“I think the fear of God failing us leads us to ‘cover for God.’ This means we ask for less, expect less, and are satisfied with less because we are afraid to ask for or expect more.” – Francis Chan
I decided to read the book Forgotten God by Francis Chan. I am always a small bit hesitant to read Francis Chan because he writes particularly to an audience who needs to be challenged out of their upper/middle class luxury faith bubble, one I’ve already been broken out of (mostly) from InterVarsity. In a nutshell he writes a lot of stuff I already know.
But this book held a lot of surprises. Including the quote above. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, especially since the InterVarsity Fellowship at CSUN decided to create the goals of tripling our fellowship by the end of the year. When I told people about this I got mixed feedback. Many suggested I was reaching too high, shouldn’t I set a lower goal, what if it didn’t happen, we can’t be thinking about just numbers, this isn’t Cal Poly anymore… etc. etc.
Our original goals were make small steps – going from a 50 person average fellowship to 75. That gives God very, very little room to work. In fact I bet anyone I can get 25 more people to come to our fellowship on our own without much help from the Holy Spirit. I don’t really need to pray a lot, and I don’t need to expect a lot from God. And that was the problem with our goal. It didn’t have any expectation God would come through, so I decided to settle for less.
And now I’m challenged to expect more. It’s tough because ringing my mind are the questions: What if God doesn’t come through with this? What if we never get to 150 people in our fellowship? It is ultimately scary to ask for more. It is terrifying because I have no control now if this works or not. I can be faithful, step up and pray. Invite people. Help make our large group more welcoming. Train our leaders. But at the end of the day that won’t give us 100 more committed members. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.
I’m getting tired of “covering for God.” He is a pretty bad ass dude so why did I ever think I needed to cover for him the first place. I’m a pretty weak person as it is and I feel like my life has been a lot of settling for less because I’m too scared to ask God for more. My prayer is as we step up in faith for the big dreams and big goals, the Holy Spirit will meet them. We will be transformed because we pray a lot and learn to listen to the Holy Spirit. And if our numbers aren’t what we expected at the end of the year, we will praise the Lord for the people he brought into our lives and the transformation in our own selves through this experience.
And Jesus please remind me of this when I groan and complain this is too hard, I’m not seeing enough growth, and I’m when I’m generally just being a pain in the ass and willing to settle for less.
Monte Pilgrimage 