2000: A Year of Joy
In January 1990, I candidated to become the Senior
Pastor of Bethel Christian Fellowship. On the Sunday
night of that candidacy weekend, I preached a prophetic
message from Isaiah 54:1-3. Ten years later this scripture
formed the foundation of the theme message for the year
2000: A Year of Joy. In this passage Isaiah prophesies:
Sing, O barren woman, you who never
bore a child; burst into song, shout
for joy, you who were never in labor;
because more are the children of the
desolate woman than of her who has a
husband," says the LORD. "Enlarge
the place of your tent, stretch your
tent curtains wide, do not hold back;
lengthen your cords, strengthen your
stakes. For you will spread out to the
right and to the left; your descendants
will dispossess nations and settle in
their desolate cities.
As Isaiah brings the word of the Lord to the people of
Israel, he encourages them to be prepared because
growth is coming. They have been through a period of
captivity, retreat, and diminishment, but now the Lord
tells them to enlarge, stretch, lengthen, and strengthen,
for the “tent of Israel” is going to grow!
- Enlarge: The first challenge to growth is that of
vision. Most people do not naturally take risks;
like ten of the twelve spies who investigated the
Promised Land, they see giants. But there were
two, Joshua and Caleb, who saw possibilities and
God’s promises. Lynn Anderson illustrates the
challenge of vision in the following story:
About 350 years ago a shipload of travelers
landed on the northeast coast of America.
The first year they established a town site.
The next year they elected a town government.
The third year the town government
planned to build a road five miles westward
into the wilderness. In the fourth year the
people tried to impeach their town government
because they thought it was a waste
of public funds to build a road five miles
westward into a wilderness. Who needed
to go there anyway?
Here were people who had the vision to see
three thousand miles across an ocean and
overcome great hardships to get there. But
in just a few years, they were not able to
see even five miles out of town. They had
lost their pioneering vision. With a clear
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vision of what we can become in Christ, no
ocean of difficulty is too great. Without it,
we rarely move beyond our current
boundaries.
- Stretch:
If we are to fulfill the vision that God has
given, it will require stretching. Most people—
most Christians and even most
pastors(!) — are
reluctant to stretch. It is much easier to remain in
the familiar, comfortable place. As someone has
sagely noted, the number one chair in America is
not the Risky Boy but the Lazy Boy. Yet, if we are
to fulfill our destiny we must be thrust out of the
small place and into the large place of His plans
and purposes. Charles Simpson illustrates this so
well when he writes:
I met a young man not long ago who dives for
exotic fish for aquariums. He said one of
the most popular aquarium fish is the
shark. He explained that if you catch a
small shark and confine it, it will stay a size
proportionate to the aquarium. Sharks can
be six inches long yet fully matured. But if
you turn them loose in the ocean, they
grow to their normal length of eight feet.
That also happens to some Christians. I’ve
seen some of the cutest little six-inch
Christians who swim around in a little
puddle. But if you put them into a larger
arena – into the whole creation – only
then can they become great.
- Lengthen and Strengthen: As we enlarge
our vision and are stretched out of our comfort
zones to fulfill that vision, we need to develop a
broader and a deeper foundation for the larger
test that comes with growth. This foundation
building requires stamina and perseverance.
The importance of this is illustrated in the
following story about the cheetah:
A recent television documentary pointed out that the
cheetah survives on the African plains by running
down its prey. The big cat can sprint seventy miles
per hour. But the cheetah cannot sustain that pace
for long. Within its long, sleek body is a disproportionately
small heart, which causes the cheetah to tire
quickly. Unless the cheetah catches its prey in the
first flurry, it must abandon the chase.
Sometimes Christians seem to have the cheetah’s
approach to ministry. We speed into projects with
great energy. But lacking the heart for sustained
effort, we fizzle before we finish. We vow to start
faster and run harder when what we need may be
not more speed but more staying power – stamina
that comes only from a bigger heart. Motion and
busyness, no matter how great, yield nothing unless
we allow God to give us the heart.
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