Matt Brown > Forty-Knot Winds and Waking Up to God’s Working

My wife, Michelle, and I experienced one of the most fascinating stories a month ago.

We were in San Francisco overlooking the beautiful bay during the America’s Cup yacht races funded by billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison. We happened to be in town with a book publisher to see the work of a Chinese immigrant who had spent the past twenty-nine years working in the toughest area of the city. We even saw where Francis Chan had spent the past several years in an area known as the Tenderloin, with more than six thousand homeless in a single city street block.

It was staggering going from all that poverty to all this wealth just a few dozen blocks away. Massive yachts stood like expensive cars displayed for visitors to see. We watched a yacht owner sipping a drink on his deck as a dozen passersby stood gawking at his boat. Meanwhile, a handful of young guys scrubbed and cleaned various parts of the deck. Must be an interesting life traveling around the world with eccentric businessmen and women on their vacation time, I thought to myself.

There are whole worlds we know nothing about, and yet people are the same in every culture. Some have great wealth. Others have great need. All need a Savior.

Large open areas were abundant throughout the veranda near the races, and Michelle and I plopped down on large red beanbags on the lawn in front of big TV screens. They were showing parts of yesterday’s race mixed with promotional spots and a list of upcoming events. One of the stories was about Alex Thomson, who had sailed nonstop around the world multiple times. To give some perspective, three thousand people have climbed Mount Everest and five hundred people have been to space, but less than one hundred people have sailed solo nonstop around the world.

Everything about this race is not only rare but also fascinating. When I was scouring recent interviews, I saw Alex mention that during the Vendée Globe, an eighty-day solo race around the world, nearly 50 percent of the racers don’t finish the race. Racers cannot get more than twenty minutes of sleep at a time for the duration of the race because they are single-handedly racing such a large boat, which typically takes more than sixteen people to sail. Racers consume more than five thousand calories of freeze-dried food per day and endure a test of will, strength, and stamina that is unparalleled in the sports world. If the boat capsized out in the frigid waters, escape would be virtually impossible . . . he would die.

Thomson had just completed the Vendée Globe, which takes place every four years. It was his third try; the first two attempts he didn’t finish. “You know when you’re out there on your own in the Southern Ocean, where you’re going to spend five weeks in wind chill factors minus 20, and there’s no one to help you. . . your brain is telling you you’re going to die and you’ve got to learn to control that emotion. You’ve got to be able to sleep, you’ve got to be able to eat, you’ve got to be able to do your jobs and sail the boat. That takes some mental strength, also mental instability,” Thomson told CNN.

There, on the giant screens in San Francisco Bay, Thomson shared in the America’s Cup video that when he’s out in the middle of the ocean all by himself, as the waves pound on every side, he is overcome with a feeling of smallness. He realizes how insignificant he is in the midst of the surging, awe-inspiring waves.

Leaving Our “Local Shores”

This is exactly what happens when we leave the “local shores” of our own churches and denominations and move out to see how God is moving around the world. There are incredible stories happening in Christianity all over the world today. They often do not make national news, but they are happening, and we would be greatly encouraged if we knew of them. All of a sudden we wouldn’t feel so discouraged, insignificant, or isolated in our faith. We are part of a much bigger movement: a great movement of God that depends on our role in it, just like Thomson’s role in completing his race.

Most of the believers I’ve met at churches from many denominations across the country are unaware of how Christianity is flourishing around the world—and even down the street from where they live. They perceive the status of the global Christian faith through the microscopic lens of their local church, churches they may have heard of in their city, or what little they know of their denomination. This lack of knowledge and understanding of God’s constant activity can lead to many problems in a believer’s life—not just an unawareness of what God is doing, but a lack of understanding about our place in a much bigger story.

Whenever I’ve shared even a handful of stories with the hundreds of churches I’ve spoken for, believers are visibly encouraged by any crumb I give them in this wider perspective on the Christian world. It’s easy to see why. With all that is going on in the world—political instability, persecution of Christians, tragedies, and wars—we need encouragement that God is at work all around us.

I pray God uses these stories to awaken you to what I believe is part of the next great awakening. Are we ready for it? How can we begin to live with our eyes and ears more attuned to what other Christians are experiencing from God? How can those stories inspire us to reach for greater things from God?

Live Awake

I want to call you to live awakened to the undercurrents of how God is moving on earth today. We all hope to live awake in our lives. We all have a fear of missing out. It’s why we set reminders in our phones, so we don’t miss a meeting or a game. But more importantly, we should fear missing out on what God is doing, and this can easily be the case if we don’t make his kingdom and purposes a priority in our lives. We all desire to be involved in purposes much, much bigger than ourselves, yet we don’t often know how to get there or set aside the time to do it. I want to invite you into God’s bigger story. I want to help you see that you are already a part of something God is doing that is so much bigger than you are.

As you see what God is capable of, I want to call you to greater things God has in store for you. There is more for us, but we need to be awakened to it.

Live Inspired

We all want to live for something that takes us beyond ourselves that will matter eternally rather than just filling a role or occupying a space and not making a difference in our world for Christ. In order to discover our own purpose, we need to hear about God moving in other people’s purposes. When we hear what God has done with others, it inspires us and expands our hearts with greater faith, vision, and purpose.

Scripture tells us we overcome by the blood of Jesus’ finished work on the cross and by the word of our testimony. The power of testimony, or the power of a God story, has been proven over and over again: a young person reads a biography of a missionary and it changes the trajectory of his or her life. Hearing testimonies, or the stories of God moving in others’ lives, has a way of transforming our own lives like nothing else can. We are missing out on not just the body of Christ globally but also on how these stories of God moving could affect us personally if we don’t take time to listen to them. I am what I am today because of countless God stories I have heard and experienced, and my life has taken a different route because of them. And I am just one of many who repurposed their lives after they heard about the purpose

God had for them and as they experienced how God moved in another person’s life and purpose. These testimonies can be a source of bottomless inspiration for us if we take time to listen.

Live Influential

We lose influence when we spend all our time preaching against the bad in culture. We gain influence when we preach the good we have in Christ. No one really wants to hear about the religious differences or denominational feuds taking place in our churches today. It’s exactly what nonbelievers point to and say, “Well, if they can’t agree on what it takes to be a ‘Christian,’ then I certainly don’t want to get mixed up in their issues.” Think for a moment about books, media, and examples of Christians fighting other Christians over theological differences. This isn’t what we are to focus on. We are called to focus on Christ and what God is doing and saying to us. The Bible clearly says to focus on what is true, lovely, noble, and of good report. To be sure, the early Christians challenged problems in the church, but their main message to those outside the church was, “The gospel is growing and bearing fruit all over the world.” They didn’t spend all their time focusing on who was right and who was wrong. They weren’t trying to build a successful organization—they simply couldn’t hold in all they had seen Jesus do and teach or stories about all the lives he had changed for the better. They were part of a bigger movement—and so are we.

Christians are steadily losing influence in American culture, and I believe it is because we’ve become too busy preaching against things. We are too quick to point out when everyone else is making wrong choices or doing things we don’t agree with. If we get back to the goodness, hope, joy, and love in the gospel, and how God is using his gospel in the lives of people all around us, we will retrieve a powerful antidote for the deepest needs of our culture. And we will be able to administer it with influence.

God’s Greater Story

I’m not writing to tell you to “look what the world has come to.” I want to open your eyes to “what has come to the world” in Christ and his greater story in his church. I want you to get lost in your own smallness and insignificance in the great movements of God all over the world even as Alex Thomson sensed his smallness in the surging waves of the Southern Ocean. I believe that in this feeling of your own insignificance, you will actually lay hold of a greater sense of significance than you’ve ever known. But it will be based on God’s greater story, and bigger purpose, and not on your own story.

Read stories of God working around the world in Matt’s new book, Awakening: How God’s Next Great Move Inspires and Influences Our Lives Today.

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About Matt Brown

Matt Brown is an evangelist, author of Awakening: How God’s Next Great Move Inspires and Influences Our Lives Today (Spring 2015, Leafwood Publishers), and founder of Think Eternity. He and his wife Michelle are impacting thousands of people with the gospel each year through live events and online. They also minister to more than 400,000 followers on social media daily.