Building Sandcastles While Planting a Church
Did you ever play pick-up games with your friends as kids? Can you remember what it felt like to line up and hope you’d be the first pick for the team? Or maybe you just wished you wouldn’t be picked last!
I wish I could say that I never have that feeling anymore. You know the one. Where people are looking at you, evaluating and judging, deciding whether what you bring to the table is valuable.
But there are days when I can still feel like a 12-year-old kid hoping to be picked first for the football team at recess. And then I exhaust every ounce of energy I have to win that game.
Permit me to be vulnerable with you for a moment. I want to matter. To you. My soul aches for the words I type – these words - to be read and valued. To make an impact. And if my words can’t make an impact, I want them to be at least appreciated.
Do you ever feel this way? Do you wonder if anyone notices you? And if they do notice, do you wonder if they appreciate or value what they see?
Where does this desire come from? What do we do with it? What does it have to do with planting a church?
God Planted a Desire for Significance in our Hearts
The human soul longs to connect with transcendence. We want to work for companies that share our values. Increasingly, people are willing to leave companies that differ from their personal convictions.
You don’t want to grind through our days just to make a buck. You want to make a difference. You should. The search for significance is a deep, visceral, God-given desire that should be received and enjoyed. God wants you to step into the fullness of flourishing in His love.
In the beginning, God created everything – and it was good. He fashioned the intergalactic cosmos and local ecosystem to be a place tailor-made, custom-designed, and fully optimized for human flourishing.
Your flourishing.
But, like every other gift God gives us, it’s easy to twist and tarnish His grace. It doesn’t take much to turn a good, God-given desire to feel valuable into an obsessive drive that crushes, taunts, and teases us.
God has far better ambitions for you. He does not harass us with guilt-invoking, shame-producing, fear-driven motivation. When our desire to feel valuable is disordered in our hearts, we can do and say things that make us look silly and hurt the people around us.
Replacing Lies with Truth
How easy is it for you to be vulnerable in God’s presence? Ever since the Garden of Eden, whenever we feel “naked,” that is – exposed, unmasked, unguarded – we tend to feel a level of shame. Some of that shame may come from a legitimate source; others, not so much.
Take the God-given desire to feel valuable as an example. We all have it. In different ways and to varying extents, this desire gets twisted and even weaponized against us and others. Here are a few ways this can happen.
· We get a taste of success – and obsess over it
· We get ignored (or worse) in our childhoods – and hate it
· We see others get valued – and crave it
· We make a mess – and want out of it
· We get the appreciation we long for – and resist it
The list goes on.
Have you ever brought your desire to feel valuable before God and simply laid it at Jesus’ feet? Would you consider asking God to search your heart and know you? These desires are in us; they impact us and those around us.
Paradoxically, the desires that have the most control over us are the ones we are unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge.
I recently prayed about my desire to feel valuable before God. I asked Jesus to show me what lies I might believe and what truth He wanted to replace the lie with.
God brought a picture to my mind of me as a little boy building sandcastles with Jesus. He was thoroughly attentive, completely undistracted, and totally invested in this seemingly unimpressive moment on the beach – while there was all kinds of activity buzzing all around us.
This picture didn’t make sense because sandcastles typically represent something fleeting and frivolous. “Don’t build your house on the sand; build it on the rock,” dontchyano!
I asked God, “What does this mean? Isn’t this just a waste of time?”
I could almost hear the Holy Spirit whisper:
“A sandcastle built with Jesus is worth more than a mansion built without Him. ”
Value that Nothing can Compete with
The Kingdom of God operates with an entirely different value system than what’s typically around us. The Holy Spirit values relationship with us. He enjoys being with YOU! He’s crazy about you. Can’t stop thinking about you.
“How precious it is, Lord, to realize that you are thinking about me constantly! I can’t even count how many times a day your thoughts turn toward me. And when I waken in the morning, you are still thinking of me ”
It’s like God takes a picture of every sandcastle we build with Jesus and pins it on heaven’s refrigerator. When the angels pop over to say hi, Jesus invites them in to see the pictures of every silly little thing you’ve built together.
Are you willing to receive this truth? God delights in you! While the world is building skyscrapers on the coast, people are spinning around in amusement parks, merchants are making bank selling over-priced t-shirts to tourists – God intentionally chooses to focus His intimate attention on you.
This truth will set you free.
How the Truth Sets You Free
Freedom in the Kingdom, in life, isn’t about managing your behavior so that you don’t say the wrong thing that gets you in trouble with your spouse! It’s about becoming more whole and healthy as the love of God increasingly permeates your soul.
Then you can “seek first the Kingdom” because you know, believe, FEEL, that in Jesus you actually have everything you need. You have His full attention. All of His affection. It’s unwavering. Unceasing. It’s all yours all the time.
What does this change? Everything. Every little interaction.
Press into the Endless Love of God
Can you think of moments you’re embarrassed or even ashamed of simply because you acted foolishly out of a desire to feel valuable? Are there any disordered priorities in your life that are at least influenced by a longing to be seen as valuable?
God never intended for us to kill ourselves to prove our value. Quite the opposite.
Jesus was killed – in our place – to prove how much God values us! And that, not because of what we’ve achieved, but because of what we’ve broken. And what’s been broken in us.
God sees. He knows. He loves you fully.
God’s grace runs deeper than the ocean. He chases us down, touches the most tender parts of our souls with His mercy, and infuses our hearts with a love that is too much to contain.
When we know we are infinitely valued, loved, cherished by God – then we can’t help but give ourselves away just like He did. It’s liberating. Exhilarating. Abundant life.
Planting a Church that Builds Sandcastles
The church can be a community that sees individuals. We don’t have to fabricate false cultures where people are valued based on what they can produce, achieve, or contribute. Instead, we can love each other freely because God loves us all fully.
It’s not productive or impressive. It doesn’t have to be. God is so much more interested in what we do WITH Him than what we do FOR Him. It’s beautiful. Healing. Refreshing. It’s the outpouring and overflow of the picture God paints in Isaiah 61.
After the Holy Spirit binds up the brokenhearted, comforts those who mourn, and replaces their ashes with beauty and exhaustion with praise, these people can’t help but start repairing the ancient ruins and places long devastated.
Not because they are trying to PROVE their value, but because they FEEL their value. They – WE – live out of the uncontainable overflow of God’s love for us.
We believe this is God’s intention for His church in Portland. Jesus sees the people who do not yet see how deeply God values them. And when they taste and see how good He is – all of our hearts will overflow with worship that no church building can contain.
Do you want to get involved in the Portland Church Plant? Join the movement by becoming a partner through prayer, financial generosity, and helping spread the word!
