How about when men get a new truck? With a V8! What do we do? We pull up - you've got to see my new truck! What's the first thing we do? We don't get in the car for a test drive, what do we do? We pop the hood. Look at that engine! Nine out of 10 of us have no idea what we're looking at, but it's big! Sounds powerful! Joy has to be shared.
Is this why God created us: to share His joy?
Maybe His joy got so full in Himself, that He had to create someone to share it with Him. He couldn't share it with somebody that's not in His image, or in His likeness, so maybe you are a result of God needing to share His joy. When we have real encounters with God, we want to spread it to others. I want everyone to know my God.
What would happen to our church, if church was not: attending an event?
What if it is: a life, who was committed to turning the world upside down?
What would happen if our church became one giant response to Anochi? Instead of trying to know more things about God, what if we just chased Him, and the things of God.
What if we were responding to God's desire for Anochi with us - by providing Anochi for everybody else? What we make happen for others - God makes happen for us.
God wants to: increase our authority, inside the hedge of praise and submission.
What would happen if we created that for other people? What would happen to church if it became that; instead of a gathering of people who complained about the volume of the music; or where they're having to park; or what was coming off the pulpit? What would happen if our life actually became a whole big response to Anochi?
We'd have a group of people committed to turning the world upside down - to helping the poor; to calling in the middle of the night and saying: I'm not going to make it; to being authentic and safe, to giving. It's life's response to: Anochi, Yahweh, Elohim.
Through history, the greatest people in the world, were people who were willing to die for Anochi. Peter, they tell us, died by being crucified upside down - and it resulted in one of the biggest revivals in the world. In Foxes Book of Martyrs, it talks about Philip, and the way he died.
Philip was in a town called Heliopolis, and Caesar built these columns in the town. He said: you have to walk through those columns, to pay homage to me as God. Philip walked around the columns - He wouldn't go through them, so the authorities of the city brought him and his family out; and they said: you're going to walk through those columns. He said: I will not.
He had six children. They took the youngest and killed it. He said: now you'll walk through. He said: I will not. The story goes that his children screamed out: dad, dad, don't do it! God is worth more than that! Wow! So one at a time, they killed Philips children. Then they got to his wife, and she said: don't do it - Gods plan for these people, is worth more than you giving in now - and they killed her. Then they got to him, and he said: kill me if you like, I won't walk through. They said: we're not going to kill you; we're going to let you live with the fact that your family died. That was Philip.
One of the greatest revivals ever to happen, happened after that; and then the story goes that the Roman platoon, who was in charge of the killing, actually came to Philip later and said: you must serve the one true God - tell us about Him. Philip led every one of those people, who killed his family, to the Lord; and later they came back to him, and they said: can we call you dad? We took your children away from you, but we'd like to be your children now. Can we call you dad?