longing for people to be transformed by His love. God desperately loves you, and wants you to be transformed by His love and to share His love for others, and then to let that love challenge us to deeper obedience which in turn leads us deeper into a full, vibrant, significant, challenging, exciting life.
Saving people is the very top of God’s agenda. Sometimes in the church, we get focused on what God is doing among us and miss looking at what God is doing outside of us. We get focused on us, and on our needs, and on caring for each other, and all of those are good things but we must constantly be reminded that Jesus came “to seek and save the lost.” That is Luke 19:10. That God’s call is for us to “go and make disciples of all nations”. That is Matt 28:19-20. That “(we) will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on (us); and (we) will be (His) witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." That is Acts 1:8. That God has blessed us so that we may be a blessing. That is Gen 12:1-4. That God has gifted us so that we may serve others, that’s Eph 4; that God has freed us so that we may show others the way to freedom, that is 2 Cor 3:17. And that God has adopted us as His Children (Gal 4), so that we might be sent with His authority (John 20:21), so that His light might shine in the darkness, and the darkness will not over come it (John 1:5).
Imagine, for a moment, that we are standing before Jesus our King. We hear Him share His love for lost people, we see Him talk about the joy that comes when the lost are found and forgiven, we see Him weep as He shares stories of those trapped in destructive, empty lives enslaved to sin, and we see Him turn to us and say the same words Isaiah heard: “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” We hear Him promise to equip us with everything we need, we hear Him promise to fill us with the very presence of the Holy Spirit, we hear Him promise that this really is the road to an abundant life, and we hear Him ask again, “who will go” into our world and “make disciples”? Who will take the love we have received and pass it on?
It is not about a church program, it is not about finding the right gimmick or strategy or technique. It is about us going, and sharing our lives with those in our path, and pointing them to Jesus. It is about living the abundant life which we only discover when we serve others. It is about obedience to our King.
My friend Greg, whom I talked with on the deck of the fishing lodge, asked me what church I pastor, and when I said Laurier Heights Baptist, he said “on 142 Street? just south of the traffic circle?? I ride my bike right past your front door every Sunday morning…” Right past our doors, every week.
How many more people are like that, whom God brings right across our paths every week, with opportunities to share the incredible gift of love that God has given us? My friends, my deep conviction is that obeying our King’s command to take His love into our world and seeing people become aware of the love of God for them will fill us with such joy, such purpose, and such significance that we will gladly invest our lives in following Jesus out, into the world, so that God’s desire from 1 Tim 2:4 might become a reality: “God… wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”
The first step is to pray. You and I can love, can share our lives, can talk about what God has done for us, but only God changes hearts. Only the Holy Spirit convicts of sin. Only Jesus saves. That passage I read earlier, from Rom 8, which ends with the Spirit helping us, gets more specific: “26In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”
So I want to end with a call to pray – fervently, daily, specifically – for individuals who are far from God to be brought near to God. Will you join? Will you pray?? Very simply do this: in your bulletin on your sermon notes page there is a tear off portion for you to fill in – either the name of a person you would like us to pray for, or your name if you will commit to pray, or both. I’ll compile them and send them along. And we will join our prayers with the longing of God’s heart, and we will see God’s Kingdom come, and His will be done.
