Thanksgiving Sunday and Celebration Sunday | Beyond…What We Can Ask or Imagine

Ephesians 3:20

“Beyond…What We Can Ask or Imagine” Capital Campaign Series: “Beyond” November 24, 2019, Thanksgiving Sunday and Celebration Sunday

Robert Fulghum is an American author and minister, best known for popular books, All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door, and Maybe (Maybe Not).  In his book, It Was on Fire When I Lay Down, he tells of meeting a young American traveler while overseas, who was occupying a seat in the airport terminal next to his.  Her backpack bore the scars and dirt of some hard traveling.  It also bulged with mysterious souvenirs from her having seen the world.  At first she kept quiet but then the tears began to drip from her chin.  Fulghum assumed it must have come from a lost love or the sorrow of having to give up her adventures for a return to the college classroom.  But then she began to sob – a veritable flood of tears.

When Fulghum felt led to probe more deeply into the nature of her sadness, she readily told him that she had run out of money and had spent the last two days waiting in the airport on standby with little to eat and too much pride to beg.  Her plane was soon to depart and now she had lost her ticket.  She had been sitting there in that one spot for three hours, “sinking into a cold sea of despair like some torpedoed freighter.”  

Fulghum and a nice older couple from Chicago dried her tears, offered to take her to lunch, and said they would talk to the powers that be at the airline about some remedy for her situation.  Feeling better about her future, she stood up to go with them, turned around to pick up her belongings, and SCREAMED.  They thought something terrible must have happened to her, but that was not it at all.  She screamed because she found her ticket.  She had been sitting on it the whole time!

Fulghum said, “Like a sinner saved from the very jaws of hell, she laughed and she cried and she hugged us all and she was suddenly gone.”  She was off to catch a plane for home and for what she was convinced was a most hopeful future.  Meanwhile, the rest of the passengers who knew of her situation were left there limp from being a part of her drama, a drama that stemmed from a ticket she couldn’t see because she was sitting on it.

How many times have you missed out on something because you were sitting on the one thing that was your ticket to experience it?   We’ve all had that sort of thing happen to us at one time or another, have we not?  We have frittered away opportunity after opportunity to know more than we ever dreamed possible only because we have been oblivious to the power that was right there at our disposal.

If that’s been a part of your life story at some point along life’s way, then you can relate to what the Apostle Paul was concerned about in his letter to the church at Ephesus.  Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a work intended to offer encouragement to a church located in a strategic city in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, to realize their potential as the body of Christ by coming together as Jews and Gentiles in service to their Savior and Lord.

In this section of the letter Paul has offered a prayer on their behalf that God might strengthen them for the work He has for them to do.  He prays for them to be empowered with might through the Holy Spirit.  He prays that Christ might dwell in their hearts through their faith in him.  He prays that they might be able to comprehend the love of Christ so that they might be filled with the fullness of God.  And then as Paul has focused on the power of the Holy Spirit, the presence of the Risen Christ, and the fullness of God the Father, he is lifted off his feet into this effusive doxology, this fulsome and expansive song of praise:  “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we might ask or imagine, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all ages, forever and ever. Amen.”  

It’s as if Paul leaps to his feet because he has discovered the “ticket” to spiritual possibility.  It lies not in our capacity, but in God’s abundance; not in our ability, but in God’s mind-blowing power – power that can never be exhausted, and then some on top of that!

Of course, Paul’s profuse doxology raises a question.  If God is able to work with such superabundant and limitless power, then why doesn’t God do it more?  Why is it that we see so few Christians who have, to use Paul’s words, received strength in their inner being, been captivated by the love of Christ, and been filled with the fullness of God?   There is but one answer to that question.  God’s superabundant power is stifled by the unwillingness of His people to allow it work in their lives.  In other words, the failures we experience in life are never because of God.  Please hear that again.  They are never because of God.  Our failures are instead the consequences of our refusal to allow Him to have His way in our lives and our reluctance to trust Him to do the “immeasurably more than what we might ask or imagine.”

We gather this morning on the last Sunday of our “Beyond” phase of the “All Things Are Possible” campaign to give evidence of our confidence in God’s superabundance by the manner in which we make ourselves available to Him.  The aim of this campaign effort has been clear: our intent is to leverage this magnificent location and update our church’s facilities in order “to make ministry more possible” as we move further into the 21st century.  That is to say that we desire to reach more people and serve more needs and further the cause of Christ so that our church might be stronger in the decades to come than it even is today.  It is an ambitious aim to be sure, but it is not out of the question for us to realize it as long as we show due openness to the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst – a power and a presence that truly makes “all things possible.”

One of my favorite preachers has been Tony Campolo, a retired professor of sociology at Eastern University in Philadelphia and now Associate Pastor of the Mount Carmel Baptist Church in that same city, who likes to “bill” himself as “the positive prophet of Red-Letter Christianity.”  The thing I always liked most about Campolo is that as a guest speaker he could say and do things that a congregational minister would never be able to say and do, at least not if the minister wanted to keep his or her job.

For example, there was the occasion where he had been invited to be the guest speaker at a Christian Women’s Club.  At the meeting the present read an appeal letter from a missionary who needed $4,000 for an immediate need.  After reading the heart-rending letter, the president of the group turned to Tony Campolo and said, “I’m going to ask our guest speaker, Dr. Campolo, to lead us in prayer that God will meet the need of this dear missionary.  Dr. Campolo, would you pray?”  To which Campolo said, “No, I will not pray.”

The president was understandably stunned and for what seemed like an eternity there was awkward silence.  Then Campolo continued.  “No, I won’t pray for God to meet the needs of this missionary.  But I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I’ll give every dime of cash I have in my pockets and place it on the table.  And I’m asking each of you to do the same.  Then, if we don’t have $4,000, I’ll be most happy to pray for God to meet their needs.”

The president was flummoxed and tried her best to recover.  “You have a point, Dr. Campolo.  We should give sacrificially.”  And then turning to the group she said, “We get the idea; don’t we ladies?”  But Campolo wouldn’t let the matter go.  “No,” he said.  “I’m not trying to make a point.  I’m serious.  I challenge you to give what you have right now, right this very moment!  No credit cards, no checks, no pledges, I mean cold, hard cash.”  He then pulled out his own wallet and emptied it on the table at the front of the room.

Reluctantly, the women in attendance, all 300 of them, began emptying their purses too.  And when the money was added up, as you would imagine, it was way over the $4,000 they were going to be praying for.

When the number was announced, all eyes turned to Campolo for a response.  He did not disappoint.  “You see, ladies, we didn’t need to pray that God would provide the resources.  The resources were already there.  All we had to do was let go of them.”

I have been praying long and hard for this “All Things Are Possible” campaign, and I know many of you have been praying too.  But now it’s time to stand up and commit to God’s work the resources that some of us have been sitting on.  

After all, our commitment is the ticket to the good future God has for us to claim, a future that if we fail to claim God will allow some other congregation to enjoy.  Let’s not limit God through our reluctance to trust in His provision.  Let’s instead believe that in Him all things are indeed possible and go beyond anything we’ve ever considered doing before.  Only then will we discover that the God whose ability extends “beyond what we might ask or imagine” has already provided everything necessary to accomplish His purpose, and such a discovery will no doubt be an experience that will most certainly make us exceedingly thankful.