What is Too Small for God?

"Unexplainable" is a series by Erwin McManus that explores the gospel of John and the seven wonders of Jesus that John says provokes our faith and shows us a new reality of our relationship with Christ.

Of course, the most fascinating miracle of Jesus was how He conquered death and rose from the grave. However, if we were a marketing group, we might not have suggested that the Messiah come the way He did. We would've instead suggested that God make a huge appearance on earth that would leave little question that He was the King of Kings.

In John 2:1-11, there's a story about how Jesus turned water into wine and "His glory was shown". It sounds like He did a magic trick and gained disciples. But, Erwin suggests that there are a lot of fill-in-the-blanks here.

We know that Mary, Jesus and the disciples were there in Galilee at a party. Mary comes to Jesus telling Him that they have no more wine. "How in the world could you think to involve God in this?" says Erwin. Jesus is almost indifferent in His response to Mary, basically saying "How does this involve me?" Have you ever experienced someone who involves you in their problems? They just pull you in. After asking the question, Jesus even says, "My time has not yet come." He was there to save the world, not to provide after-dinner drinks.

Sometimes, though, Jesus starts a conversation to press us into uncomfortable situations. Mary doesn't argue with Jesus, she just asks the servants around Him to do whatever He asks.

"I flew in from my trip to Europe...Kim was telling me some things I needed to do...we were going to have dinner with this couple...oh and by the way, they are bringing 48 people with them...I'm not a social party guy...cause it's a little exhausting for me...but Kim gave me the 'you don't have to be there'...so I knew I was going to be there because I have..I want to...because I have to be there." Mary, in a woman's way, involved Jesus.

It's an interesting point in this story that Mary never commands Jesus. In all of scriptures, the only command Mary gives is "do whatever He asks". It, then, is almost an honor to Mary to do whatever Jesus asks. Many times in our life, we don't even know what to ask God. There seem to be many things in our life that seem like we shouldn't even bother to ask God. But God created us to have a relationship with Him. The idea of Him creating the Universe or parting the Red Sea is mind-boggling. But turning water into wine is just "God play".



Why would Jesus produce the wine when most people at the party were probably already too far gone to notice? Many of us act like we have just so many "God chips" or just so many "Yes chips". "God, I know I blew it, but let them hire me..." We feel like we are risking chips if we ask more questions. If we ask God for something, we might not want to waste a God chip on an incidental, like running out of wine.

The unexplainable in Erwin's message is the notion that God will pay attention to the small trite things that are well beneath Him. "You know what stretches my faith but blows my mind?....God actually cares about the details....the little things of my life."

What's more, in this passage, Jesus doesn't just respond with a wave of His hand. Jesus gives instructions to fill up an estimated 120 to 180 gallon jars with water. Jesus is about to create! Not only does Jesus make the wine, but He makes it a premium wine and they have an abundance of it.

There are such things as the prosperity gospels that many people focus on saying that if you become a Christian, you will life a life of prosperity. But what is phenomenal about this story is that Jesus would perform a miracle that only concerned those around Him. Jesus took these people to the place of celebrating life. Symbolically, this was thought to be Jesus taking religious vessels and turning the cleansing element (water) to that of celebration (wine). The master of the banquet was overwhelmed with the quality of the wine!

Each of us loves certain kinds of foods. There is so much detail in what we enjoy and what brings us pleasure. Recently, Erwin went to Europe with a group of guys for seven days. "We had the most amazing time...It was a group of guys, all from all parts of the world." One guy Erwin had never met before came and someone else came from a chance meeting. So, eight strangers came to know each other over this time and God seemed interested in the details of hooking these men up to build bonds with each other. Erwin noticed that. "Have you ever noticed that when people truly love each other, they become very interested in the details that mean the most to that person?" One of the guys was a real physically conscious guy, but as this guy was traveling with them, he went on a chocolate binge. He loaded up on more chocolate that Erwin had ever seen. "It became chocolate mania and soon, all the guys became aware of all the chocolate places to go." Then, when each guy received a piece of chocolate at a restaurant, they would all pass it to this guy. It was a chance for the others to contribute to what seemed important or desirable to him.

Erwin remembers having a conversation with his daughter while she was telling him about what she liked. Sunflowers and carnations. This is what Erwin locked in his mind because he cared for his little girl.

Religious leaders might have tried to shut the party down and to condemn Jesus for his actions. But Jesus chose to honor his friends and to love them through the gift of a miracle. Erwin's daughter, Mariah, has a body language that tells Erwin that she is about to hug him. One evening, she came in front of Erwin and asked him to hug her. He did, but she needed a stronger hug. She then told him that he had been absent from her all week and she really needed him to stop and be present with her.

The unexplainable moment for many of us can be the fact that the Creator of the Universe can be present with all of us and can care for each of us and can even care about the details that would be minuscule to the person right next to us. For whatever reason, God decided to demonstrate His love through wine.

"I was watching a special with Kobe Bryant...Spike Lee was the interviewer...Spike asked, 'Why do you call the plays out loud?'... 'Everyone knows the plays, but it's in the details and the execution that makes the play work even when the opposing team knows the play'" When you listen to truly great music, you hear great care to the details, the spaces and the harmonies. It is actually the details that makes a composition work.


A couple of months ago, a group wanted to create a short film around an experience Erwin had. Erwin began writing, on their request, some of the script to help with the details. But Erwin was having a hard time, because the experience was by far much easier to live through than trying to duplicate it. Storyboarding, writing, directing, angle shots and editing were all required. Attention to the details eventually created the masterpiece of the short film. But it could have easily missed its mark without them.

This is what makes God great in how He works in our lives. His willingness to write the story of humanity is beautiful, He has to be involved in the details for its full creation. He waits for us to each invite Him to be a part of our own personal lives with full integration of His handiwork.

When Does God Run?

"We believe that God is real...alive, and...Jesus Christ is His Son...He is the way to eternal life." Johnson Bowie, http://www.fusionatl.org/p/12081/Default.aspx, continuing with fourth part of his series "Furnace", actually delivers this message off the stage because he wants his audience to know that God, the Creator of the universe, is with us in prayer. When we see someone praying on stage, we tend to relate in our prayer the same way; on stage or at a distance. So, Johnson thought to bring the message physically to the same level of those in the crowd.

Recapping, the first week Johnson talked about Matt 4:4. Jesus says that we need the Word of the Lord for our spirit to live just like we need food to physically live. Prayer time, the scriptures and sermons are ways to find the Word. We can't just eat a "cheeseburger in 1998" and expect that to grow us. Often, we remember a great spiritual experience and expect that to carry us on. In the second part of the series, Johnson's team talked about finding our own voices in prayer. The best translation of the bible is the one that's read. "Just read it!" Whatever works for us, whether it be climbing a mountain or just listening, we need to find our ways of communicating with God. The third part of the series was experiencing and encountering God in prayer. One of the stand out examples in the bible was Jacob wrestling with God and refusing to let go of Him at one point until he received a blessing. Do we wrestle with God in prayer? Do we get to a point where we won't give up until He blesses us?

"One of the things that I see as the secret to prayer...and its bigger than using big words, being dedicated to prayer or even being consistent ..... It's called confidence"

When Johnson was 14, he went to a youth conference where Andy Stanley was speaking. He was thinking about how he had this great spiritual experience, but then...he went home. His dad was a Presbyterian minister, so Johnson already knew some things about the bible. He knew God was really big, God created everything and the Old Testament was really boring. He knew Jesus was the Savior, that God got really mad when people messed up and that God would often kill them. It wasn't anyone's fault, it was just Johnson's personal experience. So, going to the conference was a great step towards truly knowing Christ, but now it was a time to try and work on it at home.

He would read one chapter a day and Proverbs 3. It wasn't enthusiastic, but he started by reading one chapter and then praying until he fell asleep. For years, he practiced this, but for years it wasn't working. There was really no confidence in his prayers. We have issues, right? We have lusts and pride. Everytime Johnson failed to avoid doing what he knew wasn't right, he would feel unworthy. At the time he was just a 15 year old kid. It's like his impression of God was God doing these amazing things for other people, but then looking at Johnson and shaking his head in disappointment. One night, Johnson said (funny delivery), "God, if I masturbate again, then you can kill me....I didn't really keep my end of the deal." He was later driving back from a friends house and he was convinced that God was going to take him out. He visualized himself seeing his car fall off a cliff and he started mentally doing the "Hail Mary's".

We do that don't we? We feel like we are on some sort of spiritual probation. Then, whenever we sin, we do things that we think might be best like keeping our distance from God; not praying or reading the bible for maybe 3 days. Sometimes, we think maybe we can do something good to offset what we've done like helping an old lady across the street. We go back to God like this can have bearing. Another way we deal with our sin is we wait or take time for it to blow over. The irony of these approaches is that our reactions actually have more influence on our spiritual lives than our screwups! Genesis 3:9-10, Adam and Eve have just sinned and God calls for Adam, who answers, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

Johnson was talking to a couple several months ago because they hadn't returned to church in 3 months. He found that they had stopped going to church because they weren't tithing! It's like they didn't feel worthy as "hypocrites" to worship!?!

There came a point where Johson begin to pick up on stuff that brought him out of the slide of rejection. One of the stories that stood out was Peter's denial of Christ three times. You could look at Peter's REACTION though. Judas, after betraying Jesus, hung himself while Peter ran back to Jesus. When Peter saw Jesus after He had risen from the dead, he jumped out of the boat and swam to hug Jesus. His sin drove him to Jesus. This gave Johnson hope! Jesus didn't reject Peter at all. In Song of Solomon 1:5, it says we are dark and we are lovely. Somehow, even in our sin, God still loves us. We can hear this, but has it found its way into our hearts?

There's a difference between conviction and condemnation. Conviction says go back to God, get restored and get up and run. Condemnation means we are cast away or judged. Romans 8:1 tells us there is no condemnation now! Two people can look the same on the outside, but have two completely different hearts. There is a difference between someone who sins because of their weakness and someone who sins because they have a hard heart towards God and is rebellious. This can look exactly the same on the outside.

In Hebres, it talks about how Jesus, through his sacrifice, has made us perfect in the eyes of God. At the same time, we are being made Holy. A lot of times we go into prayer wondering why God is putting up with us. But on the flip side, if we understand that we are being made holy, if wer remember Peter running to God or if we are reminded that we are dark but lovely. These things drive us to CONFIDENCE

Hebrews 4:16- "Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." We will never pray our hearts out or wrestle with God or go back to new areas of prayer without confidence! Johnson believes there are 3 things that we have to have for an effective prayer life.

1) Dedication - Our commitment to pursue and communicate with God
2) Devotion - A desire and want to be close to God. (This is where many of us stop)
3) Confidence - The idea that God actually loves us back, even in our sin.

Lots of us have had this thought; that God is pure, loving and perfect except for His one blemish of character, the fact that He hates us. We think, "Why does God have all this grace for other people?" But somehow, Peter moved past this and had a confidence that Jesus would hug him back.

We have this cycle, right? We experience God and love it, we pray, we sin and then we walk away for a while until another experience with God. But if we have the confidence that He loves us, we will continue to experience more and more of God at deeper levels. 1 John 4 talks about how God gives us His Spirit. John, the author of this passage has seen and testifies that (Jesus) is the Savior of the world. John was the one who put his hand on Jesus' chest on the last night Jesus appeared after His resurrection. John was the last remaining disciple and nearly 90 when he wrote this. 1 John 3:1, "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him." So we know and rely on the love God has for us.

1 John 3:1 tells us to just step back and behold that God loves us. We want to experience love we can RELY on. Right? He wills that we know his love so that we are confident in the day of judgement. "We love because God loved us first." In this world, we are like Jesus and this should give confidence! Many of us think that the day of judgement will be horrible. The earth will be torn apart and people will be thrown into a lake of fire. It will be the worst day for those who do not know Him. But if we have the love of God, we can have confidence, even when it all comes crashing down. There is no fear in love. There is no rejection in perfect love BUT, if we can be confident on the day of judgement, how much more confident can we be today?

We don't have to be afraid of God. We don't have to view him like our imperfect dads. He is the perfect Father. We don't have to sneak back into his presence after sinning and quietly put the key back in the door hoping not to be caught. God is not waiting for us in the prayer room, tapping his toe in disappointment. God is waiting for us, like the Father of the prodigal son, waiting for us to come home. We need to anchor in our thoughts the vision of God running to us like the most loving of fathers. In our weakness, He is strong FOR US! It is so easy to fall into the trap of condemnation, but God wants us to run back to him to gain more confidence. We will screw up over and over and over. But we need to get up and be confident enought to continue the great race. Quit keeping score because God isn't.

How Do I Pray?

"The heartbeat of Fusion is Acts 2:42." Johnson Bowie focuses on the fourth element of this passage; prayer. Many times, people check out when we get to the subject of prayer because we think its boring. When we pray sometimes, it's like sending an email into space. So when we don't get answers, its like the server went down. We relate prayer, basically, to our own understanding. We think prayer is a ritual for monks or snake handlers. In our own prayer time, we act as though God always has the volume turned up on his side to speak. Nobody teaches us how to pray, right? Do we make a list and then do it? Do we imitate those we've heard? What does it mean to live a life FUELED by prayer? This is what God wants for us!

"I don't think God gives us stickers and balloons for good behavior....I want to be able to go into prayer and encounter the God of the Universe!" Our motivation to go into prayer has to be to know Christ. Really, when we get to know Christ, we swap our addictions of life for an addiction to Christ. THEN our life becomes fueled by prayer. This is then what keeps us coming back to prayer! It comes from our desire from within to know Christ. But at the end of the day, we don't know how to pray because we've disconnected ourselves from prayer.

Matthew 4:4 says that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." This suggests that we inately starve inside when we are separated from Him. We become surrounded by the FAKE of life. But when you come into contact with something REAL, it does something inside you. We have to have HIS Words. Most of us don't live in the place of Living from the Word of God. Our definition of prayer can be really narrow; we are down here and God is way up there. So, we just send our prayers up. But we need to know that God is right here and he wants to know us like a husband loves a wife. What would it be like if we talked to our spouses like we sometimes talked to God? It would be TERRIBLE, right? It would be FAKE.

God calls us to (Leviticus 6:13) to keep the fire on our altar ever burning. Sometimes we throw a single log on and walk away from it for a week! But if we don't clear off the ashes (Leviticus 6:10) of last week's church service or last months prayer conference, the fire goes out! You have to keep on feeding it and going back to that place of prayer. The moment we cut a flower, it begins to die. God is ALWAYS moving, not just in the single encounters that we remember from way back.  (picture courtesy of Lighthouse Church)

In Matthew, when the disciples ask how we should pray, Jesus basically responded by saying to communicate with God, pray for others and pray for ourselves. Praying for ourselves, we sometimes leave out because we feel funny focusing just on us. But in order to feel comfortable here, we have to have an ongoing relationship with our Creator. How can we ask Him for things when we don't know Him? Secondly, Jesus tells us to pray for others. But this includes our enemies! Bless those who curse us and pray for those who spitefully use us. Sometimes we pray for ourselves to tolerate those around us.  We say things like "God, give me patience to handle them."  While this is okay, pray for them to know Him! As we pray for others who persecute us, WE begin to change and it becomes easier for US to forgive them. Also, the more we pray for them, the more we get to know God's heart.

Johnson assures everyone here that prayer can be very hard to do on a regular basis. He confesses that he is not that good at it. But he wants us to know we're not alone when we are not "transported to another place" in the moment of prayer. Prayer can just be hard especially when we are tired.

In closing, he talks about his three year old who asks for help in drawing an airplane and how Johnson will hold his hand, which goes limp, and through the power of the father and submission of his son's hand, they will create an airplane together. That's how God is. We can rely on the strength of God. We can seek His forgiveness and even give ourselves a break from our past. We can run to Him, get His comfort, His words, His answers and then we can charge into life with Him and His blessings!


Video courtesy of Youtube's mysticmom4