Bless What God Blesses

A University of Hawaii Professor has written a book about risk, and an entire chapter of that book is on common household dangers. Some are obvious – 460,000 people a year are injured by kitchen knives; manual and power saws injure 100,000 a year. But some risks are more surprising – 20 people in America a year are strangled to death by drapery cords. Some 4,000 of us seriously injure ourselves on pillows.

But the most dangerous object in the home is, John Ortberg suggests, a little death trap called the easy chair (usually spelled EZ because that takes less effort). We don’t buy these chairs because they are the most beautiful. They are not called “adventure chairs.” They’re EZ. We buy them for one reason – comfort.

You know, I could preach an amazing sermon about going out and serving God, laying it all on the line for Jesus. The sermon could move you to heights of joy and a gushing of tears (really, I could preach this well). You could be so fired up and so motivated when you left the building today. But what happens when you go home? You ease yourself into that EZ chair. You do it today. You do it when you get home from work on Monday. You’ve got the remote in your hand, your favorite beverage, and bag of chips next to you. Let me ask you: Are you ready to spring into action for God? If God asks you to do a difficult thing are you likely to say yes?

It’s not so much what you do in this chair, but what you don’t do. Too much comfort is a very dangerous thing.

Well, a guy named Larry Walker was sitting in a chair in his backyard one day. It was a lawn chair, not an EZ chair. Larry always wanted to fly. So he got this idea. He hitched forty-five helium-filled balloons to his lawn chair, strapped himself in with some sandwiches, a pellet gun, and a six-pack of lite beer. His plan was to hover 30 feet or so above the backyard for a few hours, then shoot enough balloons to come down.

But when his friends cut the cord Larry did not level off at 100 feet. He didn’t level off at 1,000 feet. He stopped climbing at 16,000 feet. At that height he was reluctant to shoot any balloons. He was scared, but at least he had his beer and sandwiches. He drifted into the airspace of LAX. The transmissions in the flight tower of LAX that day all began with, “You’re not going to believe this but. . .”

After a few hours, Larry decided to risk shooting a few balloons, descended and got tangled in some power lines, and was eventually rescued. The FAA charged him with breaking the law even though it was unclear what law had been broken.

When asked by a reporter why he did it, Larry Walker replied, “A man can’t just sit there.”

Larry Walker may not win any awards for Intelligence Quotient, but he is write about one thing, a man can’t just sit there.

God asks us to do difficult things sometimes. If you look at all the call stories of the Bible – Noah, Moses, Jeremiah, Mary, John, Paul- these people react with, “What, Me?! I can’t do that!”

And so God says, “Oh yeah, that would be really scary for you, I can see. Never mind, I’ll go find someone else.”

Wait. No, God doesn’t say that. He says, yeah, it’s scary, but that’s what I want you to do, and I’ll be with you.

Sometimes the most difficult part is getting out of our comfortable chair. That in itself is a witness.

John the Baptist was called to be a witness to the coming Messiah. In fact, that’s what the whole Gospel is about – witness the Christ. Leon Morris says the word witness is used thirty-three times in John’s Gospel but only a grand total of two times in the other three Gospels combined.

People are coming to John and asking questions like, “Are you the Messiah?” “Are you Elijah the Prophet returned?”, “Who are you?” John is very patient at first, but he’s not there to talk about himself. His first answer is a nice declarative sentence, “I am not the Christ.” The second time someone asks, his answer gets shorter, “I am not.” The third time he has to answer, he becomes monosyllabic, “NO.”

John is not doing an Entertainment Tonight piece on himself. He is there to witness to Jesus. It’s interesting that not once but two times he says, “I myself did not know him.” John was not claiming a special knowledge of Jesus or a special relationship. John was saying, simply look at the signs, his message, his works, the testimony of the Trinity, “Behold this is my Son with whom I am well pleased.” This is witness enough. You must believe it.

John is also telling us something else about witness. Leon Morris uses the example of witnessing a car accident. Two cars are involved in a collision. As long as you the witness keep silent, both parties have the hope that you will testify on their behalf. But the moment you tell the police, “The Ford ran through a red light and crashed into the Chevy,” you have committed yourself. You can’t go back on what you say without being discredited. In other words, witness commits.

If you are going to be a believer, you can’t just sit there. You have to answer God’s call to get involved in what He is doing. Like John the Baptist, you may not have all the knowledge you think you need, but you bless what God blesses. You may be scared, but that’s not really a good enough excuse.

Risk something. Try something new to help others. For example, the other day we received the paper work for the deed to the Campbell property given to us. The paper work needed to be taken to the courthouse and the deed recorded and the appropriate fees paid. It involved some further calculations and research and paperwork at the office of the Recorder. It required someone with the skill and knowledge to do that sort of thing, someone with maybe legal experience, a sharp person. And apparently we couldn’t find anyone like that because the stuff was handed to me. I went into the courthouse to the office of Recorder. I was like a tourist in a foreign country who didn’t speak the language. I wandered around the room aimlessly for a few moments. All that I was missing was the Hawaiian shirt. But God helped, I believe. We got it done. And if it was done wrong then, as they take me away in handcuffs I will say, “A man can’t just sit there.” Kindly, someone has already offered to post my bail.

Stretching beyond our comfort zone is a good thing. We meet new people, make new connections. We become a part of God’s larger plan in our communities. We become witnesses of the Gospel. We show that it’s not just about us.

We become an instrument in God’s hands for goodness. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword. . .he made me a polished arrow in his quiver.” Isaiah 49.1-2

I am a sharp sword. I am a arrow in quiver of the Lord. You are too.

What’s really amazing about the witness of the Baptist is that he so easily turns the attention over to Jesus. I mean, John has been preaching, teaching, and baptizing his guts out, out there in the Jordan wilderness. His life was decidedly not comfortable.

But when the time came, he said again and again, don’t look at me, look over there at Him. When the time came, he let his disciples, Andrew and Simon Peter, go with Jesus. He let them go with his blessing. He knew this was a part of what he was meant to do. This was his contribution to the work of God.

John summed up his own attitude a little later in the Gospel with these words:

“He must increase, I must decrease.”

Witness commits. Believers commit. And here is my commitment to you. This year I will do my best to make it as uncomfortable as possible for us just to sit here in our pews. We will commit to a holy discomfort, a holy restlessness to put our witness into action. I always thought these pews were comfortable. From now on, we’ll call them “adventure pews.”