Zondervan Blog

Seek and ye shall be surprised [Excerpt]

 

Yesterday Mark Batterson shared his experience with trying to Force a Miracle. Here's the story's unexpected conclusion — a real-life example of "seek and ye shall find," and how the finding will often surprise ... ye!

I love how this story hints that God is directing the scene, but Mark and his unnamed friends have their roles to play. That is exciting, because it's true in our stories too!

This story is from Mark Batterson's book The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears.

-Adam Forrest, Zondervan

 

The strange meeting

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I almost said no to a miracle.

 

A couple who had just started attending National Community Church requested a meeting, and I almost denied the request because they said they wanted to talk about church government. I love talking about the mission and vision of the church. Church government? Not as much! Plus, I was fighting a book deadline, so I didn't have much margin in my schedule. So I almost said no, and if I had, I would have missed out on a miracle.

As we sat in my office above Ebenezer's Coffeehouse, they peppered me with questions about bylaws, financial checks and balances, and decision-making protocols. And while I felt a little defensive at the time, I realize now that they were simply doing their due diligence...

 

After answering nearly ninety minutes worth of questions, they ended by asking me about our vision. I had so much pent-up passion after talking about policies and protocols that I just let it rip. I shared our vision of starting a Dream Center in Ward 8, the poorest part of our city and the primary reason the nation's capital is always in the running for murder capital of the country. I talked about turning our coffeehouse on Capitol Hill into a chain of coffeehouses, with all the net profits reinvested in missions. I talked about launching our first international campus in Berlin, Germany. And I shared our vision of launching multi-site campuses in movie theaters at metro stops throughout the greater Washington area. Then the meeting came to a rather abrupt and awkward ending. They said they wanted to invest in National Community Church, but they didn't say how or how much. They left, and I was left scratching my head.

 

A surprising phone call

I wasn't sure anything would come of that meeting, but a few weeks later, they asked my assistant for a phone appointment. On an otherwise uneventful Wednesday afternoon ... I received one of the most unforgettable phone calls of my life.

 

"Pastor Mark, we wanted to follow up on our meeting and let you know that we want to give a gift to National Community Church." My mind immediately started racing...

 

"We want to give a gift, and there are no strings attached. But before I tell you how much we're going to give, I want you to know why we're giving it. We're giving this gift because you have vision beyond your resources." I'll never forget that phrase: "vision beyond your resources."

 

If the vision is from God, it will most definitely be beyond your means.

The rationale behind the gift was just as meaningful as the gift itself. And that rationale has inspired us to keep dreaming irrational dreams. Those four words, vision beyond your resources, have become a mantra for the ministry of National Community Church. We refuse to let our budget determine our vision. That left-brained approach is a wrong-brained approach because it's based on our limited resources rather than on God's unlimited provision. Faith is allowing your God-given vision to determine your budget. That certainly does not mean you practice poor financial stewardship, spend beyond your means, and accumulate a huge debt load. It does mean that you take a step of faith when God gives you a vision because you trust that the One who gave you the vision is going to make provision. And for the record, if the vision is from God, it will most definitely be beyond your means.

 

Having vision beyond your resources is synonymous with dreaming big. And it may feel like you're setting yourself up for failure, but you're actually setting God up for a miracle. How God performs the miracle is His job. Your job is drawing a circle around the God-given dream. And if you do your job, you might just find yourself standing waist-deep in three feet of quail.

 

"We want to give the church $3 million dollars." I was speechless. And I'm a preacher.

 

It was one of those holy moments when time stands still. I heard it, but I could hardly believe it. I was blindsided by the blessing... God's provision came out of nowhere...

 

It's not our man-made plans that move the Almighty; the Almighty is moved by big dreams and bold prayers. In the awkward silence of my speechlessness, I heard the still small voice of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit hit the rewind button and reminded me of a prayer circle that I had drawn four years before... [Mark tells that story in the post "Lessons Learned from Trying to Force a Miracle."]

 

Do you want God to surprise you?

Over the past year, I've been repeating one prayer with great frequency: "Lord, do something unpredictable and uncontrollable."

 

If you want God to surprise you, you have to give up control.

That is a scary prayer, especially for a control freak like me, but it doesn't scare me nearly as much as a life void of holy surprises. And you can't have it both ways. If you want God to surprise you, you have to give up control. You will lose a measure of predictability, but you will begin to see God move in uncontrollable ways!

 

Anything could happen. Anyplace. Anytime.

- Mark Batterson (@markbatterson)

 

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Learn More

Learn more about The Circle Maker
Watch session one of The Circle Maker DVD Group Study

 

 

Further Reading

Lessons Learned from Trying to Force a Miracle via Mark Batterson
When the Answer to Prayer Is Bigger Than Our Brain via Mark Batterson

 

 

(Some styling above is a web-exclusive feature not included in the text of The Circle Maker. This post does not represent the views of Zondervan or any of its representatives. The writer's personal opinions are shared only for information purposes. To receive new Zondervan Blog posts in your reader or email inbox, subscribe to Zondervan Blog.)

 

 

Lessons Learned from Trying to Force a Miracle [Excerpt]

 

Have you ever ever prayed for something that would advance God's kingdom, but your plan didn't work out? This can be disconcerting, to say the least.

"This could be God saying 'Not yet' instead of 'No,'" a friend says. But a delay is mysterious when we see a clear need for God's intervention. "Why would God wait?" I've thought. "Doesn't he know the timeframe I'm working with? I only get about three score and ten years to make a difference!"

These concerns come out dramatically in this true story from pastor and author Mark Batterson. This story is from his book The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears, and I hope you find it as encouraging as I did.

-Adam Forrest, Zondervan

The $2 Million Dollar Miracle

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One day, I was praying for God's provision when I felt a prompting to pray for a $2 million miracle. The first thing I had to do was decipher whether this prompting was just my own desire [for my non-profit] to be debt free or whether it was the Holy Spirit who dropped that promise into my heart. It's tough to discern between natural desires and holy desires, but I was about 90 percent sure it was the Holy Spirit who put that promise in my heart. I had no idea how God would do it, but I knew I needed to circle that promise in prayer.

 

I got what I thought was a $2 million idea for an online company called GodiPod. com. Lora and I invested the capital to get the business off the ground, but that $2 million idea turned out to be a $15,000 personal loss. In retrospect, I think I was trying to manufacture the miracle for God.

If we repent, God always recycles our mistakes.

This is what we often try to do, isn't it? When God doesn't answer our prayer right away, we try to answer it for Him. Like the day Moses took matters into his own hands and killed an Egyptian taskmaster, we get ahead of God. But when we try to do God's job for Him, it always backfires. Trying to get ahead of God cost Moses forty years. Of course, even then, God redeemed the forty years Moses spent as a fugitive tending sheep by prepping him to tend His sheep, the people of Israel. If we repent, God always recycles our mistakes.

The one upside to our failed business is that I did learn some valuable lessons about unanswered prayers that are worth far more than the $15,000 hit we took on GodiPod.com.

If God answered [our] selfish prayers, they would actually short-circuit the purposes of God in our lives.

First of all, I came to the humble conclusion that our prayers are often misguided simply because we're not omniscient. I'll be the first to admit that I've drawn some prayer circles around the wrong things for the wrong reasons, and God didn't answer those prayers the way I wanted Him to! If we were absolutely honest, we would have to admit that most of our prayers have as their main objective personal comfort rather than God's glory. If God answered those selfish prayers, they would actually short-circuit the purposes of God in our lives. We would fail to learn the lessons God is trying to teach us or cultivate the character God is trying to shape in us.

 

A second lesson learned is that no doesn't always mean no; sometimes no means not yet. We're too quick to give up on God when He doesn't answer our prayers when we want or how we want. Maybe your deadline doesn't fit God's timeline. Maybe no simply means not yet. Maybe it's a divine delay.

I learned that we shouldn't seek answers as much as we should seek God.

Finally, I learned that we shouldn't seek answers as much as we should seek God. We get overanxious. We try to microwave our own answers instead of trusting God's timing. But here's an important reminder: If you seek answers you won't find them, but if you seek God, the answers will find you. There comes a point after you have prayed through that you need to let go and let God. How? By resisting the temptation to manufacture your own answer to your own prayer.

 

It would have been easy to cash out on the $2 million promise after GodiPod.com failed, but I keep circling that promise. I still believed God was going to answer that prayer somehow, someway, sometime. I would have never guessed that the payoff would happen in a meeting about church government, but I stopped trying to manufacture my own answer and simply trusted that God would give an answer when I was ready for it. Then one afternoon, right around three o'clock, God came out of nowhere and delivered on His promise with a holy surprise...

 

God has surprised me so many times that I'm no longer surprised by His surprises. That doesn't mean I love them any less. I'm in awe of the strange and mysterious ways in which God works, but I have come to expect the unexpected because God is predictably unpredictable. God always has a holy surprise up His sovereign sleeve! The only thing I can predict with absolute certainty is this: the more you pray the more holy surprises will happen... 

- Mark Batterson (@markbatterson)

 

Watch for the rest of this story on Zondervanblog.com tomorrow! To receive more encouraging and informative blog posts by email or RSS, subscribe to Zondervan Blog.

 

Learn More

Learn more about The Circle Maker
Watch session one of The Circle Maker DVD Group Study

 

 

Further Reading

When the Answer to Prayer Is Bigger Than Our Brain via Mark Batterson
Closed Door Stories by the Zondervan Team

 

 

(Some styling above are web-exclusive features not included in the text of The Circle Maker... This post does not represent the views of Zondervan or any of its representatives. The writer's personal opinions are shared only for information purposes. To receive new Zondervan Blog posts in your reader or email inbox, subscribe to Zondervan Blog.)

 

 

It's Like Watching Jesus Drive a Shuttle Bus (AKA, Flourishing in Action - Excerpt)

 

Does God want his people to flourish? What does flourishing even look like? John Ortberg gives us a picture in this excerpt from The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You.

 

John Ortberg

Not long ago I boarded an airport shuttle bus to get to the rental car lot. Driving a shuttle bus is usually a thankless job, for the driver is often regarded as the low man on the totem pole. People on the bus are often grumpy from travel and in a hurry to get to their car. No one says much except the name of their rental car company. But not on this bus.

 

The man who drove the bus was an absolute delight. He was scanning the curbside, looking for anybody who needed a ride. "You know," he told us, "I'm always looking because sometimes people are running late. You can tell it in their eyes. I'm always looking because I never want to miss one. Hey, here's another one! ..."

 

The driver pulled over to pick up a latecomer, and he was so excited about what he was doing that we got excited. We were actually cheering him on when he was picking people up. It was like watching Jesus drive a shuttle bus. The man would grab people's luggage before they could lift it, then he would jump back on the bus and say, "Well we're off. I know you're all eager to get there as quickly as possible, so I'm going to get you there as soon as I can."

 

Jaded commuters put down their papers. He created such a little community of joy on that bus that people wanted to ride around in the terminal a second time just to hang out with the guy. We would say to people who got on after us, "Watch this guy!" He wasn't just our shuttle bus driver — he was our leader; he was our friend. And for a few moments, community flourished. On a shuttle bus for a rental car company — and one person moved toward the best version of himself.

"Flourishing means moving toward God’s best version of you." -John Ortberg

 

What happened to that shuttle bus driver can happen in you. Sometimes it does. Every once in a while you do something that surprises you and catch a glimpse of the person you were made to be. You say something inspirational at a meeting. You help a homeless man no one else notices. You are patient with a rambunctious three-year-old. You lose yourself in a piece of music. You fall in love. You express compassion. You stand up to a bully. You freely make a sacrificial gift. You fix an engine. You forgive an old hurt. You say something you would normally never say, or you keep from saying something you would normally blurt out.

 

[God] is guiding you toward that best version of yourself all the time.

As you do, you glimpse for a moment why God made you. Only God knows your full potential, and he is guiding you toward that best version of yourself all the time. He has many tools and is never in a hurry. That can be frustrating for us, but even in our frustration, God is at work to produce patience in us. He never gets discouraged by how long it takes, and he delights every time you grow. Only God can see the "best version of you," and he is more concerned with you reaching your full potential than you are.

For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. [Ephesians 2:10]

 

Your life is not your project.

You are not your handiwork; your life is not your project. Your life is God's project. God thought you up, and he knows what you were intended to be. He has many good works for you to do, but they are not the kind of "to do" lists we give spouses or employees. They are signposts to your true self.

 

Your "spiritual life" is not limited to certain devotional activities that you engage in. It is receiving power from the Spirit of God to become the person God had in mind when he created you — his handiwork.

-John Ortberg

 

A Friendly Dare: Today, try one thing that will help you and others flourish.

-Adam Forrest, Zondervan

 

Learn More

Learn more about John Ortberg's book, The Me I Want to Be.
Follow John Ortberg on Twitter: @johnortberg.

 

Suggested Posts

Why Does Jesus Give "Life to the Full?" via John Ortberg
What Helps YOU Grow? via John Ortberg

 

(Some styling above is a web-exclusive feature not included in the text of The Me I Want to Be. Image attribution: from The Me I Want to Be. This post does not represent the views of Zondervan or any of its representatives. The writer's personal opinions are shared only for information purposes. To receive new Zondervan Blog posts in your reader or email inbox, subscribe to Zondervan Blog.)

 

A Friendly Dare: Today, find one way you can contribute you human flourishing today - yours and the people around you.

-Adam Forrest, Zondervan

How Can We Share God's Peace? [Excerpt]

 

What is the church's role in extending God's peace to the world? Mark Buchanan gives perspective in this excerpt from Your Church Is Too Safe: Why Following Christ Turns the World Upside-Down.

 

Mark Buchanan

The primary gift God gives to those who trust in him is reconciliation with him. But the primary gift the people of God give to those who are reconciled to God is a community of reconciled people. We give them the gift of our own wholeness and oneness. We give the gift of community. We invite them to be part of a people where everyone makes "every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace" [Ephesians 4:3].

 

God calls us out of darkness and into marvelous light [1 Peter 2:9]. But his intent is that "if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another" [1 John 1:7]. So God prepares us to be a people who draw and who welcome every tribe and tongue and nation into the light by first making us light. And he does that, in part, by bringing those who are far away near. He does that by making the community of the converted also the community of the reconciled...

 

One sign that God has returned to dwell in the center of our lives and of our churches is that we become a living testimony of what we promise. We promise that in Christ all become new creations, no longer seeing others according to the flesh. We promise that in Christ we have the peace of God and the God of peace. We promise that we through Christ receive God's love and forgiveness, and then extend it — with authority — to the whole world. We promise all this, but then claim exemption for ourselves in some petty matter or another.

 

When God steps into the center, those who once were part of us, and now are not, come home. They come back. God's personal faithfulness to them and righteousness for them become their daily portion.

 

What before was rumor becomes reality.

 

We become living testimony of the new life we promise to others. May our churches be the gathering places for this reconciled community.

- Mark Buchanan

 

Learn More

Learn more about Your Church Is Too Safe: Why Following Christ Turns the World Upside-Down.

 

Suggested Posts

The Weight of Your Past via Mark Buchanan

 

(Image and some styling above are web-exclusive features not included in the text of Your Church Is Too Safe. This post does not represent the views of Zondervan or any of its representatives. The writer's personal opinions are shared only for information purposes. To receive new Zondervan Blog posts in your reader or email inbox, subscribe to Zondervan Blog.)

 

The Weight of Your Past (and What Jesus Thinks about It - Excerpt)

 

We begin our scene at Jacob's well, as two people discuss what God desires. One of those people is the Son of God. This story is told by Mark Buchanan in his book Your Church Is Too Safe: Why Following Christ Turns the World Upside-Down. -Adam Forrest, Zondervan

 

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"Will you give me a drink?" Jesus asks.

 

The voice, the question, the man: they startle her. They startle her out of her silence and avoidance.

 

"You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" [See John 4:1-42]

 

And then unfolds a remarkable encounter, a life-turning exchange. But not at first. At first, her speech is as cagey as her silence, a series of diversions and evasions. Jesus offers her living water, "the gift of God." She's puzzled and intrigued, but when Jesus exposes her condition, she scurries down a rabbit trail. She wants to talk about worship. That might be a good thing, but as so often happens with talk of worship, it bogs down quickly into hairsplitting and argument baiting. Is this style better than that style? Is old better than new? Is tradition better than innovation?

 

When Jesus exposes her condition, she scurries down a rabbit trail.

Jesus cuts through all that with a clear word about the heart of worship: it's about the heart in worship. It's about a heart that longs for God and seeks him wherever he might be found. It's about a heart that wants truth in the inmost parts, and opens itself wide as a bird's mouth to receive it, and steeps in it until it works its way to the outermost parts. Worship is not about a style or a form or a place. That's not what God's seeking. He's seeking not a kind of music or liturgy or architecture but a kind of person: humble, hungry, wide awake, who comes in spirit and truth, bold and beseeching both, ready to live toward God out of their depths.

 

Which is all fine and well. But the woman, either overwhelmed or underwhelmed, tries her last dodge: "I know that the Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." And then Jesus pulls out his showstopper (with a kind of Yoda syntax): "I who speak to you am he."

 

That changes everything. She runs back to town, "leaving her water jar" (a lovely and revealing detail: she's distracted in all the right ways now), and does something that, in the telling, flies by so swiftly we could easily miss the revolution at hand: she goes back to her town and says to the people, "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?"

 

And they heed her.

 

She "said to the people." That's the revolutionary detail. That's the shock wave of the story.

 

[The Story's Shock Wave: "She said to the people"]

We have little background to this encounter. We know, from the text at hand as well as from other places, biblical and historical, about the mutual hostility and suspicion between Jews and Samaritans. We know — John tells us straight up — that Jews don't talk with Samaritans, and at the story's close he tells us again, less directly, that her gender is a cultural problem as well.

 

[We know] women in the ancient Near East never went tot he well [at] high noon. [And they] never went to the well alone.

[We] can also, with a bit of sleuthing, shade in a few more details about this particular story. We know that in general women in the ancient Near East never went to the well at "the sixth hour" — high noon. It's too hot. And we know in general that women in this culture never went to the well alone. The trip to the well was done in the cool of the day and in the company of others. There must always have been exceptions to these customs. But the fact that this woman has lost at love so often — five ex-husbands — and has become so cynical about or damaged by that that she's given up on matrimony altogether — the man she's with now is not her husband — is a significant clue about why she's at the well by herself at noon...

 

She's ashamed. She's estranged. She's probably outcast — scorned by her community, distrusted by the women especially. Villages have names for women like this. Tramp is one of the nicer ones, and it just gets worse from there...

She "said to the people." ... "They came out of the town." The encounter with Christ has healed the rift. Whatever's kept her apart from the rest of the town, Christ has mended. Whatever authority she's lacked, Christ has restored. Whatever shame's kept in the shadows, Christ has removed.

 

That she describes this as 'everything I ever did' says a lot about how these things weigh on her, how completely they define her.

"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did." All we know for sure that Jesus told her is that she's had five husbands and she's shacking up with her current guy. That she describes this as "everything I ever did" says a lot about how these things weigh on her, how completely they define her.

 

But it also says a lot about Jesus. It tells us the tone with which he spoke. There couldn't have been a single note of condemnation in it. There couldn't have been even a shadow of scolding or shaming. She heard the voice of love. She heard the voice of acceptance. She does the math: the Messiah reveals himself to me, teaches me about God's heart for worship, and offers to me the gift of God — and he does it knowing full well everything I've ever done. My past doesn't disqualify me. My past has not forfeited my future.

 

He doesn't hold my past against me.

 

- Mark Buchanan 

 

Learn More

Learn more about Your Church Is Too Safe: Why Following Christ Turns the World Upside-Down.

 

Suggested Posts

Winter of the Soul via Mark Buchanan
Two Eyewitness of Heavenly Worship via Rory Noland
 

 

(Image and some styling above are web-exclusive features not included in the text of Your Church Is Too Safe. This post does not represent the views of Zondervan or any of its representatives. The writer's personal opinions are shared only for information purposes. To receive new Zondervan Blog posts in your reader or email inbox, subscribe to Zondervan Blog.)