Most churches stay on automatic pilot on default settings such as:

• Keeping people happy
• Loyalty to history and heritage
• Maintaining long time ministries
• Survival
• Budgets and buildings
• Strong personalities

Every one of these default settings will ultimately lead us off course. Every one of them will ultimately crash the plane. Yet, they feel safe to us and we love safety. However, we are anything but safe, for the will of God is never safe. It leads us into the wilderness, on wild journeys against great challenges, and to the cross which we must all take up for ourselves. Faith and safety are antithetical. At the end of the day only two things matter:

• The mission (why we exist) and,
• The vision (where we are going)

We need to be challenged, to have imaginations captured, to attempt to do with God…things that we could never accomplish on our own. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians is his prayer for us too.

“For this reason I kneel before the father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge…. that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.”

“Throughout all generations,” he says. What the church needs is the power that comes from “a love that surpasses knowledge,” “a power at work in us,” “a power able to do more than we ask or imagine.”

Our first task is to look to see where God is already showing up…and he is! Every time this church has stepped out beyond the comfort zone, God has shown up. He showed up a couple of Sunday nights ago, when young woman from Arms of Hope shared powerful testimony of what God has done in her life. Months ago He showed up as he gave us the opportunity to buy Him 66 acres of land for a purpose bigger than we can get our heads around. We know that He can use all those 66 acres. We just don’t know how He’s going to do it, yet. And God has been with us through the great recession, so that, not only have we paid our bills we have updated a decrepit looking church building and added ministers and missionaries.

I have a vision for this church. The vision is for “more than we can ask or imagine.” It’s a vision where we are working hard to discern what God is up to…constantly looking and asking that question. And it is a vision where we are praying for him to reveal his will to us.

One small way that we going to do that is with a day of prayer on Friday, May 24. We would like as many people as possible to come and take up a vigil to pray for individual prayer needs and to pray that God will reveal His vision for our church.

It is somewhat comical to me that there are Christians alive today, that don’t believe that humans are having an effect on the environment and that we humans don’t have the power to bring about total destruction of our planet. These same Christians also believe what the Bible says – that God, in Genesis gave humans the world, twice, to lord over everything in it (Gen 1:28, 9:3). These same Christians see that time after time the sins of even one person bring calamity to whole nations. It is almost as if Christians today are confused about the true cause of death and destruction here on earth. But is it their job to fix this earth and the people in it? What is our Christian role in this place? Let’s check in with our leader and let him dictate our place on this earth.

First let’s see what he, Jesus, did, and then let’s ask him what we are supposed to do. Jesus brought us hope and grace. He loved when others hated and condemned. He gave us hope that in the future God will bring about a new heaven and new earth, and that anyone who wants to be a part of this newness is welcomed, no matter what their sin. He comforted the sick, helped the hurting, and spoke grace to the sinful that were in despair. He even celebrated and feasted with people at the Passover and he brought the best wine to a wedding. So what does he want from us?

Go where I send you and speak peace he says in Luke 10. If they will not accept your peace, dust off your feet and walk away. It is our job to spread a message of peace and joy. Death isn’t the end. Life isn’t limited to what we can sense with our senses. Pain isn’t the final state of being. We are called to love, when love doesn’t make sense. We are called to have joy and to celebrate. We are called to endure persecution. We are called to be set apart, to be different in such meaningful and attractive ways that people will want to come and know our Lord. We are called to have great celebrations for the good that God’s wisdom and his love bring.

So, in general, how are we doing? Well if you watch the media, “conservatives” seem to be the unhappy, fear-mongering people. They attack others for their sinful beliefs, all while hiding their own. They preach a message of death and destruction. Their celebrations, like marriage receptions, baptisms, and healings are constrained, rigidly defined events lacking the spontaneity and spirit of joy, confined to a tradition based on fear.

If you ask me; we are growing and learning to celebrate more. We are faced with persecution and we are learning to respond with love and to celebrate the joy of salvation and the joy of doing things the way God intended. We have a long way to go and persecution to endure, but we are learning to be joyous, focusing on whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable and praising God for these things.