Living life with bigness, capacity and passion
II Corinthians 6:11 - (the Message) - “I can’t tell you much I long for you to enter this wide open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I am speaking as plainly as I can, and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively.”
Capacity and bigness - we are going to make this a “no small life zone”.
A lot of times I speak in such a way as to not offend people. I try to be gentle, but I won’t take that approach with this subject. Because of the Olympics coming up, I have been doing a lot of research lately into professional athletes. These people train for years and years in the hopes that they will perform and excel in a single moment. They focus their whole life on one moment. The majority of athletes will never win a medal, and many train knowing they will never win a medal. But does this stop them from training to their fullest anyway? It doesn’t stop them because most athletes in the Olympics aren’t trying to win a medal. Most athletes are just trying to perform their best - at their top capacity. They give their lives to mastering their personal best and performing at their peak. It’s intense sacrifice.
Let’s bring this into the Kingdom. Let’s think about a church or a group of people who are going to start thinking and operating and sacrificing and goal setting and performing and being disciplined in the way that these athletes do. Let’s start to think about a group of people who are going to the next level. I know that is a cliche, but it is a good one. I want us to shatter the old records. I want to obliterate the best we have done before. I want to get into the race and smash the record. I am talking about living your life in front of the record - in front of where you have been. I am talking about living your life in a totally new place.
You don’t just stumble to get there. It takes discipline, focus and sacrifice. It doesn’t come for free, and it doesn’t come cheap. So why do you want to put yourself through that? Why do you want to live your life at your peak performance? Because it’s time to get radical. I believe in sustained lifestyle, but I also know that there are seasons and times when we need to perform at a peak level. Most people are never willing to pay the price, because the sacrifice to have ever part of your body performing at peak level is immense. I am giving permission for radical behavior for anyone who wants to be radical. There are people giving their lives to the presidential race. People are donating money and time, and organizing themselves so passionately around their candidate because they believe so much. There are athletes giving up their whole lives for an Olympic moment and an Olympic dream. This level of passion is inspiring. Sometimes they make the church look lethargic and ineffective.
Passion is connected to peak performance - to generating fruit for a cause. I don’t get depressed by someone’s passion for something. Whether or not I agree with their cause, I get inspired by their passion. They are usually radical people. It starts with a little maverick streak and a sense of not wanting to go with the status quo. A sense that you want to break out, be different, and not be counted amongst the mediocre or the same as everyone else. In sports they call it the Independent Spirit.
The Kingdom is the many, but it is also the one. He left the ninety-nine to go after the one. The Kingdom is all of us, but it functions on what is going on in the individual. When what God is doing in you joins with what is going on with others, you have the church. But without a bunch of passionate people with the individual fire burning on the inside, it doesn’t work and you only have a small group that is fired up and passionate. I don’t want one small group fired up and passionate - I want the whole church fired up and passionate. Working for peak performance. Working to shatter records in how we treat others, our attitudes, our giving - all the attitudes of kingdom life. We are going to get ahead of previous levels and smash records to do radical things for the Kingdom.
I am focused on the goal. I am focused on starting a fire. I am focused on passion level increasing. It will manifest itself. Sometimes it will take some guts - you have to stand up and be radical. You have to be passionate about what you believe and be passionate for God and spreading the Kingdom. Shake up the status quo. Don’t get held up by religiosity, arbitrary parameters or other obstacles. We are doing this so we can reach people. Be passionate about it. Get on fire for God - fire makes people bold. When we get bold, God starts doing awesome things.
