The Forgotten Way To Meeting God

Now what I want to do is invite you to grab your message notes that look like this as we continue our September series, "Prepare to meet your maker." And I want to talk to you this morning about something that's really captured my imagination. It's really captured my heart. This is intensely personal what I'm going to share with you today. These verses from the Bible that I want to share with you have been a huge part of my spiritual development over the last 10 years. It really started a renewed focus in my life a decade ago. And it's intensified with some things that have happened to me this summer.

And there's always a risk when a pastor says, "I really want to share with you something that God's been laying on my heart because it's so personal and so real to me." And honestly, you may not think that pastors think of this or feel like it, but we do run the risk of sharing something that just really has cut us to the quick and seeing people go, "Okay, that was interesting." You know, so here's what I want to invite you to do. Please open your hearts, open your minds to what God might have to say to you through a passage that has really hit me right where I live this last summer. I hope it has a similar effect on you.

This weekend, I want to talk about the forgotten key to meeting God. The forgotten key to meeting God. I have dozens of books in my office library about how to meet God, about how to maximize your spiritual life, about how to revitalize your Christian faith. And I went through and I grabbed a stack from my bookshelf and looked through these books. What do they have to say? They say a lot of things about prayer and about Bible study and even about spiritual disciplines, but the first 12 books I looked at didn't have one page in them that mentioned this forgotten key to meeting God.

And yet God gives us this key in the Bible. It's as plain as the nose on our face and yet it has somehow vanished from so many of our books about how to revitalize our spiritual lives. And this is very important. You know, I've been a Christian now for over 40 years and I've discovered that it's very easy to fall into a spiritual slump. You go through what I call spiritual dry spells. I go through these things too. Times that your soul feels like this dry parched desert ground. Look at this picture. Doesn't it make you feel thirsty to even look at that? Don't you just wouldn't you just love to just go out to that nice cool water fountain? Wouldn't you just love to have this bottle of water right now? Wouldn't you like to be me right now? Ah, that is delicious. Would you like to have some? You can't have it, but instead I'm going to give you something even better.

What God says is water for our souls because there's times just like this that you don't feel close to God. When you feel like your heart is dry, when you feel barren inside, when you feel like your prayers are kind of bouncing off the ceiling, right? You feel disconnected from God. Now I want to be clear about this. When you're going through a spiritual dry spell you don't lose your salvation, but you do lose the joy of it. You lose the peace. You lose the confidence. You lose the closeness that you once felt to God and you feel dry and empty and dusty inside. What do you do in those times? Well, there's a part of the Bible that speaks right to this issue. It's Isaiah 58. That's page 526 in the brown TLC Bibles in front of you if you want to look it up for yourself.

It's a place in the Bible where the people of Israel have a problem and in your notes you might want to write out their problem as this. They are going through a spiritual dry spell and maybe you are there right now. Nothing seems to work no matter what you try. How do you think God sees your problem? Well, here's how God sees the problem for these people. Isaiah 58 starting in verse 2. Day after day God says they seek me out. They seem eager to know my ways. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them. But why have we fasted they say and you haven't seen it God? Why have we humbled ourselves and you haven't noticed?

When I was a younger Christian I used to ask pastors, "God feels distant and I feel dry. I'm going through a spiritual dry spell. I feel parched. What do I do?" They'd answer things like this. "Pray." Well, I am praying. "Pray more." "Pray harder." "Pray through it and read the Bible." Well, I am. "Do it more." And also try spiritual disciplines. What do you mean? "Try fasting." What do you like to eat? "Chocolate then stop." If you're not doing stuff that you like to if you stop having fun then you're going to be really spiritual. Right? Well, these guys here in Isaiah 58 they were doing all that stuff. They were still dry. It says even though if you look at the text it says day after day they sought God. They prayed. They asked him for just decisions. It says they even fasted.

So what was the problem here? This is super important for our church to hear right now because we are a couple of weeks away from launching God is. Which is something that we wrote and put together this summer. It's our church-wide 50-day study on what theologians call the attributes of God. What's the identity of the true God? Let's get to know him through what creation reveals to us, through what scripture, special revelation reveals to us. And this could either, I'm convinced after working on it for months now, this could either be one of the most awesome experiences that we have ever had together as a church or it could be a disastrous disappointment.

Because at the end of this you could be saying, "God why have we studied day after day? Why have we fasted? Why have we sought after you and it feels like you haven't even noticed?" See there's nothing wrong with Bible study. In fact it's necessary. I'm going to be arguing that next week. We get lazy when it comes to that. There's nothing wrong of course with prayer. Jesus commends it and models it for us. There's nothing wrong with being spiritually disciplined. It's necessary. But according to God in Isaiah 58 there's another necessary component to spiritual growth that these people were missing.

Now I want to make this clear. We are saved by God's grace and God's grace alone. But God knows that there are components to living an abundant life. A happy, joyful, spiritually satisfied, well-watered spiritually life that we need to have in our lives. And God says to these people you are missing an important component. And if we leave this component out of our fall study of God, I'll be honest with you, we may as well not do it. So what is it? Well I want you to look at God's prescription for this problem here. Are you ready for this? Now before I reveal this, I want to say there's a lot of causes potentially for spiritual dryness, right? You feel spiritually dry. It could be there's active sin in your life, some destructive habit that's gotten ahold of you. Or it could be some kind of stifling, arrogant doubt. Or it could be just laziness for you.

But for me when I was spiritually dry those things were not precisely the issue. I found myself falling really into the category that people here in Isaiah 58 and God's prescription for them really hit home and I have not been able to get it out of my mind. And it's this. God prescribes bold acts of compassion. Bold acts of compassion. Now you can cross your arms here and go, "Well I already am compassionate." I don't need to hear this. Or you can open your heart to whatever God might be telling you here. Go to verse 6. God says, "Great you've been fasting, but is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke. To set the oppressed free and to break every yoke." Now what's he talking about?

I want to go to the next couple of verses in Isaiah 58 line by line because honestly they've been revolutionizing my own spiritual life and practice when he says, "This is the kind of fasting I have chosen." He's saying this. He's saying, "You guys think of spiritual discipline as what do I stop doing? What do I like to do? What do I better stop doing it? That's that equals fasting. What do I what do I stop doing?" But God says here, "No think about it. Think about it as what do I start doing? Follow me here. We tend to define holiness as what do I separate myself from rather than what do I give myself to. I'll say it again. We tend to define holiness as what do I separate myself from rather than what I give myself to, right?

We tend to think spiritual growth is all about avoiding evil. And so we're blind to all the opportunities for doing good all around us. And that's exactly what God is saying to these people. And look at the vision he's casting. He's saying this is an abundant life. This is this the life I want for you is a life that's challenging and verdant and beautiful and exciting and adventurous. It's not a spiritual life where you kind of cloister yourself in this little spiritual cocoon and go, "I guess this is living." He says, "Let me cast a vision for you." There's a word he uses twice here, the word yoke. He says, "Untie the cords of the yoke. Break every yoke." What's this mean? We don't see these a lot in our culture, but a yoke is this a heavy piece of wood put on the shoulders of oxen or other animals so that they can pull heavy loads.

So what is God saying? Go to the farms and the ranches and break every yoke on the oxen and the horses and get them all set out, all the animals free. That's not what he means in this verse. He means that there are people, there are human beings that God loves who are yoked up, who are being treated as nothing more than beasts of burden. He says, "You got to set those people free." I'll give you an example. This is Jyoti, a beautiful young woman. I heard about her first in a sermon by a man named Kevin Kim talking about international justice mission, IJM, that's a human rights agency that works toward justice for victims of slavery and other forms of oppression, and this is one of their cases.

One day four women come to her village and they say, "Jyoti, come with us. We'll take you to the city and we'll get you a good job and you can make a lot of money and then you can send that money back to feed your family." And so Jyoti at 14 years old gets into a taxicab with him, these four women who've offered her this job, and on the way into the city they offer her tea that is drugged and she falls unconscious, true story, and then the next thing she knows she wakes up and is in the red light district of a major city in India being sold into a brothel for $250. Her new owners take Jyoti down into a basement and for the next three days they beat her with electric cords, plastic pipes, and metal rods. While they tell her over and over and over, for three days, "You are hopeless, you are powerless, you are helpless, hopeless, powerless, helpless," they say, "You will never see the outside of this brothel again. This is your life. Give up."

I wish I could say this was an unusual case. There are more slaves today than ever before in human history. Human trafficking, which is the modern word for slavery, is now a $32 billion a year industry that's on track to overtake drugs and arms dealing as the most profitable illicit trade. There are at least 27 million slaves worldwide. Half of them are children. They are yoked, but this yoke can be broken. Let me show you another picture. This is Jyoti now. Look at her countenance. She is free. I.J.M. was able to raid that brothel and get her out and they put Jyoti in a place of long-term Christian aftercare where she got counseling and eventually she came to know Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.

She became so empowered by that experience that this young girl horrifically abused in this nightmare said, "I want to go back. I want to go back because I know where there are other young girls like me and we need to set them free too." And she led the police and I.J.M. reps on a raid of the brothel where she had been held and seven more girls were set free and then one of those seven girls said, "I know where there's another place where there are even more girls," and they found two dozen more girls there set them free and as I speak all 31 girls have been placed in loving Christian homes and their yoke has been broken. Does that excite you?

Now if your heart is racing going, "Yes, that's awesome!" That's because that's what you were made for. See that's your identity. That's your spiritual DNA as a Christian. Like her, you've been set free. Some yoke in your life was broken. Maybe it was some sort of crazy over-the-top self-reliance, "I don't need nobody," and God broke that and said, "Yeah, you need me," and you've learned the beauty of dependence on God. Or maybe in your life it was alcoholism or maybe in your life it was some sort of a doubting atheism that had a stranglehold on your imagination and your faith or maybe it was something else, but God has broken a yoke in your life and set you free and now like Jyoti, God says, "Now go back and set others free as well. Set the oppressed free."

You know there's a huge phrase in this verse that it's so easy to skip over, but it's startling if you notice it. It's like, "What is he saying?" And it's this phrase, "Break every yoke, every." Say that sentence with me, "Break every yoke." Say it again, "Break every yoke." What's that mean? God is saying, "Have big dreams here. Have high expectations." He's not just saying, "Just do some token thing. Throw some money at it." He's saying, "Break every yoke as a Christian. Go out and do things. Change the world." Now this is huge. This is why I use the phrase, "Bold acts of compassion." It's another way of saying, "Stay idealistic. Think big thoughts when it comes to breaking the yokes out there."

Do you remember the old starfish story? You've heard it before. I've used it in sermons myself. Short version, a man's walking down the beach when he sees this, a beach full of starfish washed up on the shore, and there's a boy throwing one starfish into the ocean. The man says, "What do you think you're doing?" The boy says, "Saving this starfish's life." And the man says, "Look around you. There are hundreds of stranded starfish. It does not make a difference." And the boy reaches down, tosses another starfish into the sea, and says, "It made a difference to that one." How many of you have heard that story before? Let me see a show of hands. Right. I've used it. It's a great story. It has one flaw when you think about it. It's very individualistic, isn't it? One kid changing the life of one starfish.

I like the way a guy named Scott Todd rewrote that story for 2011. And it goes like this. A man was walking along the beach when he saw a thousand starfish washed up and stranded on a shore. And then he saw a little girl taking pictures of a starfish with her iPhone. And he asked, "What are you doing?" And she answered, "Uploading pictures of these stranded starfish to my Facebook page and asking my friends to tweet a call to action." And the man said, "Little girl, what does 'tweet' mean?" And within an hour, a thousand children stormed the beach and every starfish was saved. Don't you love that story better? I love that story.

Well, listen, I was thinking about this and the second story, follow me here, the second story is a lot more accurately what acts of compassion look like in the church. Because you know what? Listen, we are all tied into a social network that's a lot older than and a lot bigger than Facebook. It's called the church. Let me repeat that. We're all tied into a social network that's a lot older and a lot bigger than Facebook. It's called the church. And when God says break every yoke, he's saying not just you individually, but as a people. You know now some estimates are that there's two billion Christians on planet earth, two billion. That's a massive social network. And God is saying, "All of you together, you've been called not to cloister yourself, but to get all the starfish off the beach, have big dreams."

And let me just encourage you, big things can change. Did you know we used to say that 40,000 children die each day from hunger related causes? A horrific figure. In the 90s, that number dropped to 33,000. By 2008, it was down to 24,000. Current figures, it's down to 21,000. Now that's still a horrible truth, but it was cut in half in one generation. And why? There are a couple of contributing factors, but a huge part of the decline. Churches in the last 20 years woke up to the need in the evangelical church for feeding the hungry. Church giving to that need tripled in the last 10 years. We can really change the world.

Now I don't know about you, but when you hear me say, "We can change the world," part of me used to go, "Uh-uh." No, because Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you." Because the Bible teaches that depravity is the condition of lost man. So we can't change the world. I didn't say perfect the world. To perfect the world, that's still God's job. Perfect the world, that's not going to happen until Jesus returns. We have a new heaven and a new earth ruled by Him. But change the world, that's part of our calling, that's part of our vocation as Christians. I mean, you're changing the world really every day, in some small way, good or bad. And our calling as a church is to go and do this together.

You say, "How?" Well, there's some very specific ways to do that in the next verse, verse 7, is my kind of fasting, not to share your food with the hungry and provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked to clothe them and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood. There are three basic human needs in this verse. There's the need for what? Shout it out. There's a need for food, right? The need for what else? Shelter and the need for what else? That's right. Food, shelter and clothing. This doesn't come out of some, you know, government report or something. This is out of the Bible. God says, "Look, everybody's got a need for food, clothing and shelter and I want you to help take care of it."

And then there's a fourth need in Isaiah 58, the need for respect. God talks about that in verse 9. He says, "Do away with the yoke of oppression with the pointing finger and malicious talk." Do away with the pointing finger. What does that mean? I used to go, "What is he saying? I can't point, you know. Hey, there's Jim. There's my wife, Lori. Look, you know, what's wrong with that? There's Yogi, you know." That's not... In our culture, it doesn't mean what it meant in this culture. I read several commentators, one of them, John Piper, that pointed this out. He said, "There's remnants of this to this day in some Middle Eastern cultures. In those days, to point a finger was a very rude gesture, roughly equivalent, and I hope this doesn't offend anybody, but roughly equivalent to our crude, giving someone the finger."

God is saying in this verse, "Stop giving poor people the finger because that's basically what you're doing when you drive past them and under your breath say, 'They're probably lazy and deserved to be poor and I'm not going to help.'" And he says, "Stop giving poor people the finger. They have a basic human need for respect. Instead, what do you do? Spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry. Satisfy the needs of the oppressed." You say, "But the needs are overwhelming. There's somebody on every street corner and there's this and there's that." That's why it's about... It's not about you throwing one starfish in. It's about us going, "We're going to take that beach. We're going to clear that beach of starfish and doing it in an organized way."

I came upstairs one Saturday morning. Our bedrooms are on the first floor of our house. Then you come upstairs to where our living room is and I kind of wander into my bathrobe and, you know, cup of coffee. My hair's like this and I see our youngest son, David. This is five years ago when he was eight years old and I walk in and he's playing with Legos on the floor there. And you know how many parents do we have with kids still in the house? Can I see a show of hands? You can still have kids. Okay, you know how you never know what's going to come out of their mouths, right? Ever? You're like, "Okay, wasn't expecting that." Well, David is playing with his Legos and he stops in mid-Lego build and he goes, "Dad, I was pleased to see that Cal Ripken Jr. made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame in legendary Cooperstown, New York on the first ballot but many commentators believe that Barry Bonds and Pete Rose won't ever make it in because they're scandal-tained Legacies." And he goes back to playing with Legos again.

I thought, "Where'd you hear all that, David? Sounds like you're quoting somebody." And David goes, "Oh, Dad. You know, CNN headline news is just one channel above the Disney Channel on cable and he says, 'Sometimes on Saturday mornings when you and Mommy think I'm watching cartoons, I actually go up a channel so I can catch up on current events.'" Just like that, eight years old. And then he says, "But, Daddy, sometimes I have to turn it off because it's so sad." And then that channel must have been doing some kind of a special on hunger in the world or something because he goes, "All those people starving, all those hungry people." And then he stops looking at his Legos and he looks at me and he goes, "Daddy, what can I do about that?"

And I knew I had a moment where I could affect his paradigm, potentially for a long time to come. And I knew I had probably about 60 seconds of his attention. Right? So I'm sitting there, I'm half awake and I'm like, "Don't blow it." You know, what do you say to an eight year old about how he can help solve world hunger? You know what I did not want to say? Anything that could be construed as, "Don't worry about it." Or, "There's nothing you can do." Or, "Talk to your mother." Or, "Talk to us about it when you're older." Or, "Do what most grownups do. Just change the channel and forget about it." Right? So what was I going to tell them? Well, I said, "David, you know what? You are, you have been called to be part of God's plan to change that."

I said, "There was a little boy in the Bible who, when 5,000 people needed something to eat, and none of the grownups knew what to do." And Jesus said, "You give him something to eat, nobody knew what to do." I said, "There was a little boy, probably about your age, who said, 'Well, I got my lunch.' And he gave his loaves and fishes and you know what happened? He saw God do a miracle and multiply that and Jesus fed all 5,000 people. And you're that little boy. You give what you can and you'll see God do miracles." And so I'm getting all passionate about this like I am with you right now and I'm expecting him to come running up to me with a hug and say, "Yes, Daddy, I'm in. I dedicate my life to fighting hunger." And it said, he goes, "Okay." And goes back to playing Legos.

And I'm thinking, "Probably what happened was you went, 'Note to self, do not ask your father these questions or you'll get a sermon. Forget it.'" But you know how you never know what soaks in, ever. Two Saturday mornings later, same scene, I walk upstairs, bathrobe, coffee, hair going everywhere and I look in to say good morning to David. He's not playing with Legos. He's not watching Saturday morning cartoons or CNN. Where is he? I go outside to get the morning paper and I see this. David had on his own baked brownies and other things and was selling them in front of our house with this sign, "All proceeds go to Second Harvest Food Bank." And I want to emphasize he initiated this 100% by himself.

I mean like he got a chair, he went up and he got the brownie mix. He made all this stuff. I didn't even know he knew how to use the oven but he did all of this by himself. I'll be honest with you, I gave money but I did not eat anything. I'll be very honest. But guess what? He clears almost 30 bucks and gives it all to Second Harvest at eight years old and that was the first year that I was able to stand in front of you and say that we gave over a hundred thousand pounds of food in our food drive and when we made that announcement I looked over at David and he was beaming because he was able to say, "I was a part of that. I was a part of the crew that headed to the beach and picked up all the starfish I could and threw them in. I changed that beach. I changed the world because I was part of a movement."

I want you to notice something. When God tells us to do this, he's not saying that we should do this because it's a punishment. He's saying, "This is something awesome. This is an exciting way to live. This is gonna just shoot you off like a rocket." You know this is, listen, this is not a job description. This is a doctor's prescription and there's a difference. It's not a job description. It's a doctor's prescription. God's not saying, "Here's your jobs, Christians. You better do this." No, we're saved by God's grace, but this is a doctor's prescription for what ails you.

God says to these people, "You're dry. Spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and this is exactly the cure for you and what will happen next here is God's promise." And God goes into major promise mode here. I mean, honestly, God promises these people a lot more than I would dare to as a pastor, but I got to preach what God says. And so God said, the last half of Isaiah 58 is all about, "And then you're gonna have this amazing abundant life." And he says, "You will meet God in amazing ways." In fact, it's the opposite of spiritual dryness. What I want to invite you to do is to read this next verse together, the rest of verse 11. And let me hear you say this with gusto. Here's his promise, the opposite of being parched spiritually. He says, "You will be," let me hear you, "like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail." In other words, watch. You go from this to this, a well-watered garden. And this garden sprouts in the most unlikely places, like.

We did Project Homeless Connect last year with the city of Santa Cruz. Do you remember that? Hundreds of TLCers volunteered. And one of the stations at Project Homeless Connect was a foot washing station. Now just imagine that, washing the feet of homeless people. Well, there was a woman who was volunteering there, not the woman in this picture from the Santa Cruz Sentinel, another woman. This woman had been attending Twin Lakes Church, a very brilliant woman, very intellectual. And she told me that she wasn't sure if she even wanted to be a Christ follower yet, but she'd been coming to church just to kind of check it out, right? Well, this woman, not even a believer in Jesus yet, hears about Project Homeless Connect in church and thinks, "I'll try that," and ends up assigned to the foot washing station.

The next week she writes me this. I was one of those fortunate enough to participate in the foot washing booth at the Homeless Day. That day woke me up to the power of Jesus and introduced me to a way of life that I want to live through Him every day, regardless of what I'm doing, and goes on to describe how she committed herself to Christ that day at the foot of a homeless person. And by the way, she's getting baptized this afternoon. Isn't that exciting? This is somebody who found Jesus doing these bold acts of compassion. She became like a well-watered gardener. She wrote us this week, "The unbelievable good news of Jesus and the whole spirit and community there at TLC has changed my life. I really can't wait to be baptized." She met Jesus there, but does that surprise you?

Because when I do bold acts of compassion, look what God promises in Isaiah 58, closeness. He says, "Then you'll call and the Lord will answer. You'll cry for help and He'll say, 'Here am I.' Strength. He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. Joy. Then you will find your joy in the Lord and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land." Man, closeness, strength, and joy. Why? Why is compassion such a key to meeting God? Two quick reasons on page two of your notes. First, compassion is the cure for self-absorption. Giving is the cure for self-absorption, right? Let me ask you this. Is this possible? Is it possible to study the Bible and go to church week after week and practice spiritual disciplines like fasting and yet be totally self-absorbed? Is that possible?

How many of you have ever known somebody like that? How many of you are sitting next to them right now? No, just kidding. How many of you have been that person in your life? I've been that person. But it's when we give that we're forced out of that and compassion helps me understand the heart of God. You know, you really want to know God. Well, God is a God who gives. That's God's heart. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life as a free lavish gift. And the best way to get to know the heart of a God that is characterized by giving to the poor and hopeless and helpless is to give to the poor and hopeless and helpless yourself. Because then you're kind of you're playing the same tune. Your heart is resonating with Him and He calls you to it. You can hear Him calling you to this, to an abundant life doing this.

Each year rather, our church sends a medical dental team to a children's home in India called Little Flock. How many of you have been on one of those trips? Can I see a show of hands? We got a lot of people here who've been on those trips. The kids there at Little Flock Children's Home are all orphans or come from backgrounds of horrific abuse and poverty. And one year I went over to visit. Well, the kids invited us to one of their chapels and they prayed as they do at every one of their chapels, the Lord's Prayer. They prayed it in their language, Tamil and in English. And I knew it was the Lord's Prayer so I knew what they were praying but here is what it sounded like. Watch this video.

Now the only thing I understood frankly was amen. But I knew they were praying the Lord's Prayer and it hit me when I heard them pray it. That phrase, "Give us this day our daily bread." You know, these little kids are praying that prayer every single day and it hits me. Standing right there, I'm the answer to that prayer. We are. And there are kids like this all over the world in places just like this praying that prayer and don't think they're not praying it here. I don't know if you know this but since 2001, the number of people that are helped by church food pantries here in the Monterey Bay area has tripled. If you put together, somebody did some research and if you put together the number of people helped by all of the food pantries supplied by Second Harvest Food Bank, it's 59,000 people a month. That's in Monterey Bay area and the Santa Cruz area. 59,000 a month and that's tripled since 2001 and half of those are children.

And a lot of those children are like these kids in India and they're praying the Lord's Prayer and they may not be thinking of it this way but every other phrase in the Lord's Prayer is between them and God, right? Like forgive us our debts as we forgive those indebted to us but that line, "Give us this day our daily bread." I'm called to be part of the answer to that prayer. To break every yoke. So how do we do that? What's this look like here? Well, God calls us to do bold acts of compassion because they increase our faith. They provide memorable experiences for us and they really make a difference and I want to suggest that we all do something that frankly is a little crazy.

Like crazy as part of our God is series. If you've ever been looking for evidence, hoping for evidence that your senior pastor is going nuts, you may be about to hear it, all right? Because here's what I was thinking about. If everybody in our church saved one dollar and forty cents, one dollar forty cents a day until Thanksgiving. Now I mean for every kid like my kids, every adult like me and my wife, a dollar forty a day, not for the whole year, not for half a year, not for a quarter of a year, but for ten weeks. That's all. And then we bring it all in on the weekend before Thanksgiving. You know what that adds up to when you work out the math? It adds up to money that's worth one million pounds of food. One million pounds of food given to second harvest. One starfish at a time.

And then I thought I also want to have an overseas component to this. I've thought about this for years, right? And so this week Valerie calls World Venture, which is a missions agency, and she asks them what is the worst spot on the planet right now for hunger? And they say there's no question about it. It's Somalia, the Somalian border with Kenya. You've seen the pictures. People there are starving. They literally have nothing. There are no crops. There is no money. The soil is not fertile. So they take them food through the churches in Kenya so that a hundred percent of the giving goes to the famished. And my wife and I actually personally know the woman who does this. Her name is Carol, and she's the woman who heads up this whole project. We've spent some time with her over there in Kenya.

So this week we are on the phone with World Vision or rather World Venture, and we say, well how much would it take? And this figure just pops into my head, I hope, you know, perhaps inspired by the Holy Spirit. How much would it take to feed a village of 200, no 500, no a thousand people, a village of a thousand people for a month, no for a year, a village of a thousand people for an entire year. How much would it take? And it breaks down to this. You know what it takes? A dime a day for 10 weeks. A buck from all of us. Or rather, you know, a buck for over 10 days for all of us. You add it up. Here's the equation. You add that into the dollar 40 cents. A dollar and a half a day from now until the weekend before Thanksgiving. That would equal one million pounds for second harvest, plus it would feed a village on the Somalian border for a year.

Now, I present this to you. Is anybody interested in trying to get the starfish off this beach? Anybody interested in this? I want to invite you to look at this envelope. This is in your bulletins. This is all laid out for you here, except for the details about Somalia, because we were still working those out so you can write that in. Plus feed African Village for a year. Now, I suggest that you put the funds in here over the next 10 weeks. Let this really be a creative spiritual growth opportunity for you. What I'm going to cut back to get the dollar 50 a day. Now, listen, of course you don't have to do this. This is not some legalistic thing. In fact, you may not be able to. That's okay. I know these are tough times. In fact, if you can't do this, come here and get food for yourself. Please do not feel bad if you can't do this. And I'll never know who gives what. That's between you and God. But you may be able to give more. If you pray about, "God, what does it mean for me to spend myself on behalf of the hungry?"

But my point is, I bet you can do something like my eight-year-old. This is about hearing God say to you, "The Christian life is not about living in a straitjacket. The Christian life is not about living in some cultural cocoon. The Christian life is about rejoicing in the lavish free gift that we get from God and then going out and seizing our divine moment and being gracious to others and breaking every yoke, not because it hurts me. Brownie points from God or love from God. He already loves you infinitely, but because God says, "This is a way that your life will be vibrant. This is a way you'll meet Him. Plus, this is a way to get every starfish off some beach together."

So as we go into the God Is series, we need to prepare ourselves to meet our Maker, to study and to boldly act. And if we mix the two, a deliberate 50-day study of God's attributes with these kinds of bold acts of compassion, let's raise a million pounds of food and let's feed a village for a year. Stand aside because I believe through that combined effort, God is going to blow us all away. Let's pray and let's dedicate that to the Lord. Would you bow your heads with me?

You know, with your heads bowed, maybe you have never made an initial connection with God. We've been talking about dryness, but maybe for you the issue is not to rewater what has become dry, but you've never been connected to God in the first place. And so today's your day. I want to lead you in a prayer, and if you've never opened your life to Jesus Christ, you might want to say this in your mind, if this expresses the longing of your soul, something like this, "God, I don't understand all of this, but I know and sense I need you in my life. Jesus, you made me, you loved me, you saved me, you died and rose from me, and you give me both forgiveness for my sin and a mission to live for." And so this morning, I want to open my heart as best I know how to you. I ask you to come into my life, help me to get to know you and make me like you.

Now with heads still bowed, if you've prayed that prayer before and for you the issue is spiritual dryness. Would you pray a prayer like this, "God, please pull me out of the spiritual desert. Help me to do the kind of fasting you have chosen. Help me to follow your prescription for my dryness. May this day be the first day of a time that we all as individuals and as a church become like well-watered gardens. And we want to commit all our goals to you. May the hungry be fed, may yolks be broken. Please do great things in my life and in the life of this church this fall. In your name we pray. Amen.