Chapel Service

 

The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway

June 11, 2011

“Revelation:

The Spark Plug to Imagination”

Bob Butcher

We have been on a year long journey in this series since Iowa last year. We have gone through Faith, Jesus simple yet direct commands, Relationships between male & female, Marriage, Forgiveness, Learning to comfort one another through a crisis and Resurrecting lives by using your experience by faith you learned by that crisis of your own first.  We have come full circle now. In Iowa we were back to faith in God using Job as our teacher because things just couldn’t get worse than what happened to him.

In Iowa we discussed how God took Job to task about not only dealing with a crisis but also on how Job and his friends thought they knew as much as God and how they thought they knew how God ought to deal with things.

God ask Job some very specific questions about:

  • how He designed things,
  • where Job was during their creation,
  • why didn’t Job did not have any input on their making

Just as a reminder of this exchange let me use this example:

Among the wonders of Jamaica is a body of water called Luminous Lagoon. It has been displayed photographically in National Geographic and other scientific journals.  By day it is a nondescript bay on the country’s northern coast.  By night it is a marvel of nature!

If you visit after dark, you notice that the water is filled with millions of phosphorescent organisms.  Whenever there is movement, the water and the creatures in the bay glow.  When fish swim past your boat they light up like waterborne fireflies.  As your boat glides through the water, the wake shines brightly.

The wonder of God’s creation leaves us speechless as God lays out His questions of Job in Job 37 and 38.

If this example was actually in the Bible maybe God would have ask Job where Job was when He designed this bay and the life forms within it.  Maybe God would have asked how come you did not give any guidance or suggestions as He made it out of nothing.  “After all Job, this is just a small part of the total package of My awesome handiwork.”

Whatever the case, Job’s conclusion to all of God’s questions was basically “Wow, I think I will shut up and just listen, God”

Along with Job we came to the conclusion that God is trustworthy and despite the box we attempt to put God into, we come to understand we need to “shut up and listen” to Him.  (Job 38 -42)

God’s majestic creations – whether dazzling lightning or glowing fish – are mysteries to us.  We will never know the how’s, the why’s, the when’s of God’s creative amazing creation, until He reveals it to us in eternity.  And – I don’t know about you, but I want to be there when He does!

Today, let’s wrap this all up with Ephesians 3: 14-21:

Paul writes this while imprisoned in Rome around 60-62A.D.  He is writing to Believers in Ephesus (a city in modern day Turkey), to encourage them to think of themselves in a whole new way.  Instead of their past involvements with everything self centered and breaking God’s heart, Paul wanted them to see themselves as people “in Christ” – people with a whole new identity and a purpose in life that is fulfilling and rich because of how God has led them through their lives of remarkable and different opportunity and experience whether crisis or joy.

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians would be mine for you today:

“My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in.

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 Lord’s holy people, 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.

Reach out and take in the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.  Experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

To Him be glory in us, the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:14-21) GBB

The very REVELATION of all of this last year, especially with how He somehow wraps and entwines our entire lives with those around us, or about to be around us, ought to fire our IMAGINATION.

I want you to especially notice how Paul expresses verse 20.  In most versions of the Bible it reads:

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us …

Note it uses the word Think instead of Imagine.

“THINK” is a very western word.  It is black & white:

A: to exercise the powers of judgment, conception, or inference, reason

B: To judge; to conclude; to hold as a settled opinion.

C: To intend.

“IMAGINE” is a word that fits God!

It is beyond Think.

God imagined what He could do …Before time!

He planned it out before Creation with Jesus & the Holy Spirit

God has set these principals into motion…

He IMAGINES, then He acts, and it comes to pass.

Now, suppose this:

“We can THINK.  We usually do.  We put ourselves in this human thinking box and then act.

BUT …IMAGINE what we can do when we consult God.

Now THAT is His PASSION!

Look back at verse 20 again:

“God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!”

I want us to remember the very words of Jesus in Mark 10:27 and in Luke 18:24;

Jesus is differentiating between those who follow Him and those who choose other things in life to follow, so it is very appropriate as we wrap this all up:

Looking at them, Jesus said, “With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.”

The choice is up to us.

We have all the revelation shared over the last year now …So let’s IMAGINE with God and watch Him work in our lives and others.

I hope we all choose to make time to look over the notes of these Chapel Service subjects from the last year and spend some quiet time with God asking Him to refresh these lessons in our hearts and begin to make each of us passionate to partner with Him and change our lives, the lives of our family, our friends and teams, our home community, our nation and our world.

Have a safe and prosperous race today!