“God’s Bigger Plan”

Job 38:1-7, 34-41

October 22, 2006

First Presbyterian Church Carson City

Pastor Bruce Kochsmeier

Purpose: For people to be captured by the bigger plan he has for them by calling them to let all they are be used by God to draw them and others to himself.

     Some of you saw the film, “Finding Forster” about the life of a British writer played magnificently by Sean Connery.  What most of us didn’t realize is that there was such a man E.M. Forster.  And true to his character in the film he once wrote, “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”  Forster was writing about himself and Job and you and me.  You see, when we look at Job the question that first hits us is, “Why did he have to go through so much?  Why did he have to lose everything?”  At the risk of trivializing suffering, I don’t think we understand the story of God and his when this is our line of question.  With Job as a centerpiece God is telling us that the life we have or even the life we think we need to get or hold on to is not the life we need.  The fact of the matter is that God is continually saying in scripture and in our life together that he has a bigger plan.

     But there is only one way to know this life; this bigger plan and that is to be willing to let go of the life WE have planned.  This letting go is not easy and it doesn’t happen all at once.  Of this, C.S. Lewis has said, “The change will not be completed in this life, for death is an important part of the treatment.  How far the change will have gone before death in any particular Christian is uncertain.”

     And so we must accept that the only way for anyone to find true peace; to become who he or she really was created to be is through the gift of God’s grace. It does seem though, even in our Presbyterian understanding of predestination, that we have a choice in how much grace we will allow God to pour into us.  It would seem horribly ironic that any of us would put a limit on how much we let God love us, but we do.  We say, “That’s enough, that’s just fine, I’ll take it from here” or worse still we live in such a way that says, “No, but thanks just the same, I’ve got another plan.  I have a life figured out for myself so I’ll go it my own way.”  And in this we miss the wild and wonderful and unpredictable path of faithfulness that God wants to give us for free.  Wanting so much to hold on to the life we want we leave ourselves closed to the life we need.

    Job did this.  Oh, I know he was tough and faithful and hung in there when his wife told him to end his life and when his friends told him he must have done something to deserve the things that were happening to him.  But ultimately Job, like you and me said, “God, life isn’t turning out right.  This isn’t what I bargained for.”  And that’s just the problem.  We want what WE have bargained for; what we paid for; what we planned.  And the fact of the matter is, what we want isn’t enough.  God wants to give us heaven and we want Beverly Hills or Shangri La or if the truth be known, Tonapah, because to want less than God’s plan for our lives is to seek a life that will not satisfy.

     When Job finishes his “What about me?” speech God is very compassionate with him, though to our mind’s eye it might not seem so because we are prone to think God should have said to Job, “Job, you’re right.  You really have been dumped on; ripped off, burned.  What should we do for you Job?”  But God loves Job and you and me more than this.  And so instead he gives Job a bigger plan.  It’s the same one he wants to give you and me if we will let go of ours long enough to hear God speak.  What God offers Job is everything.  He asks, “…who has laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?”  What God wants to know is, “Do you have a clue as to what you really need in this life?  Do you really know who the cornerstone that holds you together is?”

     The fact of the matter is, we don’t know.  But the amazing nature of God’s grace is that while we are seeking so much less God is placing his cornerstone in our midst and keeping eternity from caving in on us.  And in this God reveals his will; his bigger plan for our lives.  In Jesus Christ God set his cornerstone for us; to give us a new life.  And in him we can know God’s bigger plan for our lives.

     This scripture tells us God’s plan for each of our lives.  It tells us that it is time today and tomorrow and each day to let go more and more of the life we think we have in order to take hold of the life God has for us.  What is God’s bigger plan for your life?  Simple; that you let him direct every move, every thought; that you let him come in and shake the rubble footings and take you apart so that he can put you back together for his glory in his way.  What’s this going to look like?  It’s going to look like the camel that has gone through the eye of the needle; bowed, transformed, unrecognizable in its new form.  It’s going to look like freedom.  It will be the freedom that comes from saying “no” to old ways of thinking and living in order to say “yes” to God’s bigger plan that unfolds every day we are letting go of the old.

     What will it look like for us as the body of Christ to live into God’s bigger plan?  Will it mean we build a bigger sanctuary?  I don’t know.  God knows and God knows what he wants from us and has given us the ability to do for his glory.  We will know when we turn our hearts over to Jesus Christ.  Whether we build a new sanctuary is not as essential as who will we be in submission to God’s bigger plan for us.  It is as Alan described last week in Jesus’ encounter with the man who wanted a full life.  What Jesus called him to was a matter of being and only incidentally a matter of doing.  So the question is, will we let ourselves live in the wonder of being loved into deeper and deeper fellowship with God?  Will we worship God; which is the most important thing that can happen to us, with all that we are?

     Pastor Eugene Peterson says, “We have such stereotyped ideas of what God does and how he does it that we frequently misread the signposts.”  “Here’s the thing:” he says, “we must let Jesus define the glory for us or we will miss it entirely.”  If we are going to let God’s bigger plan give us a new life we will need to let our vision be replaced by his.  We will need to be captured by a longing to BE the body of Jesus Christ in the world in whatever form is needed.

     While he was President Abraham Lincoln worshipped at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C.  One day as he and his aid were walking away from worship the aid asked, “Mr. President, what did you think of the sermon?”  To which Lincoln responded, “It was eloquently preached, it was thoroughly researched, it was biblically accurate and it failed.”  “It failed?  Mr. President, how did it fail?”  The President responded, “It failed to ask us to do something great.”

     God is asking us to do something great.  He is asking us to give our whole hearts and lives to him for the sake of bringing glory to his name.  He is doing this because he knows that this is the only way we will ever be whole.  He is doing this because he knows people are dying to know what we have been privileged to learn of the amazing love of Jesus Christ, and he is doing it because he knows that our stepping out beyond ourselves to receive his greatness is the bigger plan that is needed in and through our life.  It’s time to do something great.  It’s time for God’s bigger plan and it’s time to let him use us, as we never have before.  May we let this happen.  And may God be praised.  Amen.