The Wrong End of the Telescope

I am speaking at a retreat at my church this weekend on how we can't answer the question "WHO AM I? until we answer a more important question: WHO IS I AM? I'm using this video I found on Youtube. It's from a famous sermon from S.M. Lockridge.

I think in our churches today many are looking at God through the wrong side of the telescope. They believe in God, but He is small, insignificant and at the edge of the horizon of their lives. We need to find ways to help turn the telescope around and see the God who is huge, near, and is is the not on the horizon, but is the sun in the solar system of our lives that whose holy gravitational force holds all things in our lives and world together (Col. 1:16-17).

One thing that young people need today is a greater vision of God. One of the ways which they will see that of course is through what and how we teach, but what will capture them most is when that teaching is coupled with the lives of adults and peers around them who live "radically" different from the world, risk much, joyfully abaondon the American dream, are generous with their resources, take action when they see a need and view people they encoutner with eyes of compassion rather than comparison. Our theology needs to drive our living. For far two long we've allowed them to be seperated.

Videos like this aren't the answer, but they do help me to ask myself some good questions. When young people...my children...my neighbors...observe my way of life, will they gain a large view of who God is because of how I am responding to Him with all that I am?