Blow up your small dreams…

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Yesterday I was privileged enough to have been able to go to the Global Leadership Summit that was put on by Willow Creek church and the brain child of pastor Bill Hybills. The summit was awesome and I was able to listen to some amazing speakers, from clinical psychologist Dr Henry Cloud to  New York Times best-selling author, speaker and consultant Patrick Lencioni… all spoke on leadership and all passed on some really valuable knowledge .

All day I was excited about hearing 31 year old pastor Steven Furtick, and I like him for a number of reasons… he tells it like it is, and he packs no punches… but most of all I like him because he believes that the word of God is exactly that… the WORD of GOD.

One of the things he said which has stuck with me since hearing him…

“If  the size of your vision for your life isn’t intimidating to you, there’s a good chance it’s insulting to God” –

Wow… when Steven said that I was almost caught off guard… and the more I mulled it over in my mind the more correct he was… and I hate him for that… I was comfortable… and now I have to deal with stuff.

Before the day is done you would have travelled 1.3 million miles on your annual trip around the sun… Earth is spinning round its axis approximately 1000 miles per hour… yet it seems to me that we don’t really trust God enough for the small stuff… and to make matters worse we seem to take the big stuff (like us staying in orbit) for granted!

So why don’t we put our trust in God?

Steven took the example of Joshua asking God to make the sun stand still…

What was he thinking?

Did he actually know what he was asking?

With my small brain I can’t work out how it was done… but it’s in the Bible so however it was done, I’ll believe it – but it made me think of my own life – how big are my dreams?

We feel that conviction in our hearts to do something… and then we do something that is just enough to make us feel like we’ve done something, but we wonder why that uneasy feeling doesn’t leave us… or it just keeps coming back.

An example that comes to mind is when we hear the stories of famine in Africa… it’s easy for us to throw money at it, or some may go even further than that, but it’s only really a token gesture… and if we are to be honest – we know it!

So… how big is your God?

Is he only a little bit bigger than what you can imagine?

Or is he so big he can  “accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” (Ephesians 3:20) – because if THAT is the God that you serve, then asking the creator of the universe to come into your life and do the impossible is very achievable…

However the risk is not doing  that… not believing that YOUR God can do ALL things, and your God becomes just as lifeless and boring as your own personal Christian life it’s one of the reasons people leave the church… their God isn’t BIG enough and when their faith is challenged their god is M.I.A.

So let me ask you this –

Are you going to let your Christian life out of YOUR comfort zone, so that God can be in HIS comfort zone, which is performing the impossible in the life of someone he cares so much for?

 

Related articles

• Leadership Summit 2011 | Steven Furtick – Audacious Faith (vialogue.wordpress.com)
• Steven Furtick and the Erosion of Orthodoxy (patristicsinmotion.wordpress.com)
• The Global Leadership Summit – Willow Creek Association (itunes.apple.com)