Marcus Mecum - The Raw Material of Greatness
I wanna talk to you about the raw material of greatness. You know, if you have ever wondered, you know, "What does greatness look like? How do I find it in myself? How would I find it in somebody else? If I were to look and try to see, what is the raw materials of greatness? What would it look like"? Maybe even more importantly, what does God look for when he defines greatness? I wanna talk to you for just a few minutes on that thought. Philippians 2, let's look at verse 13, "For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose". Everybody say, "His good purpose". To fulfill his good purpose.
"Do everything without grumbling or arguing," you just give a quick, "Huh". That's the little ha-ha moment or what do they call that? Selah moment? Selah. "So that you may become blameless and pure, 'children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation". We're living in that time. I could say so much about that, but the bottom line is, we are living in a time where the generation that we live in is absolutely confused in a million different ways. But this is what the Bible says, "Then you will shine among them like the stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life".
Then you will shine like the stars among them. It's impossible to miss that God guides us throughout scripture, he's always guided his people through stars. I'm not speaking about astrology, but if you look back at Genesis 15, God would take Abraham and he would say, "I wanna speak to you about how I'm gonna use you". And so, he took him outside of his tent and he said, "I want you to look up at the stars and I want you to start to count them". So, Abraham looks up and he goes, "One, two, three, four, five, six, 20, 30, 100". I don't know how far he got, but at some point, he gave up. And he said, "God, it is impossible to count all the stars".
And God says, "Exactly. What I wanna do in your life is innumerable. It is immeasurable. You can't limit it. You can try to get out your calculator, you can try to get out your tabulator, you can try to in some way measure what it is that I wanna do in your life, but when I do something in someone's life, they should put all that side, because who I am and what I can do in someone's life is without measure. It is without limits". It is nothing that in any way you and I can calculate. And so, he said, "Your seed will be like the stars in the sky".
Abraham is the father of our faith, so we would be the answer. We would be the fulfillment of that dream and that vision. We are the seed of Abraham. We are the stars without number in the sky. In the same way that people can walk through the darkness of a night and look up and receive guidance from the stars, they can look at the beauty of the stars, they can grasp hope by just looking up at the stars. So, it is with us in the midst of a perverse, and warped, and crooked generation. In the midst of a dark world, God has a way of raising up people so they can look up and see someone. And somehow in the midst of their darkness, in the midst of their struggle, in the midst of their desperate places, they can look up and find hope, and find beauty, and find light in the midst of their dark places.
And so, God speaks through the stars. In Acts 2:19, we know the prophet Joel was referred to there by the apostle Simon-Peter and he talked about how in the end days or the last days, God will pour out his spirit on all flesh, how his sons and daughters will prophesy, how the old men will have vision and the young men will dream dreams. But it doesn't stop there, it says, "There will be wonders in the heavens above". Luke 21:25, Jesus himself said, "Signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars will be there in the last days". Psalms 147:4 teaches us that "Not only did God make the stars, but he numbered them, and he gave them each their name".
Trillions of stars, he gave them each a name. The entire Bible message when we get to the New Testament is centered around Jesus being born in Bethlehem and the idea that God would light up a certain star out of all the billions of stars that existed or trillions of stars, he caused one star to shine especially bright, so the magi could travel 600 miles just by looking to this star to be their guide. Jesus' birth is centered around that sign in heaven, a star.
Revelation 22:16 calls Jesus, "Our bright and our morning star". I'm trying to get you to see that God is a star maker. The opening verse said, "Hey, listen, in the midst of a crooked, and warped, and perverse generation, what I'm going to do, is I'm going to raise up people that will shine like the stars to their generation". And God is still the maker of stars. NASA says, "There are millions of stars born every day in the universe. An average of about one new star is born per year and one star dies each year in the milky way". NASA estimates there's about 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, therefore, there are about 100 billion stars being born and drying every year. It corresponds to about 275 million per day in the observable universe.
In a simple way, they say that all stars are a result of a balance of two forces. There is an inward force of gravity and then there's an outward force generated by the fusion reaction, and if these two forces remain stable, they remain equal, they remain balanced, a star is born. So, you have to have these two forces. There has to be a pull, there has to be this gravitational pull and then there has to be an outward push. There has to be a pull and then there has to be a push. There has to be a receiving and then there has to be a giving. There has to be a drawing in, a filling up, and then there has to be a pouring out. And if those two forces are balanced, and there's the raw materials available, a star is born.
Now, if these two forces are unbalanced is what's called a supernova and a star dies. The core of that star, the very center of that star collapses and causes the star to explode and die. And there are two reasons why the star gets unbalanced. The first one is when a star begins to steal matter from the other stars, and they gather more and more material, more and more, and the idea would be that the more material, the more stuff, the more it can gather, the more it can gain. In our minds, that would make the star greater. That would make the star shine brighter, because of all that it's amassed. But it says that that star because it takes, and take, and takes, receives, and receives, and receives, it becomes what's called a dwarf star.
And because the dwarf star has so much matter, it collapses, explodes, and dies. All it does is receives, and that actually, instead of making the star greater, makes the star smaller and more insignificant, and eventually, it's completely gone. Number two, a star runs out of fuel and collapses. In other words, this star just gives, and gives, and gives, and gives, and never receives. It explodes and dies. So, a star knows that there must be a balance of the pull and the push. There must be a receiving and there must be a giving. If the star does not equally pull and then push, equally receive and take in and then pour out, that star dies, or it runs out of fuel and it burns out. So it is with the stars, it is with us. There must be a balance of these two forces. A gravitational pull.
Remember the story of Martha. Remember how she begins to have an issue with her sister, Mary, because she's not doing the work that Martha's doing. And Martha's just pouring herself out, pouring herself out, giving, and giving, and giving. And then, all of a sudden, she starts to get a little bitter on the inside. "I don't understand why she's not working the way I'm working. Why she is not investing what I'm investing, why she's not giving what I'm investing". And Jesus had to correct her, because there has to be a gravitational pull. There has to be a desire to receive, to be filled up, to pull on God, to pull on his word, to pull on his presence, to pull on his grace, to pull on his power, to pull on his word.
That's why we're here today, we're pulling on the anointing. We're pulling on the gifts of God. We're saying, "God, we know that we're here today and that we're gonna go back out to a world that's filled with all kinds of difficulty, all kinds of struggle, all kinds of trouble, all kinds of problems. And while we're here, we need to pull on you, so we can be filled up, so we can go back out there and be poured out".
But remember, there must be an equal force to the receiving, to the pulling. And that is we have to have equal to that, an outward force is generated where we're pushing to reach, we're pushing to serve. We're pushing to say, "God, here we are. You've gifted us with all this time, and these gifts, and these resources. And you've given us breath and you've placed us on this planet for such a time as this, and our job is to push the gifts that you've given us into a broken world. Our job is to be pushing to reach, pushing to love, pushing to do everything that we can to serve and give ourselves away because of what you've given to us".
If we do not have a balance of the two, then our star potential dies. You see this in church life, you see this in home life where someone just takes, and takes, and takes, takes, and pulls, and pulls, and pulls. You see this on jobs, you see this in relationships, you see this in your body, you can see this in your mind. People are collapsing everywhere, and they're asking the question, "How did I get in this kind of a place"? Because you cannot just take, you cannot just pull on others and never add value, and never contribute, and never give back. Because even though you're thinking, the more you take, that means the greater you are or the grater life will be, the truth is, just like that star, it dwarfs you and it makes you smaller, and smaller, and smaller.
But you also cannot just give, give, give, give, give, give constantly and never refuel, because eventually, you'll burn out. But if we can balance the two out which is my goal, to talk to you about how we balance these two things out, then we could have stability and we can have longevity. Paul said, "We are like a shining star in the midst of a crooked generation". So, God is still raising up people in this day like he always has to shine. He's saying, "I need to give you the keys. I need to give you the ideas. I need to give you the truths on what it's going to look like as the world gets darker and darker, for my people to shine brighter and brighter".
And God does still make stars. Every single one of you in this room are filled with immeasurable potential. You are significant, not just to God but to his purposes in the earth. It is immeasurable what God could do. If we could take some time and pull back the veil that is over each and every single one of us, where people see limits, where people see what you maybe can or can't do, maybe even the way you see yourself is filled with limits. But if we could pull back the veil for just a minute and see what God sees, we would see all across this room, there are stars in the making. We would see star—making material all around us.
Right now, you are sitting next to a star waiting to be born, and God wants to take each of us, and he wants to raise us up to shine like the stars in the midst of this crooked generation. I want you to look at the person next to you and say, "You're sitting next to a star". I don't look like it yet, but God's trying to work it out. We're not talking about stars like those that are made by Hollywood, who might get their name on a sidewalk for everyone to walk over. Talking about how they're great, who they are is great. Not talking about your fame, we're talking about the greatness of his name and living a life to make his name famous. And any greatness we do receive, according to the Bible, any greatness we do receive, our job is to do, what? Our job is to realize God has blessed us to be a blessing.
And the Bible says, "If he does give you greatness, it is so through you the nations of the earth can be blessed". And so, three thoughts, three thoughts on raw materials of greatness. From Philippians 2, the first one is the raw material of purpose. Why are we here? What's the point? It said in that verse that, "God works in us to fulfill his good purpose". His good purpose. The word "Works" in Greek is energeó, which is where we get the word energy from, and it speaks of a divine power that produces noticeable change moment by moment. That there's a divine power that's at work within us that produces noticeable change moment by moment. It's not an event, it's not a one-time thing, it's not an overnight thing.
But as you begin to allow God to work his purposes in your life, you will look back overtime at who you used to be and you'll know that that was you, but you'll hardly recognize the way you thought, the way you went at relationships, the way you went at yourself, the way you went at trials and struggles, you'll look back and you'll say, "I know that that was me". But you'll see noticeable change that happens moment by moment. You and I are here because God is doing something in us to fulfill his good purpose. And that is where your purpose begins, is when your why becomes bigger than you. It is his good purpose.
When you find that why, you find your way. When you find your way, you find your will, you find your determination. You find what Paul called the mind of the spirit in Romans 8:27. It's the divine power that lives on the inside of us that has the determination of its own. It has a mind of its own. You can't ignore it, you can't push it aside. But when the Spirit of God is moving on the inside of you, it has a mind, it has thoughts, it makes decisions, it has ideas. It orders your steps, and it orders your stops. It says, "Nah, now is not the right time to make that call. Now is the right time". It says things like, "No, that person, nothing wrong with them. Not evil, not demonic, but that's not a destiny relationship. Don't lean that way. This one is, pursue that. Do what you have to do".
And the mind of the spirit is working within us to fulfill his good purpose. Acts 20:22 says, "We are compelled by the Holy Spirit", or "Paul was compelled by the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem". In other words, the Holy Spirit told Paul, "I want you to go to Jerusalem. There's difficulty that awaits there, there's going to be chains and imprisonment. It could even get worse, there's going to be beatings there". And even though Paul knew all of this awaited him, he was compelled. Not blindly. He wasn't naive to what was coming. Clearly, with great detail, God said, "Hey, I need you to go. It's not gonna be all great and wonderful".
And Paul, in spite of all the trouble that awaited him, was compelled by the divine energeó. He was compelled by the mind of the spirit. There was a divine determination that pushed him no matter what he was facing. And you and I are the same way. We will never fulfill our true potential, unless we have a divine determination, that energeó on the inside of us that's compelling us to say, "I cannot settle. I cannot stop. I gotta keep reaching. I gotta keep pursuing". I've gotta keep saying, "God, I know that you want to raise me up to shine like the stars. Not my own sake, but for your great name sake".