Weird in a God Way*
Sycamore Creek Church
August 11/12, 2013
Tom Arthur
Matthew 7:13-14

Peace friends!

I’ve always been a little weird. Growing up, my friends told me I was “a little off.” I hung out with the crowd in high school that was sometimes called the “holy rollers.” I led Bible studies and prayer groups before school. I had a rule, that I didn’t always follow, that I would only date Christians. I was a little weird. And yet, I always wanted to be normal. I wanted to be popular. I wanted to be athletic. I wanted to date the popular good looking girl. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be seen as smart, but not too smart. I wanted to drive a cool car, but instead of having a 69 Camaro like my friend who picked me up for school each day, I had a two-tone blue 79 Plymouth Horizon. At times I managed to do what normal people did and live the way normal people lived, and it usually ended up hurting me or others.

Today we’re starting a new series called Weird: Because Normal Isn’t Working. There are a bunch of different kinds of weird. There’s weird in a good way, like that guy with the flat-top I see always riding his bike all around Holt and S. Lansing making the rest of us look like super slackers. There’s weird in a bad way, like the overly needy friend who is always having a crisis and it’s always someone else’s fault. Then there’s weird in a God way. That’s what I want to explore today: being weird in a God way.

Jesus puts on the path to being weird when he says:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
Matthew 7:13-14

The majority of people travel the broad way. They think, “We must be OK because the majority of people are on it.” If you’re on the broad road, looking like everyone else—pretty normal—it could be that you’re on the broad road that leads to destruction.

The problem is that normal isn’t working. Take away the Bible, just ignore it for a moment, and look around yourself, and ask: is normal working? When it comes to our schedules we’re overwhelmed, stressed, driven by the urgent, and lacking in quality time with friends and family. When it comes to money, we direct our lives toward the pursuit of material things that don’t make us happy and we end up broke, in debt, fighting about money, and full of fear. When it comes to our jobs, we’re working for a paycheck, just getting by, and not doing anything that we’re called to or filled with passion about. When we look at our relationships the usual course of things is to go from bed to bed to bed to marriage, which last for seven years and then we divorce. Normal isn’t working.

If you want what normal people have, do what normal people do. But…
If you want what few people have, do what few people do.

The few have peace, security, a sense of call, a mission for their lives, and their eyes on eternity. They’re weird.

Let’s face it, the teachings of Jesus are really weird too. He teaches something different than the normal. Jesus says, don’t just avoid adultery because lust is adultery too. Weird! Jesus teaches that the first in life will be last in eternity and the last in life will be the first in eternity. Weird! Jesus teaches that if you give, it will be given to you. Weird! He teaches that when someone curses you, you should bless them. Weird! He tells us that when someone hits us on one cheek, we should give them the other one too. Weird! Jesus teaches that when someone wrongs you, you should forgive them. Weird! Jesus is weird!

Sarah and I try to follow Jesus by living a bit of weird life too. We have a group of friends from seminary that we video chat with every other month. We call ourselves “The Order of St. James.” We have three things we hold ourselves to: Simplicity, Hospitality, Evangelism. We try to live at a certain level of income and give the rest away. We seek to share our homes with people who need a place to land to get back on their feet. We want to share the good news of Jesus with others and invite them to participate in the body of Christ. We’re all pretty weird. Who video chats with people these days and shares their financial details, talks about how they’re using their homes, and whether they’re inviting people around them into Jesus’ love and community? Weird!

There are two points that I want to share with you today about being weird. They are foundational points for the rest of the series.

1. Weird people don’t think like normal people.
First, weird people don’t think like normal people. Don’t copy what weird people do. Learn to think how they think. Paul, one of the writers of the New Testament said:

Don’t live any longer the way this world lives. Let your way of thinking be completely changed.
Romans 12:2 NIrV

The Message is a paraphrase of the Bible and it paraphrases this verse in this way:

Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.
Romans 12:2 The Message

Learn to think differently about the way you live your life, and the way you live your life will change. This series is inspired by and based upon a book by Craig Groeschel titled Weird: Because Normal Isn’t Working. I suggest you pick up a copy of the book and read through it while we’re in the series. You’ll learn how to think differently about your time, your money, your relationships, sex and the values that you have.

What you think and value has a significant influence on what you become. If you value the pursuit of money as the purpose of life, then it will suck your time away from the relationships that really matter: your family and church. If you value the pursuit of pleasure as the purpose of life, then you will seek to have as many sexual encounters (real or virtual) as possible, and it will ruin your capacity for deep intimacy in your relationships, especially your marriage. If you value being liked by the people around you, then you will spend money to make sure they like you, spend time pursuing their approval, and end up with shallow friends and short-term commitments.

Learn to think like weird people. Because how normal people think isn’t working.

2. Weird people don’t live like normal people live.
Second, weird people live entirely differently than normal people live. When you take scripture seriously, and pursue God, you will be different than this world. If you look like everyone else, then it’s hard not ask this question: do you really know the God of the Bible? Because knowing God, not just knowing about God, makes you kinda weird. Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers, said:

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.
1 Peter 2:11-12 NRSV

They malign you as evildoers because you’re not doing what everyone else is doing. You’re abstaining from all the stuff that draws us away from God. But when they look at the end result of our lives, they see that our weird lives actually were lives that brought peace, contentment, joy, mercy, hope, and love. By our weird lifestyles, they will be eventually convicted of their own choices and turn toward God and bring God glory.

Let me tell you that there are some weird people in our church. I think about the Richards, the Hoerners, and the Kirkconnells who have all been following the principles of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University: set a budget, don’t spend all you have, live below your means, pay off your debt, build an emergency fund, and then pay for things all in cash, even your house and your kids college. Now that’s weird, because we live in a buy-now, pain-later culture. They along with many others are living like no one else so that later they might live like no one else. Weird!

I think about Kathie Brooks who has what she calls a “prophet’s room” in her basement that she shares from time to time with people who are struggling and need a safe and affordable place to stay for a while. Weird!

Then I think about Kathie Brooks, Sue Knechtges, and Teresa Miller who all went backpacking on South Manitou Island to build deeper spiritual friendships and grow closer to God. When was the last time you heard about three middle-aged women heading out in the wilderness to grow spiritually? Weird!

I think about Rebecca Titus and Dawn Bacon who are raising their grandchildren. You know when the Tituses show up because there’s so many of them. I love that when it’s baseball season, instead of skipping church, they come dressed in their baseball uniforms to the early service, and when they can’t make Sunday morning, they come on Monday night. Weird!

Then there’s Barb Smith. Barb died a couple of years ago from Pancreatic Cancer. It was only months after her diagnosis that she died. It was so quick. One day Barb invited me over to her house to plan her funeral before she died. I was amazed at the peace she had. While she was a bit afraid of the process of dying, she wasn’t afraid of death. Who sits with their pastor and looks death right in the face by planning out their own funeral? Nobody. Weird!

Then this week there are 22 guys from our church running around in the woods acting like a CRASH, a herd of rhinos. They’re deepening their relationship with one another and God. There are several people who gave scholarships to make sure that every guy who wanted to go could go. And they’re doing all this male bonding at a Girl Scout camp. Weird! Weird! And triple weird!

Now when I say weird people don’t live like other people, I’m not telling you to copy their weird. God has a custom weird for you. You may find bits and pieces of weird in there worth copying, but seek God’s weird for you. Maybe God is calling you to work less so you can volunteer in the community more. Or maybe God’s weird for you is to leave a lucrative job to be a parent. Or perhaps to take a big job so you can give generously. Or maybe if you’re single and sexually active, to reclaim sexual purity until marriage. Or maybe God’s weird for you is to live simply so you can care more fully for creation. Or is God calling you to seek a single mom or fatherless child in the church or community to invest your time in?

Normal isn’t working. Normal is fear, shame, regret. Weird is peace, contentment, fulfillment, and purpose. You can’t be weird like this by just being a normal Christian. Normal Christianity is half-hearted, lukewarm, risks nothing, sacrifices nothing, meets my needs and makes me feel good, and worships one day a week. Weird Christianity is different. Weird Christians worship seven days, are fully submitted to Christ, are the last, serve, give their whole heart to God, and are all in. You get all in by stepping through the narrow gate of Jesus. You don’t get there by doing enough weird stuff to be accepted and loved by God, but you receive the love of God in Jesus Christ’s own weird. Jesus loved you so much that he left his comfortable place in heaven to enter into creation and live a perfect and sinless life and submitted himself to a painful death only to be raised by the power of God three days later. That’s weird! Jesus’ weird is what makes it possible for you to be weird too. Don’t wait another moment. Follow Jesus and be weird too.

*This sermon is based on the book and sermon series, Weird by Craig Groeschel.