Francis Chan

I just recently got the audio series from the Thirsty '06 conference put on by Passion ministries. I've listened to three of the sermons so far. I've been really impressed by Francis Chan. Of the three that I've heard, two of them were Chan's (the other was Louie Giglio's, which was also very good). Chan is the pastor of Cornerstone Community Church located in Simi Valley, CA. You can visit the website and hear his sermons at cornerstonesimi.com. Anyway, in the second sermon I heard by him, he spoke about living your life according to what God calls you to do, no matter what the cost. He based most of this off of the book, Haggai. His exposition really convicted me about my own life. In Haggai, it talks about the Jewish remnant. They knew that they were called to rebuild the temple of God, but they built themselves new, beautiful houses instead. God then tells them that because of their disregard for God's commands they don't have rain or crops and when they save money they save it to put it in a bag that has holes in it. It's pointless. So the people heeded God's command, feared the Lord, and started construction on the temple. The interesting and convicting part of this passage is that God doesn't promise them that He will now send the rain or that they will have an abundance of crops or that they will be prosperous in business. Rather, the only thing that He promises is that He will be with them. How often do we say (at least to ourselves) "OK, I'll follow You because then You will give me a better job, a girlfriend (or boyfriend, depending on who reads this), health, etc." So often we obey God because we think that we will get something else out of the deal. God tells us that what we get is Him. And that is more than enough. What we are really doing is undervaluing God when we do this. We are saying "I want the gifts more than the giver. I am serving God for the sake of the reward." When we say this we make an idolater of the reward (a reward that we aren't even promised).

I could probably go on and on about this, but the bottom line is this: God is our portion (Ps. 73), He is our fullness of joy (Ps. 16:11, Phil. 4:1), He is beautiful (Ps. 27:4). He is the point and end of all our service. We serve God to get God and all of the riches of His grace (which includes heavenly rewards). This is always a convicting message for me, because I so often get sidetracked on what I hope to get in this world from my service. Our obedience results in God's nearness and that nearness is our good (Ps. 73). If we lost everything, but had God's nearness, then we would have enough.