Maximum Impact # 5
Breaking out of the Box - Dream!
On Wednesday morning, I stood among excited students at Good Shepherd Christian Academy. The older ones laughed, swapped stories, and postured to impress each other with their summer tales. The little ones quietly looked around, wondering about this new world they were entering - some fearful, some eager! As I watched it all, I let myself dream for a moment.
Who would these children be in 10, 20, 30 years?
Who was I talking to when I spoke to them?
What would they take from GSCA that would help them to become a productive, happy adult living in the service of God?
I have friends who lead churches who ask me,
“Why do you keep your school? They are expensive, draining a lot of time and money from other church work.”
Their remarks make sense to them because they do not share my dream. They just see lots of work and tons of money. But in my dream, I see the adults these children can become as we sow discipleship principles into their lives!
Tragically, many people are so consumed with the immediate that they will not dream.
I don’t know who first said this, but it is so very true... “The tyranny of the urgent drives the important from our lives!” You may think you’re too busy to dream, to think about a different way to live.
Or you may not dream because you have been told not to dream by others who fail to understand the power of a dream! Hans Finzel lists the statements that kill organizations stealing the dreams of those who lead them. They will kill your personal dreams, too. Sadly, I have to admit to saying some of these things to dreamers around me! I imagine you’ve heard most of these before:
1. That’s impossible!
2. We don’t do things that way around here!
3. We’ve never done it that way.
4. It’s just too radical!
5. We tried something like that before and it didn’t work, so what you think this time is any different?
6. I wish it were that easy!
7. When you grow up, you’ll understand.
8. Let’s get real.
9. It’s not our policy.
10. How dare you suggest I’m wrong about that? - Change is Like a Slinky, Northfield, 2004
Those around us are always ready to tell us why we shouldn’t, why we can’t, and how great a failure we will be if we ignore their advice. But sometimes the smartest guys in the world get it wrong. Here are a couple of examples of smart people who failed to see the possibilities.
· The Internet... will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.--Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld, 1995.
· The New York Times, in 1939, asserted that "The problem with television is that the people must sit and keep their eyes glued to a screen: the average American family hasn't time for it."
· IBM chairman Thomas J. Watson predicted in 1943 that there was a world market for "about five computers."
· “Man will never fly” so said the father of the Wright brothers’ father. He was an Episcopalian bishop who believed that flying was reserved for angels.
· Mark Twain decided not to invest in Alexander Graham Bell’s new invention, the telephone, believing it an interesting device without many practical applications. Instead he financially backed a cumbersome typesetting machine that bankrupted him!
Bad Predictions, Elsewhere Press, Laura Lee
Now, let’s bring this to our subject of living for Maximum Impact, Making a Difference.
I have no interest in being just another motivational speaker who tells you that you can have all you want, get what you want, and become rich or powerful! But, I do want to tell you this morning that God has a purpose for you, a place in His world uniquely shaped to your gifts, experiences, and interests.
Living in the center of His will is the way to have maximum impact, and it requires us to dream the dreams He gives us and then to take the risk of living them!
In the book of Genesis, chapter 37, we meet a young son of Israel (better known as Jacob!) for whom God has some very big plans. He clues the teenager into His plans with a dream.
READ - Genesis 37: 2, 5-11 PB 60
What a dream for a teenager who was near the end of the birth order, a person whose brothers do not respect him all that much. But remember this! He had to wait and work for that dream!
Dreams don’t ‘just happen’ to be fulfilled. WE have to own our dreams, apply ourselves to make them reality.
Joseph lived with integrity while he lived through a living Hell for the next 20 years. His brothers betrayed him and sold him as a slave. His employer’s wife tried to seduce him and when he turned her down, had him imprisoned as a sexual predator. Friends in prison that he helped out, forget him when they went free. But God never forget the promise, and I have to believe that Joseph never forgot the dream! Eventually he became Prime Minister of Egypt and saved his people from annihilation.
I wonder how many times when he was going through tough stuff, he remembered the dream and drew strength from it.
Ill. - my own calling as a teenager, often remembered when discouraged or weary.
Has God given you a dream?
Have you listened and prayed to hear what HE wants to say to you?
Most of us, when we hear God whisper a dream into our lives, start to tell ourselves and Him why we can’t do it, won’t try it, shouldn’t risk it!
What have you told God that He cannot do? Well, then, what have you assumed that God would not do?
God can’t change my marriage.
God won’t help me find true joy.
God can’t lead to me emotional wholeness.
God won’t help me break my addiction.
God can’t secure my future.
Let me invite you to take a look at another story in the Bible this morning. The book of Acts tells us about a day when God blew away Peter’s assumptions both about what He will do and who He loves!
Our text is found in Acts 10.
Before we read the text, let me give you some background.
The Jews of that time, and later on, Jews who became Christ-followers, were totally convinced that they ‘owned’ God. They were certain that they were the ‘chosen people,’ that God loved exclusively. For at least the first decade of the church, the Gospel was exclusively preached to Jews. Everybody believed that you had to eat kosher food, be circumcised, and worship on the Sabbath - to be acceptable to God. It didn’t occur to anyone that the Gospel should be preached to Romans or Greeks! After all, they all ‘knew’ God didn’t love those people.
You might be thinking, but didn’t they know Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel?”
Yes, they did. However, they heard His words with a set of filters that caused them to think – “Go preach to Jewish people only!” Even the leaders of the Christian sect had locked God’s Gospel in a box that said, “For Jews only.” Then God’s Spirit gave a puzzling dream to Peter. Let’s read it.
READ 10:9-35
That day Cornelius and his family became disciples of Jesus Christ and a whole dimension Christianity opened up.
This story doesn’t like much of big deal to us. Most of us are Gentiles and most of the Christians we know are Gentiles! But, 2,000 years ago this was BIG news! The dream started a change in his thinking, his experience of seeing what God could do the following two days in a Roman household changed his life!
Like Peter, there are some in this room today, who are sincerely wrong in our assumptions about God and His works! We may think that we know His Word and that we are being responsive to His will. However, we may have been taught to think in such a way that we have a set of filters that changes the colors of the real picture.
Having known God for a length of time, we become quite certain that we know all that He does and exactly how He acts. Because we have experienced God at work, we assume we know all of His work.
Down through history, good people have violently disagree over who God is and what He does and why He does it! Violently they argue and hurl labels at each other – blind, stupid, heretic, ......
And all the while the work of God is hindered by the human limits on His vast creativity. Some issues that are allowed to divide Believers who are so sure that they have found the exclusive Truth are:
End Times Doctrines, Baptisms, Gifts of the Holy Spirit,
Styles of Worship, Church Organizations, Non-traditional ministries....
Do you need a fresh vision?
Do you need new eyes, open ears that allow you to re-discover new perspectives about God, His work, and His people?
In addition to changing some of our assumptions about Himself, God also may need to change assumptions we’ve made about ourselves! God has a calling for you! Fulfilling that calling may seem an impossibility – to you and/or others!
You may be the greatest skeptic of all, asking “what could God possibly do with me?”
IF I attempted to answer that for you, I would be building a box for God.
What might God ask you to do? I do not know! But as long as you search the Scripture and do not violate the eternal principles laid down in that revelation, you can be pleasantly surprised at his wonderful creativity in your life. Don't be closed up. Remember God does not limit His work, His plans, or His callings to the tallest, the smartest, or the Harvard grads!
"Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”?
That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
You’ll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God’s master stroke, I didn’t try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy. I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did—Jesus crucified. I was unsure of how to go about this, and felt totally inadequate—I was scared to death, if you want the truth of it— and so nothing I said could have impressed you or anyone else.
But the Message came through anyway. God’s Spirit and God’s power did it, which made it clear that your life of faith is a response to God’s power, not to some fancy mental or emotional footwork by me or anyone else. " (1 Corinthians 1:26-2:5, The Message)
Don't take as your motto the 7 last words of a church- "We’ve never done it that way before." Instead, come asking God to use you in whatever way he wants to. Listen to his prompting as he directs you to unique expressions of your service to him. Others may stand away and accuse. Many may mock. But if God has spoken to you, who are you to oppose him?
Let’s pray for an awakening like that which changed Peter’s ministry. I encourage you to pray with an open heart, to let the Spirit of God inspire your dreams, to fill your mind with His incredible wisdom and creativity! If we want to live to make a difference, it will certainly mean allowing Him to take us past where we are comfortable. It will mean allowing the Spirit to lead us into situations we would not choose for ourselves. It will mean risking confrontation with others and criticism from those who are satisfied with the ‘status quo.’ It will mean questioning assumptions that we may have accepted as ‘the Truth’ for most of our life!
And, we will become people of Maximum Impact!
One of our values in our church is that we are an Accelerating group. By that we mean that we aim to encourage people to dream, to take risk, to live outside of the box. Do we mean that, OR are those just nice words on our bulletin?
Only you can answer that. But I hope you’ll listen carefully this week, and when someone entrusts their dream to you, you will prayerfully encourage them, appropriately guide them, and ask God to make it plain!
Please know that I am not making a case for –
1. Doing "new" things for the sake of novelty,
2. Doing “weird” things in the name of Jesus Christ, or
3. For naively accept every "new teaching" that appears in a Christian magazine or that is preached by your favorite TV Pastor!
We need the discernment that is a gift of the Spirit: We must test ideas, compare doctrine with doctrine and with the Holy Scripture. However, to be bound by tradition for tradition sake, to become deaf to the new music of life, and close our minds to the dreams that God gives to His people today,
is to invite spiritual ineffectiveness and ultimately, death.
Don't put your God in a box!
Don’t know if you’re ready or able for change?
Then trust Him.
Joseph’s dream kept him faithful through 2 decades of difficulties.
A dream transformed Peter’s thinking and led him to preach the Gospel to the world!
God has a dream for you... Will you let Him work in you, through you?
Jeremiah 29:11-14 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you!” declares the LORD.
