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Stirring: Fish Out of Water
Intro:
Afternoon Stirring Family, at home and here.
I hope this day has been a good one for you.
I am happy to join you all tonight with great music, community, and art.
And if I am not mistaken, we have that for the kids as well over in Hope 4 Kids.
So Stirring Kids, you are dismissed to enjoy your own community and lessons.
Have fun!
Alright, well, we are finishing up series called “Shallow End of the Pool.”
The first week Eli highlighted the importance of a devotion to scripture as being the key to navigating the deep end of the pool of faith.
Last week he unpacked moving to the end of the pool in our faith is more of a process than a moment.
God calls all believers into movement toward maturity.
In this he looked at the things that hinder us and the things that we should be moving toward.
Both sermons were solid at giving us perspective on moving to the deeper end of the pool of our faith, so go back on any of our media platforms to check those out.
One of the things that I think we cannot remember enough,which is stated in the first two messages, is that God does call us into the deeper waters of faith but we truly are so comfortable in that shallow end.
I mean, if I am floating on a raft, I know someone is going to try and flip me.
I would much rather float in the shallow end where I can touch the ground.
At least then I might still keep my hair dry.
But God doesn’t just want a relationship with just half of us does he.
No he wants us completely, from our heads to our toes and from our core to our skin, from ever single cell to our soul.
But like Eli said, it’s a process right, so tonight I wanted to look at three stages we find ourselves in.
There could be more, but I think we can find ourselves in one of these three stages in this process of maturity in our faith as we head to the deep end. 1. Called out! 2. Called on.
3. Created for.
We might move from one stage to the next and back from time to time, but it has been true for me that I can usually find myself in my faith in one of these three stages.
ILLUSTRATION:
I feel cruel even bringing this up, but remember that weather we had like a week ago where it was still nice and warm and we could still actually swim in a pool?
Well let’s think back to then, and there is a beloved pool game called Marco Polo, right.
I assume you all know the game but just in case, it’s like tag but in the pool.
The person who is it has their eyes closed and they yell Marco, and everyone else in response is to yell Polo.
The tagger is trying to find the others only by following their voices.
Well I have always played with this variant, that if the tagger was getting close to you, you could always get out of the pool and run to a different part of the pool.
But if the tagger yelled what?
Do you know?
That’s right “fish out of water” then you were it.
“Fish out of water”, you were supposed to be in the water, but you are out and you are not where you belong, and you got caught.
Right?
You see, God calls us out wherever we are in life.
When he pulls on our heart, we usually fight the urge to believe that we are not good enough.
That’s the reason why this first stage is called .. Called out: “I’m not good enough”
But I hope tonight that we all hear, that if we are in this stage that our “not good enough” is enough for Christ to work with.
The scriptures are filled with God showing us he has a soft spot for calling out people that are not good enough and doing something amazing with them.
Let’s look at two of Jesus’ primary disciples, arguably two of the most influential, Peter and John.
In Acts 4:13 it says,
The Jewish leaders understood that Peter and John had no special training or education.
But they also saw that they were not afraid to speak.
So, the leaders were amazed.
They also realized that Peter and John had been with Jesus.
Here we have Peter and John only a few months, if that, after Jesus had been crucified and resurrected.
They are sharing this truth of Jesus’ life, love and miracles with people in the Jewish communities and these Jewish leaders find out, arrested them, and essentially are calling “fish out of water.”
They believe they are spreading false truths, yet Peter tells them the same thing he told the 5000 people before.
This Jesus man is real, he died under mankind’s cruelty and even sin, and is the only way for us to be right by God.
“fish out of water (point and shake hand)” some would even say they were not educated enough to even speak this.
Just think, roughly three years before then they were both casting nets over their boats asking each other what they were going to eat for lunch.
“Whachya eaten?”
Fish... yeah me too.
Yet here comes the son of the creator, this radically different teacher, Jesus and says hey guys I think you would be great students for me, come follow me.
You don’t think in that three year internship, they didn’t think, we are not good enough to do this.
What do we know, we are just fishermen.
If you are in this first stage, maybe even in the shallow end of the pool.
God is tugging at your heart, telling us to get back in the water.
Yet we fight it.
We are not good enough.
Who am I that God would call me, I'm just... a liar, a cheat, a sinner.
Im just a fish out of water, I don’t belong here.
I don’t belong in a church.
I don’t belong being loved by God.
I don’t belong telling his story.
But the beauty of it is, that is exactly where God calls us out.
Because when he calls a fool like me to do something for him, and it succeeds.
I hope people will say, that man ain’t got no sense, but I can tell he has been with Jesus.
Remember, Your “not good enough” is enough for God to do something with.
He is the God who made creation out of nothing, He is the God that raises life out of death, and he is a God who takes great joy making something out of your “not good enough”
If you are in this stage, the next time you think “I am not good enough” and follow it up with “I will never be good enough”.
Try this.
When you say “I am not good enough” next time, next time follow it up with and that is enough for God to do something with.
So then what, okay now that I know God can love me and can use me what now.
I still really like it in the shallow it.
Well tag your it... God called you out, you responded with here I am.
Now it’s your turn to be it.
You have been Called on: find something you can say “I can do that” with.
In other words, take the easy first step.
I have this quick video that I think usually portrays those of us in this stage.
Check this out.
VIDEO
Hahah.
You like that.
Here we are we get in the water, and are so afraid we are going to drown that we hold our ground and never find out that we can stand up.
Start small.
Some people have the ability to do a cannon ball into what God is doing.
I admire them, adore them even, but I can be a little more timid.
I am a planner, it’s safer, or at least I think it is.
It’s like when my son was learning to swim.
I picked him up and threw him in, and he learned to sink or swim.
That was that.
NO! Are you crazy.
Maybe some of you are, but like I said I am slow.
We let him sit on the stairs and kick his feet around first.
We then let him eventually hold our hands as he walked down the stairs.
Then we held him as we walked into the deeper water with him.
And so on...
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