THE GALACTIC GOD WHO INVITES US INTO HIS GLORIOUS PLAN

Louie Giglio1

While in Kigali, Rwanda, I visited a Catholic church on the outskirts of the city that serves as one of the many genocide memorials. I knew the story of Rwanda, but stepping into that place was more significant than I could have guessed. It wrecked me emotionally, and I don't think I'm going to get put back together for a while.

WRECKED IN RWANDA

Perhaps you've read the story, whether the account by the Bishop of Rwanda or any of the various historical accounts. This happened in our lifetime, by the way, when we were all busy doing something else. In this particular church I visited, ten thousand men, women, and children had come for refuge thinking that the church would be a safe haven, only to be sold out by the leadership there, locked in by the militia, and systematically slaughtered over a two-day period. When you walk into this empty genocide memorial, you see victims' clothing piled on pew benches, and in a memorial grave behind the building, many of their bones are still on display. They want the bones to be seen and not forgotten.

As I walked away and processed so many things, on many levels, what I had to face at the bottom of it all is that this world is messed up at an astounding magnitude. But that's not the end of the story. At the bottom of all the mess, there is a God. There is a God, one God. One glorious God. An amazing, beautiful God beyond our wildest dreams and our wildest imagination. And that God has chosen to invite us close to him. In the midst of the mess, he has invited us into life with him through his gospel. Then he has chosen — crazy as it may seem — to link arms with us, in some sense, and give us all marching orders, if you will.

CHRISTIANS ARE NOT AT THEIR LEISURE

Christians are not at their leisure — that's the heartbeat of what I sense God wants me to bring in this chapter. We are not at our leisure. Rather, we are under the mandate of the grace of God — grace that found us, restored us, redeemed us, breathed life back into our dormant lungs, and brought us back from the grave for a purpose. And that purpose is that we would, with everything in us, become an amplifier of the beauty of Jesus among all the peoples on this planet. This mission is crystal clear.

There is no room for negotiating with God in taking up a book like the one you have in your hands. There should be no, Oh, I'm just going to read this and ask the Lord to speak to my heart and see if he might want to nudge me toward his mission endeavor. That's not an option here. There is not going to be one category for those called to the nations and then a second category for those who don't feel this is their particular thing. If we're in Jesus, all of us are in one camp, and it's the camp called "the gospel of grace." And when you receive it, you become a participator in God's global purpose. When you truly embrace the gospel, you immediately become a participator in the beautiful plan of God, whether you realize it right away or later on (maybe while reading a chapter like this).

FEET ON A ROCK, READY TO TELL

The psalmist says it like this in Psalm 40:1–2: "I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure." He heard my cry. He heard me. And what did he do? He acted. He came down into the pit I was in. He reached out and he lifted me up. And he set my feet on a rock.

Far too many Christians put a period right there and say, Isn't that awesome? I was in such bad shape, and Jesus reached down and brought me out. And look what he did. He put my feet on a rock, and that's awesome. But there's more to it than that.

The gospel in Psalm 40 is the full gospel. It goes all the way out. It produces proclaimers of the story of redemption. Psalm 40:3: "He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the LORD."

"He put a new song in my mouth." So if you're not singing, you may not be saved. Psalm 40 says that he put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to my God, so that many — not merely one person in the course of my lifetime, but many — many would hear and believe, putting their trust in the Lord. There is a ripple effect to the gospel that's inevitable. There's a ripple effect to true grace. It doesn't lead us to only sit and contemplate what happened to us. It leads us to proclaim what's happened to us — and what can happen to anybody and everybody on the planet.

FROM GLOBAL TO GALACTIC

The speaking assignment given to me originally was "The Global God Who Gives the Great Commission." I love that title, and I carried it in my head for a while. But toward the end of the journey, I modified it a little. I thought we could take a step back from "the global God" and think more about the galactic God. Global is way too small for the God we worship. God is bigger than we think he is. No matter how big you think he is, he's bigger. We barely have a clue as to the magnitude of whom we're dealing with.

And even galactic is too small, because galaxies are an idea that God had. I love the saying, "The universe is one of God's thoughts." True, and amazing. And I've tweaked the title to be "The Galactic God Who Invites Us into His Glorious Plan."

A FOCUS ON GOD

So let's begin this book on finishing the mission by focusing on the God who is inviting us into it. Isaiah 6 has been in my heart as I've prayed about what to say here. Isaiah 6 seems to say it all. When you have a vision, as Isaiah had, about who God is, that's all you really need. If you see what Isaiah saw, that should do it. There doesn't need to be any application at the end of a pure vision of the glory of God. When you get a vision of who God is, of his magnificence and splendor, you don't need somebody to come along and give you three steps to take. When we have a true vision, even a fleeting glimpse of the glory of God, it absolutely wrecks us but in a good way. The Spirit of God then leads us through a process of reclaiming the wreckage and putting us back together again and on a new track, the track of his glorious plan.

It seems that it all happened in a very small window of time for Isaiah. He saw the Lord. He saw him high and lifted up, not low and watered down. He saw that just the hem of the Lord's robe filled the temple....