Harvey spoke from Ephesians 4:11, in terms of we are always fighting the odds. But his first of eight points was “We have to believe God’s word is true.” If you follow the thought process of Ephesians 4:11, we all know that God will win and we will overcome any odds. Satan will be defeated. Believe it. Celebrate it. Preach it!
Unlike some of the teams I coached, always hoping for a hail mary pass to bail you out (Okay, so you watched Brent Favre and the Vikings last week), “God is getting ready to show up” when we think there is no way we can beat these odds. He comes to the rescue and throws us a life line.
Another way Harvey talked about overcoming the odds is to “Equip the body to serve and equip others.” It will take the whole team to overcome the odds, not just the paid staff. Sometimes when we are facing extreme odds, we tend to circle up the wagons and get into a protection mentality. What we need is more troops in the cavalry who are ready and willing to help fight in the battle.
For churches to overcome odds, “the people must take ownership of the work it will take to defeat the odds, and then become genuinely engaged in that work.” If the odds are stacked against you, it will take hard work, determination, and discipline to carry through. Which leads to his next point, “Look at the Bible for examples God gives us of His people overcoming the odds!” The Bible is full of stories like this! These examples have to become real to us, not just "page 856, last paragraph on the right." God is using a bullhorn and yelling into our ears, "You can do this with My power!"
Whatever you do, if you want to overcome the odds, don’t put this item in a church committee. Things only get delayed and eventually die in a committee. Don’t even be on a committee. Join a task force, if anything. But more importantly, Harvey would say, “more prayer meetings and less strategic meetings.” Amen and amen to that. I couldn’t agree more! We are never going to overcome any odds without the power and concerted effort of massive amounts of prayer!
The church that overcomes the odds “realizes its potential.” I always get a kick out of a resume from a potential church planting candidate who has switched churches about every two years. Perhaps he has never realized that God’s body, no matter where it is located, no matter what the attendance is running, has POTENTIAL. It is, after all, God's body of believers. There are hidden diamonds in every church. We just need to spend some time digging for them and then harvesting them. Do you know of any church in the world where God doesn’t want to do great things with that body?
Lucky number 7 (of Carey's eight points) - the true Biblical answer: “Step out of the boat of complacency.” If the boat is sinking, don’t’ just stay in it and end up drowning. The reason you might be facing great odds is because of complacency. I believe the longer we are complacent, the more the odds build up against us, until we get to the point where we just sit in the boat, going down with it.
And last, but my favorite point of Carey's eight - “Stop making excuses.”
- "If we only had a better building and a better location, we could grow."
- "I don’t think I will ever be able to break that sin habit."
- "Please God, just send us more money."
- "If we had better leaders, this church might be able to overcome the odds."
- "A good youth minister would solve all our problems we are having with kids."
- "The poor economic times have really hurt us financially."
Hey. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God. That'll work. It's not a gamble.
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