We all long for a sure hope.

We long for a security in the things for which we hope. We long to see possibilities and promises come to fruition. No rational person wants a false promise, that will build false hope, that will lead to failure to trust. No. We want a sure and steady hope, and a clear fulfillable promise.

Unfortunately history—both personal and corporate—has taught us that people make promises they simply cannot or will not fulfill. People instigate hope in us that they cannot or will not bring to fruition. People fail to bring possibilities to reality. So to whom do we turn?

To God, and God only as an unfailing surety. God’s promise is our only sure and steady hope. Only in Him can we be guaranteed that our hope will not be put to shame. Only in Him can we be sure that a promise is both yes and amen!

Conspiracy of Hope | Genesis 3:14-15 | Hope Promised

We rarely consider the good in our lives, so we aren’t moved to serve anyone.

We as a society rarely consider the good things we have experienced. We live in an epidemic of “what have you done for me lately.” Which means that we have a hard time being a people of sacrifice. We have all experienced directly when we send out an invitation to help us move. There is no greater way to discover who your true friends are than moving homes.

Even greater than the relational strain of moving furniture is how this reality manifests itself with our relationship with God.

We rarely consider the great things that God has done for us, and so we aren’t moved to serve him I’ll speak for myself, my desire to serve becomes smaller the longer I go without considering God’s goodness towards me. Spiritual disciplines, my willingness to give monetarily, my willingness to give of my time, my ability to simply be faithful to that which I have been called, is directly connected to my frequency in remembering God’s faithfulness and goodness towards me.

None of this is news to our Heavenly Father. In fact, the Bible is plain in its revelation of how our hearts work. Throughout it, you will find a constant refrain to consider the goodness and faithfulness of God. The position of the scriptures is

God’s faithfulness moves us to faithful service.

Stand Alone Sermons | Faithfulness | 1 Samuel 12:24

“The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson

You and I may not all be able to place such eloquent words on the underlying sense of incidental-ness that plagues most men and women, but the feeling is proven potent, for many life is a series of disconnected and randomized events, of which we must make the most.

I remember quite vividly a heated argument I had with one of my dearest friends, years ago at Augustine’s, on Memorial. He spent the better part of an hour trying to convince me that everything in life was a randomised series of events.

There was no rhyme or reason to life. We are born, and the people who are most successful, he said, are those who learn to react the best to the randomness of this world. As he closed his bar speech. He turned to me with incredible confidence, raised his glass and declared, “life, in the end, is incidental… a game of chance, and I will win precisely because I see no purpose in it!” He slammed down his empty beer mug, and looked at me with incredible smugness.

Without batting an eye, I leaned in close and asked him a question, “If life is incidental, and without purpose, why do you invest so heavily, both politically and financially in trying to make the world a better place?”

He sat in stunned silence… and we said little else that evening.

Again, you, especially if you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, would be unlikely to ever say something so void of belief as Neil DeGrasse Tyson or so depressing as my friend Johnathan—but you would think it. You would wrestle with it. You might even start to believe it.

In fact the second biggest lie we ever believe in this world is that we are incidental in it. We believe that our lives are incidental.

The first is connected, that IF there is a God, He is hiding something from us that could help us better navigate this twisted and torn series of unconnected events.

But the Scriptures teach us something far more dignified about God's greatest creation. Our lives are ripe with redemptive potential.

Great Expectations | Intentional Over Incidental | Genesis 37 - 50

It is easy to become cynical amid difficult situations. And though the progression towards cynicism is likely unique for each of us, it is the ultimate destination for all of us, if we do not get a handle on how we handle the difficulties of this world.

We go from discouragement to detachment. We turn off the news because we want no more bad news. We stop weeping over injustice because we just feel overwhelmed. We forget our commitment to our Compassion kids, because we start to think we are not really making a difference. We ignore the fact that in much of the world our brothers and sisters in the faith are persecuted and suffering. And before long we can only look at the world through cynical lenses.

But, and hear this carefully, we do not have to be cynics. In fact, we can even have joy in the midst of the difficulties. We can have immovable joy in this cynical and difficult world.

Great Expectations | Joy Over Cynicism | 1 Peter 1:3-9

The main trouble is that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?

“Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of your past. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now David’s treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself.”

Great Expectations | Faith Over Fear | Psalm 27:1-14

“It is what it is.” Every one of us, at some point or another, has probably said or heard this phrase. It is a modern repackaging of the older saying “Qué será será, whatever will be will be.” Or, if you grew up in the church, “God’s going to do what He’s going to do.” This is fatalism, the belief that all events are predetermined and therefore inevitable.

These phrases are often used by us to describe a future that is already written. It is a way of resigning our past, present, and future to fate, luck, chance, or destiny. “These are just the cards I’ve been dealt,” we say, giving in to cynicism, and embracing the belief that God is either not involved in our story, or there is nothing we can do to change it.

More often than not though, Fatalism is the way we mitigate fragile faith, it is the lens through which we interpret our circumstances.

Great Expectations | Sovereignty Over Fatalism | Amos 7:1-6

We believe if we don’t fulfill our purpose to change the world someone else will!

Someone will take on their purpose with passion. Someone will secure themselves in their identity as a masterpiece. Someone will walk in the works God prepared for them before time began. Someone will get activated as the gift that they are. Someone will help the church fill the world, to change the world.

Someone. Someone. Someone. Someone… but... not… “me.”


I am here to tell you today that you are someone! And the great work before us will never be worked without you!

You—through the Church—are God’s means for transforming the world. You—through the Church—are God’s PLAN A! There is no plan b!

You—through this church—are God’s means for reaching the world!

Made For More | Made To REACH MORE | Ephesians 4:17-5:20; 6:10-17

We do not believe we have anything of worth to contribute… we are satisfied to simply show up.

We convince ourselves that there is no place for us. Those people are far too talented. Their strengths far outweigh mine. I have no experience through which God can work. I have no gift that I can give.

Wrong!

Not only has God made you a masterpiece with a unique masterpiece mission, but He has also wired you in a unique way to BE at least one of five catalytic gifts He has given to the church. The church is mobilized and catalyzed by the gifts God gives it.

Made For More | Made To DO More | Ephesians 4:11-16

We—as God’s Church—are Made For More. We—as God’s people—are Made to Be More.

Though these are revelatory, powerful, reorienting truths, there is something that must undergird them if they are to ever be fully activated in our lives—love.

But not love in the way that we have come to understand the word in modern western culture. No, this is love in the deep, abiding, transformative sense that can only come from love’s Source.

You see in order for the Church to be the fullness of Jesus in the world, and in order for us to understand the unique masterpiece we are, and in order to walk in the masterpiece mission that has been set aside for us, we must first become acquainted with and regularly dwell on how it is that we have been loved, and from that love, love.

This is Paul’s primary purpose in this prayer—to plead with God that God would ground the Church in His love. The Church must be grounded and founded in God’s love.

If this were easy or automatic, Paul would not have been praying for it to be the reality in the Church at Ephesus. Why is Paul praying this prayer? The answer is quite simple if we can be honest for just a moment—We ground ourselves in so many things besides love.

Made For More | Made To LOVE MORE | Ephesians 3:14-21

What we were made for is written across the story of our lives.

Our lives often tell the story of that for which we are made. It is usually in winding roads, crooked lines, and misdirected efforts or behaviour—but there is a pattern and a purpose being revealed if we can connect the dots.

Even though it was in no way redemptive, it is very clear to me that I was made to communicate. God gave me the gift of gab, and though I used it for many years in many ways to serve myself, He redirected it to serve His ends.

We all have something like this: an inherent love and connection with music; a keen sense of beauty in nature; an early artistic bent that may have at first been used for graffiti, but can now be used to display the wonder of God’s creative genius; a keen and critical mind, made for problem solving; a deep and abiding compassion and patience; an unstoppable curiosity; a love for hearing people’s story…the list could literally go on forever. Our lives often tell the story of that for which we are made.

But what does that have to do with God... with this scripture we just read together... with being Made for More? Everything!

You see, though we may not have taken the time to connect the dots on how we were made or how our lives tell that story, God has, with great intentionality, Made us to Be unique in this world.

Perhaps for some of us, Made us to BE More than we presently believe we are.

In fact, after another well laid out list of powerful promises, Paul tells us that Every person is a masterpiece, made by a Master Craftsman, for a unique purpose.

Made For More | Made To BE MORE | Ephesians 2:8-10