4. Something is happening (Preview to a Vision week 4)
January 31, 2010
God is Bored
I find that from time to time I really love a good heist movie. It’s really fun to watch a movie with a brilliant robber who uses his mental prowess to successful rob a bank or something of the like. The problem is not all robbers are as brilliant as they might consider themselves to be. I read about one such robber and his story made me laugh. I believe this was the man’s first attempt at robbing a store and I sincerely hope he didn’t spend too much time planning it and here’s why: 1. His target was H&J leather and Firearms which is a gun shop that specializes in handguns. So he chose to rob at gun point a gun shop in a state where it is legal and many people do carry concealed firearms. 2. The shop was full of customers who were buying firearms. 3. To enter the shop our brilliant would be robber had to step around a marked police car that was parked at the front door. 4. Upon entering the store he saw a uniformed officer standing at the counter having coffee before work. This is the point in which most clever robbers would reconsider their plan and walk out. Not our robber who had more boldness then brains. He entered the store, saw the officer, announced that it was hold-up and then fired a few wild shots from his .22 target pistol into the air. The officer instinctively returned fire with his 9mm Glock and the store clerk with his .50 Desert Eagle. In addition there were several customers in the store who drew their firearms and show back. Paramedics pronounced him dead on the scene. They found 47 expended cartridges in the shop. An autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds from seven different weapons. I just wonder wouldn’t this man’s life be an argument against evolution? If Darwin’s theory is built around survival of the fittest, how did this man make it adulthood?
We reject the idea that man evolved by chance but believe that we were created by a personal, loving, and powerful God. But even still we sometimes fail to recognize just how powerful and how creative God is. The universe is ordered so specifically tuned so perfectly in a way that enables life to exist on earth. From the very ratio of cells in the universe to the location and distance of earth from the sun and the moon and our path and rotation in our solar system we see that if any of these things were changed even a little human life would not be possible. I want you to picture thousands of dials all set very specifically much like a sound board. The difference being if any of these dials were turned even a little life on earth would not be possible. The odds of just one dial being tuned by chance to enable life on earth is 1 in 10 to the 53rd power. That’s just one dial. Each of these thousands of different dials are tuned perfectly to enable human life on earth. If just one of those dials shifted ever so slightly it would destroy the possibility for human existence all together.
That number is pretty abstract though so imagine this: cover the entire North American continent with dimes and stack those dimes all the way up to the moon which is about 239,000 miles. Then imagine there were one hundred billion continents the same size as North America and pile dimes on them from here to the moon. North America is approximately 9,450,000 square miles. Take that times a hundred billion and cover it in dimes. Then stack those dimes 239,000 miles high. Then imagine you painted one dime blue and you randomly tossed that one blue dime into the pile of dimes. Then you blindfolded a friend and had him pick one dime. Do that 100 times each time mixing up the dimes and inserting the blue dime randomly. The odds he will pick out the blue dime 100 times in a row would actually be greater than the odds of just one of these dials being tuned in such a way to enable the existence of human life.
Let’s look at it differently. A few years ago I had the opportunity to go to Rome. While we were there one of the places we visited was St. Peter’s Basilica. This is one of the most beautiful buildings in existence. The entire interior is made of gold and marble and this is said to be the resting place of St. Peter. There are ornate designs and statues carved all over. It is a truly wonderful thing to see. What impressed me more than the Basilica itself though was the courtyard. It’s called the square even though its really more of a circle. This incredible courtyard contains 284 columns that run four rows deep, two on either side. Each of these columns stands around 43 feet tall and about 10 feet wide. These two sides to the square form a perfect ellipse so perfect that if you stand on one of two places you can look across this half circle of enormous columns running two rows deep on each side and you will only see one row. The exterior of this Basilica is built so symmetrically that from a single spot and entire half circle of columns are hidden. I remember just standing there in awe thinking to myself how brilliant the architect who designed this had to be. When you look at a beautiful painting you think an artist must have painted this. When you look at a great computer you think there must be a Steven Jobs. Yet for whatever reason when we look at a world far more complex than any of these buildings or man made things people don’t want to see a designer even when it is so obvious there was a design. We try to convince ourselves all of this happened by chance.
A few weeks ago I heard about these oriels in Africa that build nests that look like purses hanging down from trees. They lay there eggs in these nests and that is where they will raise their young. There is another kind of bird called the Cow bird. These birds come in and leave there eggs in oriel nests leaving their young to be raised by the oriels. Cow birds are like the dead beats the animal kingdom. They just go drop their kids off to be raised by someone else. There is a danger the baby oriels face called bot flies. These flies actually hurt and can kill the baby oriels. If the oriel builds their nests near a bee hive they know the bees will prevent bot flies and so they throw out the cow bird egg before it hatches. If however the nest is in a tree with no bees the mother birds knows they could have bot flies so the oriel will raise the cow bird because the cow bird baby will eat the bot flies off of the baby oriels to protect them. How do these oriels instinctively know to do that? If there are bees they get rid of the adopted bird because he is just a pest if there are not they raise him because he helps out around the house.
Or think about the honeybee. When a bee finds honey it goes back to the hive and it stands pointing in the direction of the honey. Then it does a dance maybe to R. Kelly’s I believe I can fly. I know it’s terrible. While the bee dances the other bees count how many times it spins around and that tells them how far away the honey is. Bees have rhythm with a purpose. Where did these bees learn to do that?
In the Amazon there is a lizard they call the Jesus Christ lizard. They call it that because this lizard turns water into wine. No I’m kidding. But this lizard actually does walk on water.
I think about the world around us so many different animals and creatures both great and small. Each one has its own purpose and function. Each one is unique in its own way. I look at the world that God has made and I see the brilliance of His design. I also see His creativity. That God didn’t just make the world function He made it beautiful. God made the waters of the oceans softly reflect the light of the sun. God changed the color of the skies for sun set and sun rise so that every day would begin and end with something beautiful and majestic. I think about things like the aurora borealis or the northern lights with there many colors dancing through the nights skies. I think about that God that has made all of this by speaking it into existence and you know what comes to my mind?
I think that God is bored out of His mind. Think about it God who created the cosmos by speaking it into existence desires to be a part of our lives. I think that God is bored with the little faith of our American churches. When was the last time we did something, anything that would require God to act? When was the last time our churches stepped out in faith to do something so big we would need God to be apart of it? Honestly I believe that God is sitting up heaven just waiting from someone to do something that would require Him to be involved. I think He’s like a dad in a pool trying to encourage His child to jump in. He’s just there waiting for so long I think He’s saying: just jump, even if its not right into my arms just jump and I will catch you. God has all this power. He has all this creativity and what as His church are we doing that would even allow Him to use it? What if we changed that? What if we stopped being another religious institution? What if we put religion to death and became a people who dared to step out faith so much so that we challenged God to act in our lives? I think God is just waiting for us to do that. So what if we did?
What if we threw out all the ideas of nominal growth or incremental growth? What if we exploded? Could you imagine if just us, this 120 people went out and loved the world like Jesus? Can you imagine the effect 120 people could have if they loved others more than themselves? What if we prayed something so big that we could never do it? What if we pursued something so great that we could never hope to achieve it? What if we just lived in such a way that challenged God to act in our lives? What if we had a vision so big that only God could get credit for it if we pulled it off? I have to tell you something is happening here. It’s been in the process for some time now but something is happening. My hope and my desire is that when this happens we would never be the same. My prayer is that when something happens in our lives we would be forever changed. That we would be transformed from religious people to Spiritual people. God has challenged us to do something so big that we can never do it on our own and you know what, that’s the point. God doesn’t want to do it Himself. He doesn’t want us to do ourselves. God wants to do it with us. There is a reason Matthew 28 isnt called the great mission but the great co-mission God wants to do this together. He wants us to be involved and to rely on Him. God wants us to dive in so much that we are forced to rely on Him for I’ll be honest God is bored with our meager faith. God is bored with our trivial acts of worship. God is bored because so often in our churches He is not part of the process. So often we keep God at a distance and even when we worship Him we don’t always invite Him to be a part of it.
Honestly for about 3 years now I have been thinking about what Cornerstone needs to do as a church. Recently I’ve just been realizing that what we need to do is stop being a church. We need to stop focusing everything we do on what happens inside these four walls. We need to get out into the world and make a difference in the lives of the people in our community. We need to impact this city, this state, our country, and our world for Jesus. You might think that’s too big a task for a little church in Joplin. Yes it is. That is the point. This task is too big for us. So when we try to accomplish it, when we try to make something happen we have to make God the primary driving force because we cannot do this without Him. I know that the idea sounds pretty radical but something is happening here and something needs to change. Its time for us to stop being a church in the religious sense and start being a connecting point to Jesus.
God is bored what do you say we give Him something to do? Let’s forget about everything we have done in our past. Let’s forget the mistakes, all the failure, and all the embarrassment and let’s start over. Let’s start out just tapping in to the power of God. Let’s start out by tapping in to the power that spoke the universe into existence.
This is the beginning of a radical vision for our church I am going to have to spend all of next week just unpacking it. But our vision is to become passionate followers of Jesus. Here’s what that looks like: love. You want to know what is so big that we cannot hope to do it without God? Love. You want to know what challenge we could give that would require God to do something? Love. You want to know what will impact and change this world for Jesus? Love. I think that God is bored because are not loving to our full potential. I think that our love gets God excited. I think that our love is what challenges Him to move in our lives. God is a loving God and He cannot ignore love. What we need to do is be something the honestly the church as a whole has not been for a long time: love. We need to go out into the world and to love people like Jesus loved them. This week we start over because something is happening and something needs to change. For the last hundred years at least our churches have watched as the world moved further and further from God. We have sat idly by while children starved, people died of curable diseases, and so many lived in radical poverty. We live in a world we know needs Jesus. What are we going to about it? Will we continue to sit back and watch, or maybe we will be willing to start over and to forget about practically, to stop worrying about if we can, but to just go out and do something so big that God would step in to be a part of it. I am tired of doing the Christian thing, of living the routine and the ritual. If you are tired of that too I want to invite you to join me as something is happening, let’s make Cornerstone a new church, let’s make it a church that God gets excited about.
