The Sermon God is Preaching

Two weeks ago a new friend mentioned something he was thinking through and talking about with his small group. He was asking himself and the people he loved, "What is the sermon God has been preaching?" When I asked him what he meant by that, he told me a couple of stories.

"When I was a kid," he said, "I would come home from Trick or Treat and eat all of my candy at once. I would just stuff my mouth full to keep my big brother from taking any. The problem was that all the flavors mixed together didn't taste very good and even though he was eating candy it didn't taste very good.

"Some time ago I was frustrated because I felt like I was supposed to be learning all this stuff. I felt like I should read all these books and listen to all these sermons and digest all these Bible classes and it was like I was at a huge buffet trying to eat everything at once. None of it tasted very good. One day I was thinking about this and I felt like the Lord said, 'I am not doing that to you. I am not trying to stuff you. I want you to feed on someting wonderful and good and let it melt in your mouth and digest and become a part of you.'"

Isn't that a great thought? Haven't you had times when you felt like you kept coming back to a theme? Haven't you noticed that it seems like a lesson or teaching keeps popping up over weeks or months or even years. It's like God keeps bringing me back around to a principle or a teaching. Sometimes I feel slow. But God with amazing patience keeps bringing me back. Maybe I should be paying more attention. I have a feeling that what God wants is for me not just to see it, but to get it until it becomes part of me.

I think my friend has a great question. What sermon has God been preaching to you lately?

Grace.

Prevenience

I have been working on this post for a while.

John 5:17 Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working."

What does this mean? Last weekend a group of us is spent some extended time considering this question. What does it mean that God is always at work? The old timers called it prevenience. It means that God is somehow at work in everyday normal life to accomplish his purpose. It means that God is going before us so that things are ready when we get there. Though it is sometimes clearly recognizable in retrospect, it is difficult to trace the hand of God as he moves.

For instance, when we read the story of Joseph we know with certainty that God was at work in those circumstances, but the text doesn't mention God directly. It is only later in life that Joseph can say, "What you meant for evil, God meant for good." He was able to see backward that there had been an unseen actor in his personal drama who was in fact the star of the show. Though Joseph made his contribution, he attributes the work to God.

It happens throughout scripture. Life for the children of God is filled with "coincidence". The sense is that God is up to something and people are chosen to participate in his grand design. Rather than imposing their will and shaping what happens, people seem to be moving along in a kind of unfolding drama.

This truth has profound implications for followers of Jesus. For instance, think about how evangelism changes if this is true. When I think of the evangelism in the NT it seems to me that the evangelists keep running into people who are primed or ready for the message. It seems to me that God had preveniently gone before them to get Lydia, Cornelius and the Eunuch ready for happened next. What if God is still doing that?

If this is true then it is a paradigm shifting thought for ministry. I don't go to LifeGroup or lead a LifeGroup hoping to make something happen. The burden for eternally significant ministry shifts from me to God. He is already at work. He is going before me. He is causing things to happen in the lives of the other members of my group and preparing them for whatever work comes next. I am responsible to pay very close attention to what he might be doing.

The signs of his work are not immediately obvious. They require a vigilant curiosity. They requrie an intense interest in the people around me and in what might be happening below the surface. To see them requires a heart prepared with prayer and listening. You can't be looking out for your own interests or your own good. To see the signs of God requires selflessness and love. You can't see the clues unless you believe that God is at work and he is interested in us knowing what he is up to.

So today God is working. He is moving. What if today you made it your goal to pay attention? What if today you made it your mission to keep your eyes open for indications that wherever you are God has already been and he is doing something for you to join in.

Randy's comment

I wanted to get this on the front page. I love my little brother.

Hey guys,
I'm intruding on your blog. It's a slow day here at the clinic, so I thought I'd add my little piece to the discussion.
I was at a men's retreat at my church this weekend. A guy named Randy Boyd reminded us that we have been promised the blessings of Abraham. We have inherited the new covenant, so we get to go beyond what Abraham was promised right into the throne romm of the Almighty, Loving, Perfect, Holy God of the universe.
Abraham, in just 4 generations went from being one man- the son of an idol worshipper- to being a clan. Not just a clan, but his great-grandson Joseph was the most powerful man in the world. Why? Because he was good? No. Because he was born into it? No. He was chosen by God. There is no other explanation for it. Read Romans if you doubt it. Esau was stronger and more loved than Jacob, but Isaac gave Jacob the blessing because God had chosen Jacob.
So, here's the point (for Joey and anyone else who's reading). You were chosen by God to be blessed. He made you His child. He doesn't choose most people, but He chose you. Dwell on that for a long, long time. Then believe God. He is Good. He loves you. And He owns the whole universe.
I often find myself slipping into the "just enough" mentality. I think God has just enough to meet my needs for today. That's not the truth! The Canaanite woman had it right when she told Jesus that the crumbs from His table were enough to satisfy her. He owns everything. He wants to give us all we can hold. He is not stingy. He is not holding back on us. As Psalm 81 says, "Open wide your mouth and I will fill it."
Instead of bucking it up for another day and striving to please Him by our own will power, let's just look to Him, marvel at His grace, and open our hands wide to receive His blessing. He will rain down His abundance on us in immeasurable ways.
I realized even as I was hearing this message that it is a dangerous one. Immediately I begin to envision televangelists with fancy cars and Rolex watches. John Piper said on his radio broadcast yesterday that every teaching in the Bible is dangerous. It is the most dangerous book in the world. There are precarious cliffs all around, and if we stray in any direction we will likely fall into heresy. So even if a teaching is dangerous, we cannot reject God's truth. God clearly promises abundant, bountiful, overflowing blessings to those who follow Him. Mark 10 says that there will be blessings in this life, and in the age to come.
Therefore, I don't have to be afraid of God's abundance. I long for it. I ask for it. I wait expectantly for it.
I am deeply afraid of my own sinful greedy heart. So I keep my hands open. When I sense my fingers beginning to curl up into a fist around one of God's blessings He leads me, like Abraham, to the altar of sacrifice where I give it away. Sometimes, like Isaac, God tells me to keep the gift. Other times He takes if from me, but always, always, always He replaces it with something more precious and joy-producing than what I gave to Him. It is definitely true that the most joy-producing blessings He gives in this life are in relationships- to Him and to others. In my life I have found that material blessings bring me a measure of joy, but it's like when I got free tickets to a Dallas Cowboys game. I enjoyed the game, but I will never go back because I had to fight the devil throughout the game to keep my eyes on the field or on my wife beside me and not on the cheerleaders. (That really happened.) The material things God gives are not bad or inherently evil (like the football game wasn't evil). It's just that I find myself having to fight harder to manage them.
You will probably be thankful to know that I have a patient ready now, so I'll stop here.
God is good. God loves His children. God loves to bless His kids with all that He can bless them with. So let's keep our hands open, and our minds thinking correctly about the joyful, generous God that we serve.

Maybe someday I'll blog about why all that makes me want to sell everything I have and give it to the poor.
In the joy and peace of Jesus,
Randy Brown

Today I blog

I love to blog. No, really, I do. I like the challenge and discipline of putting thoughts in more or less articulate words. So why has it been a month? I just looked at the blog and saw Joey Tilton's comment about the lifelessness of this blog. Then I saw that I hadn't posted since last month. Joey's right.

I have been thinking about why this happened. It wasn't that I don't like to blog. It's not even that I don't have anything to say. At least from my perspective, there are a number of important things that have captured my attention and stirred my heart recently. It's not even that I don't think this forum is important. I do. I wish more of us would engage in the conversation. (Right now, with a few notable exceptions, it's pretty one sided.) The bottom line? It's busyness. I have had a series of things--not necessarily important things, just things--calling for my attention.

Somehow I just put it off one day at time until now I look back and I didn't write anything in March. I am frankly astounded by the sneakiness of it. If you had asked me I would have measured the time in days, maybe weeks, but not months. How did this happen? Here is an interesting thought: In February I committed to blogging ever day for 40 days. I did it. is it coincidental or expected that this dry season follows such a period of intense determination? Maybe willpower and discipline don't result in the kind of lasting change I keep hoping for.

This isn't the first time I have experiencec this. Prayer, soaking in Scripture reading, scripture memorization, prayer time with kids, engaging in evangelistic cultivating and sowing...I could keep going but you get the point. How does this happen? Better yet, how do you stop it.

Here's my solution. You're reading it. There may other dry times. I cannot promise that I will blog every day. But I will today. I have broken lots of promises--to others, to myself, to God. But I think there is something powerful that happens when I realize it and start again. How did Paul put it? "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead." So today I blog. Will it change the world? Who knows for sure. I think probably not in any recognizable way. Nevertheless, today I blog.