Dr. Lori Salierno
November 10, 2013 - W1345

What a gift it is to participate with the Holy Spirit!  Winston Churchill said, “To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”

Women too are tapped on the shoulder. Wouldn’t it be a shame if you were not qualified, ready or prepared when God called?  We all should be ready for our finest hour.

God wants to tap you on the shoulder and offer you a chance to ?? for the hour of your most significant work ever, and that is to bring you to a realization of the vision that He has for your life, the vision that He has for New Hope.  And vision is the ability to focus on God's plan for the world to grow in His heart, to grow in His mind, and it's to focus on that plan for the world, but it's also anticipating His power working through you to accomplish that plan. 

And when God brings a plan to your life, He is going to invite you to be part of something bigger than yourself.  It will require the very best from yourself, and it will actually outlive yourself because the vision that God has for you has everything to do with the kingdom of God in eternity, and when He invites you, when He invites me to that, we have to ask ourselves, are we willing to surrender to Him in such a way that we will be a part of something bigger than ourselves that requires the best from ourselves, that will outlive ourselves?

In C.S. Lewis’ “The Witch, the Wardrobe and the Lion”, a little girl is approaching the White Lion who symbolizes Jesus.  She asks, “Is the Lion safe?” The answer was, “No! He is not safe! He is good!”

Jesus died to make us dangerous! We are dangerous to the forces of darkness. We are not safe and we are not comfortable. But if you participate with God in your mission, what you do will be special and will outlive your life.

The Bible says, “When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?”⁶ He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.⁷ Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages^[a] to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”

⁸ Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, ⁹ “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”

¹⁰ Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there). ¹¹ 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.

¹² When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” ¹³ So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. (John 6:5-13)

There were 5000 men there but if there were men then there were also women and children so the number could have been much larger like 10,000 or 15,000. Since it was obvious that the amount of bread was way too insufficient, Jesus was demonstrating the power of God to bring about the miracle of making what little we had miraculously sufficient. By asking the question, Jesus was in fact asking Philip to be a part of something bigger than himself.

Jesus is asking the same of you. God’s attention is always on you.   Is your soul trained to recognize that call from God?

What is the God space? It is the gap that occurs when the need is bigger than your ability and if you fail, disaster will happen. For example, the God space was enormous when Moses was facing the Red Sea with one million Jews depending on him for safety and the Egyptian army charging from behind to kill them. Moses really needed God to fill that space or gap in his ability. He absolutely needed God to part the Red Sea or all was lost!

I was scheduled to speak at an inner city school but sensed the hostility of the school officials. They told me that the police were there to drag me away if I violated “Separation of Church and State” and to quell a riot if I incited one. So I asked God for guidance and He said that we are not called to be the light to the light but to be the light to the darkness!

I told the students assembled there that there was no such thing as safe sex unless you are married. I said that God wanted us to be virgins at our wedding. The students swore at me and made obscene gestures. Each time they swore, I yelled back, “Virgins!” 8 big gang members stood up and walked threateningly toward me. I prayed to God for emergency guidance! God answered and so as the men neared I told the assembly that these 8 men were virgins!   

They stopped and looked confused.  Later, one of those men told me that they were there to intimidate me and make me run away.  But we say to the Enemy, “We don’t run! We don’t shut up!” God said that He wanted me to bridge the gap between the church and the lost generation.

The boy the disciples got the bread from was a poor boy and so had very little food himself. When God calls, you can say no. The poor boy did not have much but he did have the materials of a miracle. Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.

What we have is insufficient but in God’s hands it is miraculous! God can do more with one man working at 100% than He can with 100 people working at 90%! With God, your life may be difficult and uncomfortable but it will be so powerful. The future belongs to God.   

For years, the church had been locked out of the schools.  The government had been hostile to the “10 Commandments” and to prayer in school. But in 2011 the school doors began opening to the body of Christ. The schools recognized that there were just too many at risk kids that needed mentorship and saving.

However, though I was asked to provide those mentors for the at risk children, I could not find enough mentors from the church. So the schools wanted me to use their staff but I said no, they had to be from Christ.  I stayed awake at nights praying to God for guidance on this problem.

God shocked me and told me something that made no sense!  He told me to ride a bike from Washington State to Georgia to raise money and publicize our mission!  As crazy as that sounds for a 52 year old non athlete woman to do, since God said it, that’s what I decided!

It was calculated to cost $25,000 to do which we did not have. But later God told me to call an old friend of my deceased dad. That old friend simply out of the blue offered to give me $25,000! So off I rode on what we called the “Challenge the Cycle” tour. We were challenging the downward cycle of poverty, crime and despair of today’s lost youth.

(A video of the “Challenge the Cycle” tour is shown)

Some people compete for a gold medal.  Other people compete for transformed lives.  And, ladies and gentlemen, is that not what we, the body of Christ, do?  We work and accept the vision that God has for our lives for transformed lives, being the salt, being the light. 

What you have done in this city, the fight that you took on and stood for, know this:  Your struggle was not against flesh and blood.  It was against the ruler and the authority and the power of this dark world.  But greater is He that is within us than he that is in this world. 

God's going to call you to be part of something bigger than yourself.  It's going to require the very best from you, but it will outlive yourself.  Do you know that the vision of New Hope literally will outlast and outlive Pastor Wayne?  Do you know that the vision that you are participating in for your own life will outlive your physical life?  How do we know?  Because in 2013 in Honolulu we're still talking about a little boy over 2,000 years later because he took his lunch and multiplied his influence by joining the power of Jesus Christ. 

I challenge you, ask the Lord this question:  What is the vision that you have for my life?  I want to be part of something bigger than myself.  I will ?? though I'm not much, I will give you the very best of who I am.  And when you put your insufficient life, your insufficient lunch into the hands of the master, He will reveal His sufficiency and His power, and it will outlast you and go on even into eternity.

I pray that out of His glorious riches that God would strengthen you with power through His spirit and your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of God.  And so know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God now to Him who's able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond anything you can ask or imagine according to His power that's at work within you. To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever.  Amen. 

Study Suggestions

1.   How can you be ready for God’s tap on your shoulder?

2.    What is the “God Space”?

3.   Why did Jesus ask Philip about bread?

4.   When is the only time sex is safe?

5.   How will what you do outlive you?