“No Splash is the Same” — John Ortberg

Series: The Ripple Effect
October 11, 2009
Ephesians 2:10

Well, good morning, everybody. Hey, before we get into the message, this is a cool thing you ought to know about our choir. They have been invited to sing in New York at the Lincoln Center. So, if any of you have been thinking about joining the choir, now would be a good time…unless your voice stinks.

If you live long enough, every human being who has ever walked the face of this planet will reflect on, sometimes be haunted by, the questions of…Who am I? Where do I find identity, a sense of significance? Why am I here? What am I doing taking up space on this planet?

Hugh Moorhead was a philosopher at Northeastern University, and he actually wrote a book. It was kind of an interesting format. He asked 250 of the leading thinkers and writers of the 20th century to respond to the question…What is the meaning of life? They were all people who had written on it, so he actually asked them if they would send him a copy of one of their books and just inscribe on the flyleaf their answer to that question…What is the meaning of life?

So his book is fascinating, but really kind of depressing to read because the majority of them write back they do not know what the meaning of life is. Many of them say not only do they not know, they don’t think there is one. A number of them say, “If you find out what it is, please write and let me know because I’d like to know.”

Isaac Asimov, a famous writer, says, “As far as I can see, there is no purpose.” Albert Ellis, one of the preeminent psychologists of the 20th century, said, “Life has no intrinsic meaning.” Here is one that really struck me. This one really lays it out. Author by the name of Michael Anania. “I don’t want to retreat into the justly despised positivism,” he says, “but to question the meaning of life proposes its own answer. Life, if you think of it as an assertion of meaning and process, always exceeds assigned meaning. To offer a parody of technical language, the set of all meanings is included in life, which is an additional meaning, so expands the set by a hypo-set, and so forth. So, any statement, any such question expands the frame exponentially. What I’m saying in nutshell is the meaning of life is meaning.”

Does that clear it all up for everybody? One of the great minds of our time right there. “Don’t know if there is any. Let me know if you find out. Don’t think there is any.” Is it any wonder that suicide has become in our day the number two killer of teenagers, young people in our society? That is unprecedented in the history of the world, but it is what happens when we become un-tethered from a sense of identity and meaning. Why am I here?

Interestingly, Moorhead’s book has already gone out of print, but there are words written by the apostle Paul 2,000 years ago…and this is what we’re going to immerse ourselves in today…that are really everything we need to know about who we are and why we’re here. So, this is his letter to the church at Ephesus. Paul wrote, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

We all want to carry this one thought with us because it goes so deep to the human condition. So, let’s read these words together out loud, and as you do, just reflect on what it is that they’re saying. Let’s read them thoughtfully together. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Really, everything you need to know about yourself, your life, the who and the why, is right there. Who are you? You are not a cosmic accident. You are the master of the universe. You are a piece of work by God. Turn to the person next to you and say, “You’re a piece of work by God.” You’re a piece of work by God.

How were you made? You were made in Christ Jesus. Now, we’ll come back to this one. It’s one of Paul’s favorite phrases. Jesus is the Rock, and when He drops into the pond of any life, that is when the ripples start to spread. They never start with us; they start with Him. And we were designed by God, we were made to live in God, but then we were made to work for God.

Why were you made? You were created to do good works. And that little phrase…again, those words are so simple; not rocket science, but they run so, so deep. There is a reason why every human being on earth has dreams. There is a reason why every human being who walks the planet wants to have a positive impact on people around them, on the world in which they live. It’s a pointer, it’s a signal, as to why you were created, why God made you.

And in fact, Paul says here,…it’s very interesting…”He didn’t just plan you. He did that, but then He also planned good works, positive impact for you to have on His world, on His people.” And what I want to do is just walk through the implications of this statement. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

First of all, you are designed by God, not by yourself. You’re not here by accident. And that means, I must become grateful for, I must seize the person God made me to be because I will never be anybody else. Your body, your temperament, your personality, your mind, your sense of humor, your DNA, all of these things were designed for you by God. One day, the God who thought up the Milky Way, who thought up every galaxy and every star and every black hole and volcanoes and sunsets and oceans, one day that God thought about something else He wanted to create, and that something was you.

You think about this. And you ask, “How did God feel when He thought about creating me?” God felt joy. God is delighted that there should be a you in His universe. Isn’t that amazing? You didn’t just happen by accident. You’re here because God wanted precisely for there to be a you.

The psalmist marvels about this. This is Psalm 139. In our day, this knowledge is so needed by the human race. This is what the psalmist says to God. “For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You…” this is grounds for worship, “…because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” I look at creation, and I know, God, You’re a marvelously creative God, and I’m one of those works.

You are God’s workmanship, and that is why to compare yourself to anybody else, to devalue the life God has given to you, is so spiritually destructive. It is what is so remarkable about every human being. Every one is God’s workmanship.

I have walked through this church…I don’t know…a thousand times in the years I have worked here. Last weekend, I walked down the aisle with a little red-headed girl who was about to get married. One of the longest walks I have ever taken. My heart was so full. I had a friend afterwards who told me he lost a bet. He was betting I would never make it all the way through the ceremony without just losing it. And my wife and I did it.

I made it through, partly because right when it got started…I’ve always wanted to do something at a wedding. You know how in movies when you go to a wedding, whoever is doing the ceremony will always say, “If there is anyone who has an objection as to why this ceremony shouldn’t happen, let them speak now,” and you never see that happen in real life? So, I decided I was going to do that, and so I did that at my daughter’s wedding. And I told my brother-in-law I was going to do that the night before. He is a pastor down in San Diego.

So, he actually stood up in the ceremony…I’m not making this up. “So, does anybody have an objection, speak now or forever hold your peace.” Craig stood up and said, “Actually, I’m Laura’s parole officer, and I have an objection.” It was a wonderful moment. I wish you all could have been there and help me get through it.

I came walking down this aisle of this church, and I was not thinking about how much work the wedding was or logistics or flowers or price tags or anything. I was just thinking about how much that life meant to me. Not because of anything about her, although, I love lots of stuff about her, but because she is mine.

One of the most amazing statements about God when you think about this…in the Old Testament, many thousands of years ago now, Moses is speaking to the people of Israel, and of course, they’re on their way out of slavery. They are this little, kind of ragamuffin, patchy, riff raff group, not important, no power. This is what he says. “The Lord did not set His affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.” And that meant no great armies, no great commerce, no great trade.

What did Israel do to cause God to set His affection on them? Nothing at all. It doesn’t work that way. They’re just His people. And of course, God doesn’t just love Israel. That is one of the great understandings that had to be revealed by God about God. God wanted actually to use Israel to bring His love to every human being on earth. The original plan was they were to do these good works God had created them to do…He gave them the law, the Torah, the commandments to explain what life looks like, what those works would look like…so that the whole world would come to understand that everybody was created by a God who loved them.

Augustine said, “God loves each of us as if there was only one of us, and there is nothing that we can do.” It’s a great phrase to think about. God did not set His affection on you because you’re so clever or smart or successful. It’s just grace. You are God’s workmanship.

I have a friend named Hans, and he was always trying to teach his little boy Isaac about grace. He said every once in a while Isaac would do something wrong that he ought to be punished for. Usually, he’d punish him, but every once in a while, just to teach him, Hans would say to Isaac, “Now, I ought to punish you right now, but I’m not going to do it. I’m going to cut you some grace, Isaac.” And then, to teach him, he would ask him, “Do you know why I’m going cut you some grace?” And Isaac would say, “No, Dad. Why?” And Hans would say, “No reason at all. Never a reason for grace.”

Then one day when Isaac was six years old, Hans said Isaac did something real dark, really, really wicked, and Hans was furious at him. He was going to let him have it, and Isaac was scared. So, Isaac looked up at his dad and said to him, “Dad, could you cut me some grace?” And Hans was real mad…the way you get when you’re a parent sometimes, and spoke without thinking, and said, “Isaac, give me one good reason why I ought to cut you some grace.” And Isaac looked up at him and said, “Dad, there’s never a reason for grace.”

That is the way it is with God. There is never a reason for grace. The Lord did not set His affection on you because you’re so smart or successful or even good. It’s just who God is. He is a gracious God, and He loves to make His grace available to people. And even right now, even today, maybe you’ll real aware…I have not been walking in the path of the good works God created for me to do.

And whatever you’ve been doing, that grace is available if you just come to Him and confess and repent and say, “God, in my attitudes, in the way I’ve been expressing using my sexuality, my anger, my arrogance, my judgmental spirit, God, I want to confess and I want to repent and I want to get cleaned up.” And God will always do that because there is never a reason for grace. He is a gracious God, and He set His affection on you because you are His workmanship.

And to give up comparing your life, your condition, your achievements, your body to anybody else, and embrace you are who you are because God thought you up and is delighted there should be a you in the universe, is fundamental.

But then, Paul goes on. And he says not only did God design you, not only were you made by God, you were made to live in God, to grow in God. He says you were created…such fascinating language…you were created by God, but you were “created in Christ Jesus.”

This is quite remarkable. I just read about this over the last few weeks. Do you know how many times the apostle Paul quote Jesus in his writings? Paul, of course, wrote a great deal of the New Testament, and his mind is saturated with Jesus, but Paul only quotes Jesus three times in all of his writings. His life is turned upside down by Jesus, only three times does Paul quote Him, but Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” more than 160 times. For Paul, the most amazing thing about Jesus is not His teaching, as remarkable as His teaching is. For Paul, the most amazing thing about Him is that He will live in us and that we can live in Him. And that is the adventure of life. And then, He’ll grow us up.

So, all the time you see things like this. Paul says to the church at Colossae, “God has chosen to make known…” we couldn’t have guessed this on our own, “…the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

It’s a very simple picture, but it just helps kind of lodge it in my brain. Barbara Johnson wrote about taking a little girl with flu to the doctor’s office. And this doctor works with children, so he’s always trying to have fun with them, and he’s doing that with her. He checks out her ears and says to her, “I wonder if I’ll find Big Bird in there.” She says, “No.” He checks out her nose. “I wonder if Cookie Monster is in there.” She says, “No.” He gets his stethoscope out to check out her heart. “I wonder if Barney is in your heart.” She says, “No, Jesus is in my heart. Barney is on my underwear.” She is like, “Shouldn’t be that complicated, buddy.”

It’s this remarkable theme in Paul that in our hearts, in that which lies deepest in us, we can be in Christ. Even the person who knows you best…we’re separated, we’re bodily creatures, and I can’t know all about how you’re thinking and all about how you’re thinking, but Jesus can, and that is why He can be closer to you than anybody else. Jesus is indwelling you through His Spirit, and once you invite Him in, He will not leave you. He has set His affection on you, and He is constantly at work. This is part of the adventure of getting to know Him.

He is constantly at work in you to grow you into that person He wants you to be, into God’s workmanship. He is always at work to do this…all the time, not just when you’re at church. So often, we restrict this business of spiritual formation or spiritual growth to isolated activities, to certain little compartmentalized areas of our life, but if you’ll ask Him, God will be forming you, shaping you. God is committed to your growth. God knows exactly what you need to grow…what relationships, what problems, what experiences, what groups, what teachings, what learnings. God knows just what will help every human being on earth grow, and His desire is for it never to become routine, never to be dull, and it will never look the same as anybody else.

Our great model in this business of how to grow as God…for God always knows just what every person needs. You think about how differently God treats all of His children. God had Abraham take a walk, Elijah take a nap, Joshua take a lap, Adam take the rap. God gave Moses a 40-year time out, He gave David a harp and a dance. He gave Paul a pen and a scroll. He wrestled with Jacob, argued with Job, whispered to Elijah, warned Cain, and comforted Hagar.

He gave Aaron an altar, Miriam a song, Gideon a fleece, Peter a name, Elisha a mantle. Jesus was stern with the rich, young ruler, tender with the woman caught in adultery, challenging with the disciples, blistering with the scribes, gentle with the children, gracious with the thief on the cross. God never grows two people the same way. God is hand-crafter, not a mass-producer.

And now it’s your turn for you are the workmanship of God. You were created in Christ Jesus. God has existed from all eternity, but even God has never done this before. God has never had a relationship with you before, and He wants to do a new thing. And He’ll do it in a way that doesn’t look quite exactly the same as anybody else, so don’t compare yourself to anybody else. And ask God, “God, how do you want me to grow?” The older I get, the more convinced I am the way God grows us is designed to be uniquely shaped to each one of us.

This last Sunday, Nancy and I went overnight just to have some time to reflect after the wedding, and we decided we would spend some time to be alone with God. So, we were over in Half Moon Bay, and we were away from each other for an hour and a half just to be alone with God. I kind of am an introvert, so after an hour and a half of solitude, I’m just getting warmed up. I could go all day without talking to anybody.

Nancy is such an extrovert. By the time I got back to our room, she was organizing a small group with the people in the hotel room next to ours. It’s just the way she’s wired. And she grows in relationship, in connecting with other people, in conversations with other people. Now, of course, that’s important to me also, but for her, it’s like that is the primary way God grows her up.

I have another friend who just rejoined Bible Study Fellowship. He knows how central the Bible is to spiritual growth, but he’s also where if he is not a part of a relational group where there is accountability and discussion, it won’t happen. So, he needs something with that kind of structure in his life.

I have another friend who grew up in kind of a pressured religious environment, and…no kidding…his dad actually bought an overhead projector…some of you remember overhead projectors…his dad bought an overhead projector to use for family devotions. And there was such a high-pressured kind of approach to spirituality that to him now anything that feels high pressure like that just kind of kills the spirit inside of him. So his path to spiritual growth will look a little different.

You are God’s workmanship. His plan to grow you up will not look exactly like His plan for anybody else, but He knows exactly what you need. So, our prayer on this one is, “God, how do You want me to grow? And I’d like to go on this adventure with You. And I’d like my mind to be immersed in Your Word. And I’d like to have people who are speaking truth in my life. And I’d like to be alone with You and get to know You really well. And I’d like to have You overseeing my finances. But I know it’s going to look a little different for me than it is for anybody else, so instead of just following some regimented program somebody tells me I’m supposed to do, God, would You lead me on this?”

Then because you are God’s workmanship and because you are in Christ and Christ is growing you up, then you are to live your life as an adventure from one moment to the next moment, to the next moment, to the next moment. “God, what do You want me to do? God, who do You want me to touch? God, how do You want my life to ripple out and influence somebody else?” And God’s intent is that your life be an adventure in ripple-making.

Here is the weird thing. Everybody wants meaning in their life. Everybody wants their life to get filled up. But if I make the aim of my life filling up my own life, if I make the aim of it “I want to find out how to live a meaningful life,” I get empty inside. But when I let go of my own life and say, “God, how do You want to use me to help that person and that person and that person and that person,” when I let go of my own preoccupation with myself and go on the adventure of actually trying to help other people, I’m the one who gets filled up.

But I have to say to God, “Alright, God, I’m signing up for this adventure. Wherever You want me to go, whatever You want me to do, whoever You want me to talk to, I will say yes.” And this is kind of a sobering thing around this one. Where in the Bible does God ever give anybody an easy job? Anybody know? Where in the Bible does God come to call somebody and say, “Here is what I want you to do, Moses, or David, or Esther, or Ruth, or anybody,” and have that person say, “Oh yeah, I can do that quite easily, thank You”?

Nobody ever responds that way. How do people respond? “I’m scared to death.” That is why the most common commandment…where God starts with people is He calls them. He gives them something. “Go face Pharaoh. Go protect My people. Go defend My people. Go fight Goliath.” And then people’s responses, “Who am I? I can’t do this.” And then, God says, “Now you go because I’ll go with you.”

It’s very interesting to me, in the New Testament it never says, “And then the disciples were bored.” But it’s amazing in this life…boredom has become one of the most primary problems of our society. A group of psychologists…I was just reading about this…have developed a boredom proneness scale. It’s actually a psychological scale.

I meet so many people. When they miss out on the adventure of doing what it is God created them to do, they’re trying to fill their lives up, but it’s about comfort or success or something, and it’s just boring. And that is never God’s intent for your life.

This is from a guy by the name of Mike Breaux. This is what your life can turn into. We have a phrase for it now…the same old, same old. Day after day after day. “You wake up at the same old time, get out of the same old bed, go into the same old bathroom, look into the same old mirror, shave the same old face, take the same old shower, dry off with the same old towel, walk into the same old kitchen, pour the same old cereal into the same old bowl, kiss the same old wife on the same old cheek, get in the same old car, drive off to the same old job, sit in the same old chair, listen to the same old boss tell the same old jokes, laugh in the same old way, clock out at the same old time, get back in the same old car, down the same old road into the same old house through the same old door, eat the same old dinner, fall asleep in the same old chair watching the same old news, get up, get in the same old bed, ask your wife the same old question, get the same old answer, roll over, go back to sleep. And that’s it from one day to the next day to the next day.”

I’m not sure why you’re applauding for that one.

God never made human beings for the same old, same old. Mike says there are two ways of getting in the swimming pool. One of the ways you can divide human beings up is how they get into a pool. And some people take the incremental approach. You start with one toe. “Oooh, that’s cold!” And then you go to the ankle, and it takes about 20 minutes to get all the way in, and you’re miserable the whole time.

You can do it that way. What is the other way to get into a swimming pool? Cannonball. Cannonball is designed to create maximum impact. And when you cannonball, the ripples go all the way to the edge of the pool. And if there were no edges, the ripples would just keep going and going and going and going. Now, that is God’s plan for your life. You were “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Where is there a hurt? Where is there a need? Where is there a dream? Where is the Holy Spirit prompting me? Where is there a possibility?

And only God can measure the ripples because God is in charge of ripple-making. I want to tell you about a ripple-maker back in Chicago by the name of Larry Clark. When Larry was in his 30’s, he quit his job so he could work at the church full time where Nancy and I worked, but he did it for no pay. And he just befriended people. He just saw potential in people. He just would come alongside them, and he’d say to somebody, “You know, I think you could lead a small group, and you ought to be doing that.” And then, he would invite them to be a part of his group until they kind of learned how to do it, and then he’d cut them loose.

He’d say to somebody else, “I think you ought to go on a mission trip. I think God will just kind of touch your heart that way. I think you ought to be part of a serving team.” And he was part of this ministry Nancy was leading of twenty-somethings, and he would just watch people grow because Larry…this kind of quirky guy…no job, no title, nothing…took the time to see something in them and speak to it and pray over them and call it out. He had no authority, no title, no paycheck, just immeasurable impact.

Circumstances may keep you from getting promotions or possessions or recognition, but no circumstance can keep you from making ripples that touch the lives of other people. None of them.

We were having an all-church small group leader retreat in Milwaukee one year…about 10 years ago. Larry came. In typical fashion, he brought a whole bunch of people with him. And he went with some of them out jogging at dawn on Saturday morning, and got off a curb, got hit by a bus and was killed. And his loss was just devastating. I remember going in the room where Nancy was meeting with scores of these young people, part of that ministry, that afternoon. A lot of them, it was the first time they’d experienced something like this.

After the weekend, we went back to Chicago and had to arrange for there to be a viewing one day and then a funeral the next day. Nobody knew if people would show up for this or not. Larry never got married, had no family, had no children, had no regular job. So many people came for the viewing and cars started pouring into the parking lot that a line formed that went out the chapel for several blocks, and 800 people waited three hours to file past the casket of this unemployed, single guy.

The next day we had a funeral. The chapel at our old church can hold 500 or 600 people when it’s real full. In about the decade I was there, in the countless funerals that were held, only one had so many people in it they had to move it from the chapel into the auditorium which could hold thousands of people, and that was the funeral of a childless, single, unemployed, ripple-maker named Larry Clark.

And at that funeral, nobody said anything about his possessions or his achievements…just his capacity to love. Just this kind of quirky guy who never talked about himself, never seemed to think about himself. After the funeral…this wiped me out…one of the people was talking about Larry. We used to wonder how does he make it because he didn’t have money and he didn’t have a job? And she said she heard Larry say one time, “You’d be amazed at what good food you could get when you scrounge around at Ralph’s Supermarket, behind the Supermarket, what they would throw away there.” That is part of what enabled him to do what he did.

He never thought about filling up his life, just about other people’s lives. And the ripples are still going out. A guy by the name of Dan is bringing the love of Jesus to the inner city of Chicago. A guy by the name of Doug and his wife are doing community development work in Jesus’ name in under-resourced parts of Africa. A young woman named Jules was so far from God, and she came to meet Jesus, and then she started a small group and then other people came to meet Jesus. Larry has been dead now for almost a decade, but the ripples of his life still go and go and go and go. He didn’t get written up anywhere. That is the way God works. “God, would You just let my life ripple on somebody?”

A few weeks ago, Paul Ely got up and told a story about when he was in his mid-seventies, God touched him and brought him to Christ. After one of the services where he told that story, a woman came up to me and said, “When he was telling his story, I was struck by in how many ways that is the story of my life. And I’m ready to go public. And I want to be baptized. And I want to commit my life to Christ.”

Paul talked about how when he sat in our Saturday men’s Bible class, he met a man named Bill Russ who started talking about how to pray. And if we had everybody at our church this weekend stand who has felt the ripples of the power of prayer from Bill and Sally Russ, it would be scores, if not hundreds of people.

This is kind of cool. Jim Candy is working to help ripples spread with our students. Jim was telling me a year ago, we had 10 staff people and 20 volunteers working with students. A year later, right now, we’re at five staff people and 50 volunteers. And in addition to that, scores of adults are serving as community parents. We have more people building into…rippling into the lives of students than we’ve had in a long time. Two of the most recent volunteers are Bill and Sally Russ, and I will not give you their age because we don’t do that to volunteers around here, but they’re even older than me. And they’re going to work with a group of teenage students to help those students learn how to pray.

Jim was talking about another family who has a child with a difficult disability who often gets made fun of, and one of our volunteers called the parents up and said, “I’d just like to spend some time with your child to build into them.” And the parents said, “That’s the first time any adult has voluntarily initiated spending time with my child.” Can you imagine that?

Paul says, “Good works, which God prepared.” This is an adventure with God. I talked to a friend at lunch. He had a co-worker he had been praying for, he said, about five years, and it just seemed like closed door, closed door. So he said he finally just started praying, “God, You’re going to have to open a door. I don’t know what to do. God, You have to open a door.” This month, that co-worker said to him, “I understand you go to a church at Menlo Park. I haven’t been to a church for 20 years, but I’m feeling a need. Would it be okay if we went with you some time?” And he took that as an open door from God.

Two weeks ago, Gary Hamel gave a talk here about how far our society is from God, but how much people need God. And what could God do through a congregation of ripple-makers? And there just have been all kinds of email conversations from that talk; folks in our congregation and folks around the world. Just something kind of waking up in people, saying, “I want to make a difference. I want to wake up to what is going on in the world and how much people need God, and I want to be a part of making a difference.”

One of those came from a woman who was here at that service. She emailed in, “A little over two years ago, I was one of those atheists Gary was talking about. I was so far away from God, had no time for Christians, really did not think much about them at all.” And then, God broke through in her life. She was in a little group over at Stanford of all places with Pete Sommer, and she gave her life to Jesus Christ. And she said, “If you’re really serious about trying to reach people like where I was two years ago, I’d like to be a part of that.”

It’s just a ripple after a ripple after a ripple after a ripple, and God still does it in the most amazing ways. And what if, what if, what if…Gary was emailing me this week, and this is part of what he wrote. He said, “What if love God, love people, and serve the world was as important to each of us as stay healthy, get ahead, and have fun?” which is kind of the default slogan of our society.

In the end, a mission statement is empty rhetoric unless it lives in the heart of every member. It’s only real if it’s real in people’s lives. In my life, your life. Do we as brothers and sisters really believe our words? Is that what we want to endorse every day in our lives? Or would we rather give priority to other mission statements like ‘get good grades, land a great job, and marry up’? Or ‘take care of your kids, work hard, and build your 401k’?

Love God with all your heart, love the people around you like you love yourself, give your life in serving is not a slogan; it is Christ’s command to His followers, and it’s everything that invests a life with eternal significance.

The beauty of it is, nobody but God knows. Some financial journal can list the 100 richest people on earth, and Sports Illustrated can try to rank the 100 greatest athletes in the world. Only God knows where the ripples are coming from. It has nothing to do with money or prominence or education or title. It’s just the work of the Spirit in a humble human life.

Here is the last thought. Maybe one of the greatest ripple-makers in the kingdom is sitting in this room. Nobody knows. Maybe they’re sitting right next to you. Maybe it could be you. Wouldn’t that be something? I know this. That is what God wants. That is why God made you…to make ripples.

Heavenly Father, how we need to hear this word that we’re not an accident, that we’re not a god, that we were created by You to live in You, to live for You. If there is anybody who doesn’t know that grace of Your love and Your presence and Your forgiveness in their life, may that happen today. May they just repent and surrender their life today. And then, God, would You enable all of us who seek to follow You to go now from just one moment to the next, and just in simple trust, whatever it is that You’ve placed before us to do, do it together with You, with joy and confidence in our Friend and Savior Jesus. We pray in His name, Amen.