Last week I sat down to watch “Galaxy Buck: Mission to Sector 9″ with my kids, and I was kinda blown away. Here, condensed into a 40 minute children’s puppet movie (with quite a bit of humor), was a potent message. Not just a good message. I mean – take all the current spiritual living, devotional, God/Christ-centered literature that has come out in recent years – this movie will summarize a large percentage of it.
(spoiler alert)
Buck works in a call center for a large ministry, and is discontent because the poster on his wall constantly reminds him “God wants you to do BIG things!” He feels like he’s not accomplishing what God wants, and gets excited when there seems to be a chance. Things go awry, and he finds himself bummed again. Then, in the subterranean levels of an alien planet, he meets someone who rips his goal apart. Literally. He takes Bucks’ poster, and rips it so that the words left read, “God wants you.” I asked my 10-year-old daughter the next day what the message of the movie was about, and she answered clearly the same thing: “God doesn’t want you to do big things, as much as God wants YOU. You’re not a shark, you’re a jellyfish caught in the flow of God’s Love.”
The obvious push-back to that is: “That sounds like an excuse for laziness, and not trying anything.” Certainly it could be manipulated into that. But when we allow ourselves to exist fully in the flow of God’s Love – we have to trust that WILL call us to be actively offering ourselves fully toward the mission of lives, community and creation transformed. But our activity doesn’t begin with us setting a goal of “accomplishing great things for Jesus”. It begins with us relinquishing control of everything in our being, into the great Love of God. That may mean we accomplish great things by the measures of this world, or that mean we lose everything and all noteriety for His sake.
The first step? Allowing the truth of that ripped poster to sink in. “God wants YOU.” Not because of your gifts or talents. Not because of your heritage. Not because you’re specifically poised to accomplish what no one else could ever do. Not because of your purity. But because He Loves you. Fully and completely, and without reserve. Just as much when you were making horrible decisions as He does today. Most of us have been loved wrong by a human in our lives, and it messes up the kind of love we even see as possible. So let the love of God sink in a bit, and then release yourself to it. There is no greater place to exist, or calling to walk forward with…
For more on covenanting with God to do/be whatever He wants, check out this modern version of the “John Wesley Covenant Service” I’ve written for use in a church setting.
For a few words on God simply desiring/loving you as His child, here’s a Spoken Word I recently recorded.
words from wick 