We Are Called to Movement

Introduction

New Series - We are Called: Adventures into the Unknown

Today: We Are Called to Movement

How our vision or just cause - something so important we would be willing to sacrifice for it.

Vision: Engage the discontented with the compassion of Christ

Simon Sinek on vision or Just Cause

Resilient - withstand cultural, technological, and social change

Inclusive - an invitation to anyone who wants to (is called) to believe and be part of it (contribute to it) no matter their

Other oriented - primary benefit goes to those other than the contributors

People who follow a vision or just cause are part of something that is always moving. Called a movement.

Decisive Moments

Two main kinds of movement: small or micro and big or macro.

Small - Live in a house…update the house.

Big - Move to another house.

Small - Change jobs in your company

Big - Change companies

Small - Move from one grade to the next

Big - Change schools

Big movement comes out of decisive moments.

Mark 1:14–20 ESV

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.

End of one Era and Brings in Another

The decisive moment that ends of a long period of waiting hope and expectation: Jesus takes center stage

God’s Good News

His Kingdom is Happening

Jesus is calling, and he has a kingdom coming. Now is the time.

A Present and Future Reality

Not a time, place, or situation

Requires a new orientation

First people - the religious who had lived in a system, structure and worldview/mindset that reduced God, people, and the world into religious formulae and legal code.

Alan Hirsch calls this a cave.

Eye Doctor: Better or worse. Prescription for what we say is better. Choosing one means rejecting others. Someone else chooses a different better. We assume our better - our one view of reality is best; is normal. We become blind to what else is really there.

This is Cave Rationality.

Those on the inside don’t even notice, as they have simply inherited a way of seeing things.

Faith reduced to try and make sense of a complex world

Influenced by things other than the life God intends like: politics, socioeconomics, race, our need to maintain the life we want to live

Where we hide, create illusions of safety for ourselves

Pull specific truths or beliefs from their contexts and treat them as if they are the whole truth.

Heresy.

N. T. Wright notes: The greatest heresies do not come about by straightforward denial […] They happen when an element which may even be important, but isn’t central, looms so large that people can’t help talking about it, fixating on it, debating different views of it as though this were the only thing that mattered.11

Breaks them out of it to a relentless pursuit of God’s truth being revealed in moment in time.

Restoration/salvation

Repent

First calling to repent is given to the people of God. It was the disciples of John the Baptist whom he first invited to repent of this system, structure and worldview/mindset that reduced God, people, and the world into religious formulae and legal code.

In Greek the word repent is metanoia, which means to “change the way you see.”

Jesus was so challenging to many of his hearers because he constantly pushed them to see things differently.

Needed a cleansing of its collective perception before the people could truly see and comprehend who it was they were dealing with in Jesus.

If we insist on keeping our religious formulas, mental, emotional, and imaginative world the way it’s always been, the good news just won’t fit.

We need to have our perceptions cleansed and transformed if we are to be able to see and understand the truth and experience what encountering God looks and feels like.

Repentance is standing on the desk in order to look at the world in a different way - Hirsch

Listen, Trust, Do

Obedience = representing God’s kingdom

Death to self

Submission to his lordship

Grow in conformity to his life and teachings: Love, humility, servanthood, forgiveness, justice, holiness, mercy.

Jesus is calling people to follow him into the wild edges of this blazingly beautiful world, and he’s calling them now like he called them then: “The time has come […] The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15).