Today we’re completing our series on Second Chances.
We’ve been digging deeper into the Word of God to find out more about how God’s character as a wonderful Heavenly Father who gives us a multitude of opportunities to live life to the fullest!
One of the big factors in taking advantage of God’s opportunities is perspective. We need to learn to see things from God’s perspective. We need to be open to receive refreshing visions from God.
Before I get to how this works, let me give you a few examples of how perspective can make all the difference in the world.
These amusements come from an email that some of you may have seen. It’s called, "The way children see things."
NUDITY: I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a woman in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved. She was stark naked! As I was reeling from the shock, I heard my 5-year-old shout from the back seat, "Mom! That lady isn’t wearing a seat belt!"
HONESTY: My son Zachary, 4, came screaming out of the bathroom to tell me he’d dropped his toothbrush in the toilet. So I fished it out and threw it in the garbage. Zachary stood there thinking for a moment, then ran to my bathroom and came out with my toothbrush. He held it up and said with a charming little smile, "We better throw this one out too then, ’cause it fell in the toilet a few days ago."
KETCHUP: A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup to come out of the jar. During her struggle the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone. "It’s the minister, Mommy," the child said to her mother. Then she added, "Mommy can’t come to the phone to talk to you right now. She’s hitting the bottle."
MORE NUDITY: A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the women’s locker room. When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with ladies grabbing towels and running for cover. The little boy watched in amazement and then asked, "What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a little boy before?"
ELDERLY: While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4-year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds. The various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers and wheelchairs, unfailingly intrigued her. One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass. As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered, "The tooth fairy will never believe this!"
SCHOOL: A little girl had just finished her first week of school. "I’m just wasting my time," she said to her mother. "I can’t read, I can’t write, and they won’t let me talk."
BIBLE: A little boy opened the big family Bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible. He picked up the object and looked at it. What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages. "Mama, look what I found," the boy called out. "What have you got there dear?" With astonishment in the young boy’s voice, he answered, "I think it’s Adam’s underwear!"
Now I read all of those to impress upon you how life is largely a matter of perspective.
Our Scripture for today, Acts chapter 10 contains one of the most striking stories on perspective in the entire Bible. It tells of God working in the heart and life of a Roman army captain named Cornelius.
Cornelius was a great guy but he hadn’t yet heard the Good News about Jesus. He believed in God, gave generously to the poor and he even prayed regularly.
Then one day God sent an angel to tell him that his prayers had been heard and that he should send someone for a man named Simon Peter. God was going to use the great apostle to share the Good News with Cornelius and his family. God even told him exactly where to have his messengers look for Peter, at Simon the tanner’s house by the seaside in the city of Joppa.
While the messengers from Cornelius were going to get the apostle, God was simultaneously speaking to Peter in a vision in which he was told to eat food that Jews were normally not supposed to eat. At first Peter must have thought this was a test of his resolve to obey the rules, so he refused to eat the food. Then the Scripture says this:
Acts 10:15 (Amp) And the voice came to him again A SECOND TIME, "What God has cleansed and pronounced clean, do not you defile and profane by regarding and calling common and unhallowed or unclean."
God was preparing the great apostle to share the Good News about Jesus with the Gentile household of Cornelius. But before this could be done the apostle’s perspective had to change.
One of the many great by-products of finding God is finding out that He gives you the potential to see things from a brand new perspective! He gives you the potential to see things differently!
I say "potential" because our Scripture today illustrates how, even though the Apostle Peter is one of the most notable followers of Christ ever, even he had to graduate to a proper view of things, a God-view.
Peter was steeped in Jewish bias against Gentiles. God had to repeat for a second time that Pete’s view was not God’s view.
This story emphasizes how we need to ask God to help us see things from His perspective. From time to time we need to be open to a refreshing vision from God. Our problems are often a matter of perspective. Our view is not always God’s view and we sorely need God’s view.
The story of Cornelius and Simon Peter teaches us several VALUES for receiving a refreshing vision from God.
First of all,
1. We need to look a second time at our MOTIVES.
Peter is not the only Christ follower to ever have problems with being willing to exchange his perspective for God’s. When he initially refused God’s overtures in the vision God gave him, he probably not only thought of his strict Jewish heritage but also of other Jews. He may have thought to himself, "What will my family and friends think of me if I make changes in how I worship?"
God’s Word isn’t telling us in this story that we shouldn’t be concerned about how others see us – it is telling us to care more about what God thinks than what man thinks.
The purpose for our life is to please God. We were created to serve Him. When that becomes our primary motivation in life other things begin to fall into place. If you worry too much about pleasing man you will have problems for a lot of reasons. For one thing, people are fickle. You can’t always please other people because they change. And you can’t please every other person on the planet because there are billions of them.
But since there’s just one God it’s easier to focus on pleasing Him. He’s not fickle. He never changes! And when you live to please Him you are fulfilling the purpose for which you were created!
When you live primarily to please other people you do weird stuff.
I can’t think of any aspect of our culture that illustrates this any better than warning labels.
Each year the Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch sponsors a "Wacky Warning Label Contest." The contest is meant to reveal how lawsuits, and concern about lawsuits, have created a need for common sense warnings on products.
Here were the winners last year in 2005:
The fourth place award went to a label on an electric blender that warned, "Never remove food or other items from the blades while the product is operating."
Third place went to a warning on a digital thermometer that can be used to take a person’s temperature two different ways: "Once used rectally, the thermometer should not be used orally."
The second place award went to a popular scooter for children that had a warning label on it that read, "Warning, this product moves when used."
And the first place winner was the toilet brush label that warned, "Do not use for personal hygiene."
Those are ridiculous. But it has occurred in our culture because of an inordinate amount of concern, because of lawsuits, over what people might think. We get off track when we bend too much to the concern of what others think.
Live your life to please God. That’s the perspective Simon Peter needed. That’s the perspective we need.
When you live to please God you are putting yourself in line to receive refreshing vision that can only come from Him!
2. We need to look a second time at our METHODS.
Jesus said, "No one can come to me, unless the Father who sent me makes them want to come." (John 6:44a CEV)
God was making Cornelius want to come to Him. So he was also dealing with the Apostle Peter to go to Cornelius.
In Scripture, the action verb for the Christ follower involved in evangelism is always, "Go." For the seeker it is always, "Come."
That’s the method. That’s God’s prescribed method. If you tinker with it you get a wrongly focused methodology. If you deviate from God’s motive your life gets out of groove. If you deviate from His method, your success is thwarted.
Focus your efforts on GOING to those people God is dealing with. People like Cornelius. GO to the people to whom God is dealing so they will COME to Him.
So how do we identify those people today?
Studies have shown who the people are who are the most receptive to the Good News about Jesus. Those are the people we need to go to – not the people we need to shun.
Who are those people? For one they are the people in transition: newly married, new parents, new home, new job, new school. Anyone who has something "new" going on in his or her life is often more open to hearing about the help that God offers them.
People in tension are often open to the Good News about Jesus: People experiencing problems in their marriage, those needing divorce recovery, and those in need of recovery from addictions.
It’s ironic. The church has often had a history of turning it’s back on the people God is wanting them to go to! We’re like Peter. Peter refused to eat the food in his vision that was ceremonially unclean. Today we sometimes fight the vision because we believe we’re being some kind of holy by not hanging out with the "unclean" people.
We need to be reminded again and again of the words of our Lord Jesus in Luke 5:31b-32 (NLT) "Healthy people don’t need a doctor--sick people do. I have come to call sinners to turn from their sins, not to spend my time with those who think they are already good enough."
God’s method for sharing the Good News about Jesus is to go to the hungry and hurting.
Philip Yancey has some pertinent comments here:
"Taking God’s assignment seriously means that I look at the world upside down, as God does. Instead of seeking out people who stroke my ego, I find those whose egos need stroking; instead of important people with resources who can do me favors, I find people with few resources; instead of the strong, I look for the weak; instead of the healthy, the sick. Is not this how God reconciles the world to himself? Jesus came for the sinners and not the righteous, for the sick and not the healthy."
Yancey continues, "I cannot help but notice the tenderness with which Jesus treated people with wounds caused by moral failure. A Samaritan woman with five failed marriages, a dishonest tax collector, an adulteress, a prostitute, a disciple who denied him – all these received from Jesus forgiveness and reinstatement, not the judgment they deserved. Jesus saw in people not what they had been but what they could be, not their past but their future." (Christianity Today, May 2003)
3. We need to look a second time at our MATERIALS.
Peter’s diet was kosher. He only ate what the law said a good Jew could eat. But in order to reach everyone that God wanted to be reached he would have to broaden his menu.
I want to take this opportunity to update you on some materials we’re gearing up to use in our church to broaden our outreach.
a. A possible name change.
Why would the leadership of our church be interested in asking for your vote to change the name of our church? Well it isn’t for us. We can live with the name that we have. Its for the unchurched. Studies of the unchurched, the people we’re trying to reach with the Good News about Jesus, indicate that they are often turned off by church names that include denomination labels.
And here’s the reason: they often feel or think, rightly or not, that words like "Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian," etc., mean they won’t fit in. We know that they can fit in, but it’s what they’re thinking that we have to realistically deal with.
Now please think about what I’m saying for just a minute.
Are we willing to change something about ourselves if it means we might take a mental roadblock out of the way of the unchurched? Is Simon Peter’s vision for us? Are we willing to change something because God wants us to reach someone with the Good News about Jesus?
If we change our church name we’re not going to change one thing about what we believe or teach and preach.
b. Literature announcing our church’s new location in this neighborhood.
We would have done this already but we want to see if we change our church name before we print any new literature.
We want to get colorful, professional, attractive literature that says to the unchurched that we are willing to make an investment in this community.
Some of it may be mailed to the homes in this area but for some of it we may need to your help distributing.
c. Establishing a presence on the Internet.
We need a church web page with links to activities, ministries, programs, sermons, Bible studies, small groups, etc.
There are other things we’re going to be doing. We’ve been meeting with the ministry teams and will continue to do so to get everyone’s input and involvement about outreach and ministry. But one thing I want you to especially pray and think about is…
d. Starting a new service in the Spring.
In other words I’d like for us to add another service where we would have two services on Sunday mornings. A contemporary service, much like we have now, at 9:45, and a more traditional service at 10:45 - for those of you who prefer singing songs out of the hymnbook (we would probably still project the words on the screens for convenience).
But you might have some unchurched family and friends you would want to invite to one service or the other, knowing they may have a preference of music style. Nothing wrong with preferring one style of music over another.
In your mind you might object that it doesn’t make sense to add another service since we haven’t completely filled up our worship center with one service yet. But there are several ideas behind this move. It would give us room to grow. It would give us more alternatives to offer Christ followers and the unchurched. We would be doubling our space with very little additional overhead. That’s good stewardship.
And don’t worry about the fear that we would possibly foster two separate congregations. I can tell you from past experience, having pastored a church that added a second Sunday morning service before, that this doesn’t happen.
One great reason, which is also another positive by-product of adding an additional worship service is; more people have an opportunity to get involved in ministry.
While one group of people is meeting in the worship center, another group can be ministering to the children. And then they could flip-flop for the next service.
You might teach a class of six, seven and eight-year-olds at 9:15 and then worship in the worship center at 10:45, or vice versa.
Is there extra work involved in this? Yes there is. But the dividends are well worth the investment of our time and talents. We can reach potentially more people for Jesus.
God may be asking our church right now at this important juncture in our history what he was asking Peter – to be open to a refreshing vision from Him!
I’ll hope and pray you’ll be a part of this! I hope and pray you can think of those who need Jesus who can be a part of it too!
