A few days ago, I found myself traveling into town to visit with my pregnant friend and her family as she was home from a land far away. On this particular occasion, the soundtrack for my drive was from “Hello Love” by Chris Tomlin. As I passed by many people wandering through Oil Fest (the yearly festival held in the town of Titusville) and along the streets, I began worshiping to the track “God of this City.”
This is a particularly inspiring songs, especially when driving through the city you live in. While singing, almost screaming, the words at the top of my lungs (Greater things have yet to come/and greater things are still to be done in this city), I began to contemplate what the town of Titusville would look like if Christ were the center. Think about that for a second:
What would it look like if Christ were the center of your home town.
Moving on, I arrived at my destination and shared a wonderful evening with my friend and her family which included one of the most popular Oil Festival activities: fireworks.
I’ve been in the process of reading “Praise Habit” by David Crowder (which I’ve neglected for the past couple of days, so thanks for reminding me) and in it he talks about praise in what may seem like an unconventional way, speaking about blowing bubbles in your milk glass and other odd things. This book has been a challenge for me to praise at every moment of the day–to find something at all times that is good and is God. On this particular evening, I reveled in the beauty of God in the form of fireworks.
Think about this: fireworks are a bunch of pieces of God’s creation working in a way that creates something beautiful. At the heart, God is there. So how could I not find God to be so amazing in that moment as I let the smell of gunpowder rest in my nostrils and the flashing light of explosion reflect off of the lens of my eye?
And then I looked around me.
It is no surprise that knowing the beauty of what would occur, people would gather in a place to see. Lots of people. But this probably wasn’t the way it always was. People didn’t always know about the beauty of fireworks. I’m going to assume that a lot of destruction happened as people tried to figure out how to get these molecules and what not to work in a way that really glorified the person who it together. That made something beautiful.
Greater things have yet to come and greater things are still to be done in this city…
Church seems to be a place where we regularly hear about how we need to tell people about Jesus and evangelize and blah, blah, blah… And I’m not saying that that’s not true, because that’s really important. But I think more importantly, we need to start blowing things up, start being fireworks.
Did you know that there’s a Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas that has a website called GodHatesFags.com? Think about that for a second. Does that sound like God’s creation working together to create something beautiful?
I think one of the reasons that people hate church isn’t because they hate Jesus, but because they hate his people.
I’ve been to a lot of churches and I have to say that “Christians” are some of the most back-biting, self-absorbed, non-firework-like people. And I’m one of them. Maybe the problem here is that we care more about ourselves and our comfort than we do about others and doing God’s will. And I have to be honest with you, I fall into that category.
So my call is to put God first, other second, and myself third. This is something I’m working on, but something I also challenge you to work on. Why? Because I’m sick of God’s people not working together and creating an environment that doesn’t glorify the Creator.
We are all God’s creation and it’s my desire to bring God glory. I pray it would be your desire as well. But when the molecules and everything packed inside the firework tube don’t react with eachother correctly, dangerous things can happen and people tend to not treat the person who made that particular firework very well.
I think as a group called the church, we’ve done enough damage already. It’s time to change and explode with flying colors.
Matthew 5:16 – “In the same way, let your light shine before all men that they may see your good deeds and praise the Father in heaven.”
bryanmakesmusic.com 