Our Plans and God's Plans

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Have any of you ever taken Gallup's, I think it's called Strength Quest or Strength Finders. Any of you done that? So of the top five strengths I have, two are futurist, so I look towards the future, and the other is strategic. So if you want a strategic plan, if you want something I can lay out and kind of, I can work it. Right, Helen? I can work it. Yeah, we're working it for Mission Haiti right now. But part of me has given up on some of that. And the reason is, for a church or for any organization, is two realities. One is the reality of our human nature, you know, because a lot of these plans are filled with a lot of hubris and egotism. I don't know if you've seen that in business. And the other is the reality of God and how God works in this world. And you look through the scriptures and you find someone who is this great strategic planner that get all these plans together. You find a book in the Bible that's filled with all of that stuff, where this person has put things together and executed and look at how great it turned out. Now, strategic planning, I think Paul had some of that in some of his letters in the book of Acts and how he lays it out. But the real strategic planning in the scriptures is always done by the Holy Spirit through God's word and through his son Jesus Christ in one form or another. And we follow along with that. And today we're going to do that. In this one-shot deal, we're going to do that. Next week we start a new series called Stupid, S-T-O-O-P-I-D. And it's actually on the book of Proverbs. We're going to look at three weeks on how stupid we can be, or the fool in the book of Proverbs maybe, and God's wise ways with us. So we're going to be doing that next week. But today we're going to be looking at what I believe is God's great goal and vision for Thrive and for his Christian church anywhere. And for you individually, and for me as well, and for us collectively. And that has much more to do with what I think Jesus had said in some of his last intimate moments he had to discuss and share things with his disciples than anything else. So we're going to do that as we turn to John chapter 13. And let's read that right now. And when he had gone out, Jesus said, now is the son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me. And just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I am going, you cannot come. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Let's pray. At the beginning of a new year and a new decade, we pray that you would have your way with us, your way with us here at Thrive, your way with us individually, and that we would be those who glorify you by the way you want to be glorified in this world, the way that how your life and what it all meant, Lord Jesus, what it accomplished there. We pray not just for Thrive but for all the gospel churches throughout Southwest Florida that together, Lord, we show who you are. We show who you are in words and actions, in attitudes, in demeanor to our neighbors and our friends so that a true movement of your spirit comes across this whole area and lives are transformed by your love and mercy and grace and truth. Notice this time as we look at your word today and as we look forward to the year that you have for us. In Jesus' name, amen. Now don't get me wrong, I am into strategic planning and we probably need to do a little more of that here in some ways, but strategic plans without actually dealing with what I think Jesus is dealing with today, big deal, who cares? That's what it comes down to. And I hope this year is the year that we see that God has moved us to the point where we can start planning for, yes, a facility on the land that we own right on Ben Hill Griffin across from FGCU. I think God is going to be doing some great things for the sake of his kingdom, not for our sake, not for my ego. But I think it's taken us this long in one sense because God has been doing a deeper work in us to prepare us for that future. That if it was quick and easy and we had a facility, we had all these things, if my quote strategic planning, which I did six years ago here and five, all of that stuff just worked out, boy, I would be unbearable and we would probably be very shallow. We might be a mile wide, but about an inch deep as a Christian community. And I see too many of those already, too many of that, the quick and easy, the flashy and the nice. So we're going to look at today what Jesus really had in mind. Now to set this up, John 13, Jesus has just washed his disciple...