"Unleash the Lion Chaser Within"

from the book “In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day,” by Mark Batterson

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Chase the Lion Sermon Series

Introduction: Script for Video: Childhood Story About Chasing Something

If you are anything like me you have certain childhood experiences that are unforgettable.

One of mine was chasing butterflies. The sense of freedom and chasing something that was wild. God put a chasing gene in every one of us.

Transition

Kids love chasing things: kites butterflies, rabbits, and dads, each other.

But as we get older we stop chasing and we start running away from dreams, our fears, and opportunities. But deep inside each of us is a little kid wanting to chase lions again.

Beniah the Hero

If I asked you who your favorite Bible hero was you might say Abraham, Moses, or David. I want to tell you today about a little-known person mentioned in the OT. In Samuel 23, there’s a short story about a man named Beniah. He’s a brave warrior who chased a lion on a snowy day into a pit and killed it.

Moments

Life is made up of moments where we we come alive. A wedding, a birth, a move to a new town and church. This is Beniah’s moment. We don’t know much about this story –where he’s going, what he’s thinking, or his mood, except Beniah crossed paths with a lion. We would say “wrong place wrong time.” But not Beniah. He saw an opportunity.

He chased a lion and killed it.

Meaning

And here’s what it meant for Beniah. Killing a lion in a pit on a snowy day looks awfully good on your resume if you are applying to be a bodyguard for King David. Beniah gets the position and rises to become the commander in chief of the Israel army, the #2 man in the kingdom. The genealogy of the success began with chasing the lion when he didn’t run away.

Application

What lion do you need to chase. What fear do you need to face, what uncertainty do you need to embrace, what risk do you need to take, what opportunity do you need to seize?

God is calling us to more than running away from what’s wrong. He calls us to chase those God-ordained lions he has placed in out lives. And when we do it, there’s no telling what God can do. Chase the lion.

I. Impossible Odds- (2 Samuel 23:20-23; Judges 6:1 – 7:17; 2 Peter 3:8)

God is in the business of positioning us to be in the right place at the right

time. It might not seem that way to you, but if and when you give yourself over to God, and trust God, then God helps you to fulfill your destiny. As we think about Beniah, we are probably glad that we don’t have to fight a lion in a snowy pit. But we all have times in our lives when we come upon situations and problems that seem like lions. And in these times, we can partner with God and fight, or we can choose to run away.

Now if we choose to run away, then we tend to have regrets later on. This regret is a regret of inaction; wishing you had done something you didn’t do. But our calling from God is much higher than simply running away from what’s wrong. We’re called to chase lions, if you will. You’ve probably heard the saying, “No guts, no glory?” When we don’t have guts and step out in faith and chase lions, then God is robbed of the glory that rightfully belongs to Him, and we miss out on fulfilling our destiny. We can’t be passive in life; lion chasers are proactive. Lion chasers are always on the lookout for God-ordained opportunities.

To do this, we simply need to live with this motto: Do the best you can with what you have where you are. That isn’t too hard, is it? We just need to make the most of every opportunity we are given, whether it seems hard, or scary, or whatever. What you do with each opportunity is your gift to God, the One who created you.

a. The odds- Now think for a moment if this fight between Beniah and the

lion were on pay-per-view TV. This would be something to see. The advertisements tell you: Tune in to watch Beniah fight a lion!! WOW. That would capture people’s attention. Many people would pay to watch that. And the oddsmakers in Las Vegas would not be making Beniah the favorite. He probably was a hundred-to-one longshot. But Beniah did what lion chasers do; HE DEFIED THE ODDS.

He didn’t focus on his disadvantages. He didn’t make excuses. He didn’t try and avoid the situation even though the odds were against him. Lion chasers know God is bigger and more powerful than any problem they face in this world. They are willing to move forward in the face of adversity because they know that IMPOSSIBLE ODDS set the stage for amazing miracles. That is how God reveals His glory—and how He blesses you and me in ways we could never have imagined.

The interesting thing, maybe even frustrating thing about God that we see throughout the Bible, is that often times God won’t intervene until something is humanly impossible. God usually comes into the situation just in the nick of time. GOD LOVES IMPOSSIBLE ODDS. Maybe God allows the odds to be stacked against us so He can reveal more of His glory.

b. God overcomes the odds- EX. Think for a moment about Gideon in

Judges, chapter 6. Even though Gideon had 32,000 men in his army, the Midianites had far more than that. But when it came time to fight, God told Gideon that he had too many in his army. TOO MANY? So God tells Gideon to discharge anyone who is afraid; and Gideon loses 2/3 of his army. Now he is down to about 11,000. But the Lord tells Gideon that there are still too many. This continues until Gideon only has 300 left in his army!! The odds at this point are probably a million to one for Gideon to win. BUT THE KICKER IS THAT ISRAEL AND GIDEON WIN!!

God says it this way in Judges 7:2, “You have too many warriors with you.

If I let all of you fight the Midianites, the Israelites will boast to me that

they saved themselves by their own strength.”

Too often our prayers revolve around asking God to reduce the odds in our lives. We want everything in our favor. God wants us to trust Him and rely on Him, not on ourselves. Maybe our impossible situations are actually opportunities to experience a new dimension of God’s glory.

Think about God more a moment. How does God keep track of over 6 billion people at the same time? How does God process millions of prayers simultaneously? It is because while we are limited to the 3 dimensions of our world (length, width, and height), although many are seeing “time” as a fourth dimension, God is actually omni-dimensional. This means that God is above and beyond the dimensions of our world. GOD IS NOT LINEAR. GOD IS EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME. God is on the outside looking in. That is why “a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” to God. (2 Peter 3:8)

II. High View of God- (Romans 8:28; Isaiah 55:8; Ephesians 2:10)

a. Thinking about God- Minister and author A. W. Tozer says that

the most important thing about you is what comes to mind when you think about God. In his book The knowledge of the Holy, he says: “…the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like…”

How you think about God will determine who you become, because you are a by-product of your God-picture. Most of our problems are perceptual, and can actually be traced back to our inadequate understanding of who God is. Our problems seem really big because our God seems really small. In fact, we reduce God to the size of our biggest problem. And even then we are not sure that God is big enough, or powerful enough to work it out for us. We tend to not believe what Paul says in Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Tozer says that a “low view of God…is the cause of a hundred lesser evils.” But a person with a high view of God “is relieved of ten thousand…problems.” A low view of God comes from someone who is fearful, because their God is too small. A high view of God comes from a lion chaser, because they know that their best thought about God on their best day falls infinitely short of how great God really is.

As Isaiah 55:8 says, “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD.” And yet, we can have access to God’s thoughts, and we can rely on God’s thoughts to get us through, and to move us forward.

Maybe it is time to stop placing a four-dimensional limit on God. Maybe it is time to stop putting God in a box the size our brain can imagine. Maybe it is time to stop creating God in our image, and let God create us in His image. The more we grow in our faith, the bigger God should get. And the bigger God gets, the smaller our lions will become.

b. Contingency plans- EX. In 1997, a team of IBM engineers

designed and developed a computer called “Deep Blue.” It was the computer that was used to outmaneuver the chess grand master Garry Kasparov. “Deep Blue” was equipped with 32 processing engines that could calculate 200 million chess moves per second./ That is an amazing statistic: 200 million chess moves per second!

However, the capability of Deep Blue is nothing compared to what God can do. And our creator has taken every contingency into consideration before even a fraction of a second ticks off the clock. EX. If you think of your life like a game of chess, you are the pawn. God is the Grand Master. You have no idea what your next move should be, but God already has your next thousand moves in mind if you will trust Him and follow Him. The moves He has for you will make sense as you make them, but probably not before.

Whenever I counsel someone who is wrestling with understanding God’s will for their lives, I try and remind them a simple truth; God wants you to get where God wants you to be more than you want to get there. This should relieve a lot of stress for you. If you keep with following the leading of God’s Spirit in your life, God is going to make sure that you get where He wants you to go. He is always work- ing behind the scenes, engineering our circumstances and setting us up for success.

As Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Now here’s the catch: Sometimes God’s itinerary means that we will come face to face with a lion in a pit on a snowy day. But when we find ourselves there, we need to know that God will order our footsteps, and that God has considered every contingency, and God always has our best interest at heart!

III. God the Infinite- (2 Kings 6; John 6:11-13, 38; Matthew 18:18)

a. Degree of difficulty- Second Kings 6 records what may be the most

ridiculous prayer in scripture. You may have said some silly, selfish prayers before, but follow this. A group of prophets are chopping trees near a river and one of their iron ax heads falls into the river. The prophet who lost the ax head said to Elisha: “Alas, master! For it was borrowed.” Now, I think we all know that if you drop an iron ax head into the water, it sinks, because iron doesn’t float.

Now, if I were Elisha, I might feel bad for the guy, and maybe even let him borrow my ax. But the prophet shows Elisha where the ax head fell in. Elisha then cuts a stick and throws it into the water, and the iron floats to the top of the water!

This kind of a miracle helps to redefine reality. And the reality is that nothing is too difficult for God. When it comes to God, there are no degrees of difficulty. There are no odds. Just think about these numbers that Jesus and the disciples faced: 5,000 hungry people; 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. The numbers don’t add up. But listen to what happened in the gospel of John, 6:11-13, “Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated, as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. ¹²When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, ‘Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.’ ¹³So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.” When God does the math it is 5 + 2 = 5,000; remainder 12.

They actually end up with more than what they started with, AFTER feeding five thousand people. And God is glorified because He defied impossible odds.

b. Remembering- Jesus says in Matthew 18:18- “Whatever you bind

on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” We underestimate how much spiritual authority we have when we pray in accordance with the will of God. The word bind means “to prohibit or to fatten with chains.” When we exercise our spiritual authority in prayer, it is like our prayers are putting a spiritual chain link fence around what we are praying for.

EX. Sometimes I watch my kids without them knowing that I am watching them. I love to watch them play together; I love to watch them walk to their class lines; I love to watch them sleeping so serenely. And when I watch them, I am so proud of them. In many ways, I can see myself in my children.

Like a loving parent, our Heavenly Father loves watching us, His children. In fact, God isn’t just watching. He is actually scrapbooking. The Bible calls it “a scroll of remembrance.” God is recording absolutely every act of righteousness that we do. He is rejoicing over us the way a parent rejoices over their child. And I believe that nothing brings God greater joy than when one of His children walks in His power, through faith, and defies the odds!

Parents rejoice when their child does something right. Our Heavenly Father is no exception. In fact, He sets the standard for the rest of us to follow. That is one of the reasons He sent Jesus to earth, to show us how to live; to show us what it means to be righteous; to show us what it means to follow and trust. As Jesus said in John 6:38, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of Him who sent me.”

Conclusion: We started out talking about Beniah, the lion chaser. And we learned that even though we don’t fight real lions, our problems can seem like lions to us. God doesn’t want us to be afraid of the circumstances, the problems, the challenges of life. God wants us to know that He can help us beat impossible odds. In fact, God wants to help us to do this. Because God has no limits, God can come to our aid. But we need to trust God. The more you trust, the more you will grow in your faith, and the more you grow in your faith, the bigger God will become, and the become God becomes, the more you trust. And on and on it goes.

Today is Epiphany Sunday. An epiphany is having that “aha” understanding of a moment. It is being willing to overcome our fears so that we will pursue the truth. That is what the wise men did. They did not fear the journey to find the Christ child, because they wanted to know the truth; they wanted to understand.

I hope you will go away today with the understanding that God is right there with you in all of your challenges and fears. God wants you to succeed and become all He created you to be. Make the decision today to be a lion chaser, and believe that nothing is too difficult for God. Amen.