Official websites
Passion City Church (Atlanta, Georgia – which Giglio founded and pastors)
Lee University (Cleveland, Tennessee)
Click here to listen to or download Giglio’s message (mp3).
Introduction
When it comes to Christianity, Giglio hates salesmen. He hates people who want audiences to buy something off a table. Instead, they should keep it about Jesus. This is what Passion 2012 (January 2-5, Georgia Dome, Atlanta) is about. If the audience wants to know who’s speaking or what bands are playing, they should go somewhere else. Before his message Giglio prayed John 3:31, that we decrease and Christ increase. He clearly doesn’t worship man!
Message: Finding your purpose
Giglio considers Christian apologist Dr. Ravi Zacharias a church resource. He doesn’t know or do apologetics. He doesn’t care either because he says we can’t answer every argument and we shouldn’t have to. Giglio’s apologetic: “I’m in love with Jesus and you can’t stop me or argue me down.”
Giglio’s dad is Catholic, his mom Southern Baptist. He doesn’t have an argument with the church of old. His life isn’t “the church has let us down.” Giglio says the church is full of broken people so someone will let us down. We can’t pick a fight with the church or the past. Instead we must move forward with Jesus and spend our passion on him. Jesus is the sure thing.
Giglio’s life verse is Colossians 3:17: “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Through it, he found personal freedom from the age-old question “What am I going to do?” The church today puts high value on church planters to unreached people groups. Others may like the fine arts. Where do they fit in God’s kingdom? Some think nowhere. It’s as though people believe there will be lines in heaven based on their vocations. Church planters will be at the front, Christian musicians next … and those who like Nascar racing at the back.
We have to blow this up! In Colossians 3:17, God says do whatever you love and be the best at it. Steve Jobs was wired in a unique way to do his job, even if he missed heaven in the process. The point is who’s in your heart as you’re doing your job, not the job you do. It’s about motives.
Maybe you want to design women’s shoes. How do you make it “Christian”? Don’t over-spiritualize everything! Don’t call the company “His soles.” Don’t put a fish on the bottom of your shoes. Don’t put a fish on your car or on anything else you do. Put the awesome power of Jesus Christ under the hood instead! Does Ravi Zacharias have a fish on his car? No. He’s great at what he does and that’s enough. The world needs great, not a fish. Daniel and the three Hebrew boys were exceptional men. They had tact and wisdom, what they needed in Babylon.
We’re living in modern-day Babylon (the world). We need tact and wisdom too. We must lead with excellence, not a testimony. We can’t be half-hearted. “Can a Christian do it well?” That’s the world wants to know. Your fish: doing your job well. So how will the world know about Jesus? Run your business well. Invest your earnings (tithes and offerings) in the kingdom of God. Treat your employees differently. Partner with local churches. Replicate this model in everything you do.
Step it up. Dream dreams, big ones. Aim for A, not C, if you’re capable of A-level work. C doesn’t make God look good. However, if you’re only capable of C, then produce C-level work for the glory of God. In any event, don’t turn in shoddy work to a professor. Shoddy and shabby aren’t godly. Let God shape you in each season of your life. If you sacrifice, yield, and humble yourself in certain areas now, you’ll reap a reward in other areas later. Things chip at us. But God will help us every step of the way. He wants exceptional and extraordinary; only he can make us that.
Giglio capped off his message with an extraordinary anecdote. He loves maps and studied geography at Georgia State. In one class project he had to study Mount Rainier in Washington. So he learned everything he could about the mountain. He even told his teacher everything he knew on the back of an exam, things he wasn’t tested on. Giglio felt like an expert on Mount Rainier. Yet he had never been there.
A year or two later, Giglio and a friend were backpacking in Washington. They ferried east to Seattle, then began the trek to Mount Rainier. The following day, they stood in a meadow near Paradise Point. The weather was perfect. Giglio was so excited the entire trip about the prospect of telling his friend everything he knew about the mountain. But when they stood in the meadow, he just started crying because of its beauty. That night the two friends camped near Mount Rainier. God told him, “That was awesome, wasn’t it?” Giglio said he learned then the difference between knowing about something and knowing it, between knowing about Jesus and knowing him. A sudden but real change occurred in his relationship with God.
Final thought: the only way to do your divine task in Jesus’s name is to fall in love with him. That’s the greatest apologetic there is.
Response 1: Liberation!
I first heard of Louie Giglio when I learned about the amazing molecule laminin, which I mentioned in a 2009 blog post “What Holds You Together?” So when I learned Giglio would be speaking in chapel, I was not going to pass it up! I even got out of bed on a cold rainy morning, an hour before the service, and drove across town just to hear him. Giglio said don’t be half-hearted. Well, I wasn’t! Giglio is a great speaker. He connects with audiences so well. I love how real and down-to-earth he is (unlike Ravi Zacharias).
Like Giglio said, the church has divided vocations into “sacred” and “secular.” Worship leader, Christian singer / songwriter, pastor, missionary, evangelist, doctor / nurse, teacher: to the church, these vocations are “sacred.” All others are “secular.” This division should not exist! Jesus was a carpenter, Paul a tentmaker. William Carey was a cobbler, William Wilberforce a Member of Parliament (MP). I know a preacher (Mitchell Tolle) and a musician (John Feezell) today whose day jobs are painting and working at IBM. The church doesn’t give them a salary. Instead, they’re 21st-century carpenters and tentmakers – and I think the church is much better off this way.
One thing Giglio didn’t say: some things you just can’t do for the glory of God. But if you’re truly born again, you won’t want to do them. I’m mostly thinking of the fashion world. They need Jesus just like everybody else. Of course, someone has to make clothes and shoes people will wear. Yet being a tailor or cobbler isn’t the same as walking down a runway and looking stupid. The only “runway” Jesus walked was the Via Dolorosa – the “way of suffering.” I wrote a blog post on fashion earlier this year. Click here to read it.
Still, I found Giglio’s message liberating. And it came at just the right time. I’ve taught English literature and composition at the university level for four years. Yet I once wondered if it were “muck-raking,” a term from part 2 of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. I also ridiculed the research aspect of academia, the “publish or perish” command to university professors. I felt like teaching (with research) was not as high a calling as the life of a missionary, pastor, or musician. As a result of this mental struggle, I left teaching to become an online journalist and social networker. Compared to teaching English, it “seems” like muck-raking. Yet I would love a journalism or public relations job. I would also like to teach journalism and media studies.
Thanks to Giglio, I now think publications and conferences have their place in university life. They’re just not my place. Yet neither is it my place to ridicule these things for those who enjoy them. However, I still think universities should not insist that teachers “publish or perish.” Some are called to teach, others to write and present their research. Not everyone excels at both. Likewise, Christian apologetics is not Giglio’s calling as a pastor. But it is that of Ravi Zacharias. Apologetics is just one part of the church body. Let those who enjoy and excel at this do it. Yet not everyone can. Then where would the other body parts be?
What excited me most was Giglio’s reference to Daniel and the three Hebrew boys – and that we’re living in a modern-day Babylon. God wants to place his people in every workplace, Christian and not, using every field of knowledge. [I said in my blog post “Must a Christian work only for a Christian?” that it’s better if one doesn’t.] This includes the social sciences (i.e. psychology, sociology), hard sciences (i.e. astronomy, physics), and humanities (i.e. history, literature, art, film) – as well as music and religion! We must claim every realm of knowledge for Jesus Christ. This is what the late Bill Bright’s “seven mountains of culture” refers to. [I think mine is arts & entertainment.] God wants us to be salt and light where we are.
In 2008, I heard Liberty Seminary president Elmer Towns say, “It takes two wings to fly.” Three years later, in 2011, I heard pastor Stovall Weems say, “The supernatural is in the sweat.” What does this mean? We must do our part, alongside God’s. Through the sweat of our brow, our total reliance on the Holy Spirit, and God’s intervention, we’ll rise to the top. And when the world needs people to do certain jobs, they’ll call upon us because we’ll be the best at them.
This takes A-level preparation and work, not C-level! We can’t be lazy! We need a strong work ethic. We have to be the best at what we do. Don’t we want to make Jesus Christ, the Almighty God, look good? He didn’t use C-level material to create the universe. While he walked the earth, Jesus didn’t give healing and redemption a C-level effort either. Oh no! Jesus used the best materials and exerted the greatest effort. Shouldn’t we, through his spiritual power, do the same?
Hollywood has already taken notice of the Christian film company Sherwood Pictures, creator of Facing the Giants (2006) and Fireproof (2008). Their first film Flywheel (2003) appeared in a single theater, prompting a news release and DVD. With each project, Sherwood has improved in production and acting. Now, according to BOM, their latest film Courageous (2011) has already made $21.2 million with just a $2 million budget. It placed 4th in its first week with $9.1 million, premiering in less than 1,200 theaters. The average is $7,850 per screen. Many big-budget Hollywood films aren’t making this kind of money! The Hollywood Reporter thinks, “Maybe it’s all that praying.” Yes, Sherwood prays before producing and premiering each film.
Thanks to Sherwood Pictures, The Passion of the Christ (2004), the Narnia franchise (2005, 2008, 2010), The Blind Side (2009), Soul Surfer (2010), and the new films The Way (2011) and Machine-Gun Preacher (2011), according to The Christian Post “movie industry insiders” are asking themselves, “Are Christian Films Saving Hollywood?” And the Los Angeles Times posits that “Hollywood shines a light on the spiritual.
As NarniaWeb reported last week, C. S. Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham (executive producer of the Narnia franchise) says that Walden Media has lost the Narnia contract. Narnia 4 won’t be made for another three to five years. Hopefully this will be The Silver Chair, not The Magician’s Nephew. Still, the Narnia franchise is now safely in God’s hands, where it belongs.
I pray Sherwood Pictures produces The Silver Chair. Maybe they only make model airplanes, unlike Walden Media’s jumbo jets. Maybe they only create films with explicit Christianity, unlike the implicit kind in Lewis’s Narnia. Yet God can work a miracle and transform a model airplane into a 747! He can also produce a Narnia film with an explicitly Christian message that doesn’t “hit you over the head.” We must have faith because, with God, nothing is impossible.
Response 2: Reservations. . .
I still don’t know what I want to do: online journalism, public relations/marketing, teaching, or something else. I don’t know what God wants me to do either. Yet he’s the one whose opinion matters, not mine. And God’s input is much more than just opinion. He must have total say about what I do.
Giglio never talked about this. All he said, in so many words, was “Don’t worry or fret or pray about finding your life’s purpose. The time is wasted. Just do what really interests you, what you believe God has put in your heart to do.” Giglio’s message almost seemed to be, “Follow your heart.” We can’t do this! It’s bad advice! Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (NKJV) We don’t know our deceitful hearts. How can we trust them to lead us into our life’s work? God, who alone knows our hearts because he formed them, also knows what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives – which are His since He’s redeemed them.
Maybe we want to do one thing but God has something else planned for us. Isaiah 55:8-9 says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (KJV). Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (NKJV). The word “thoughts” in these verses means “thought, device, plan, purpose, invention.” According to a Bible lexicon, it also means “that which anyone meditates, purposes, or plots, i.e. a counsel, a project.” God’s thoughts are higher than ours. He is the one who plans, not us. He planned world history. Cannot this God also plan and direct our individual lives? We won’t know unless we pray. Praying to God about life purpose and direction is not a waste of time.
The Christian life is all about total dependence on God. We must submit our hearts, desires, and life plans to him just like we submit everything else. Otherwise, if we try to go our own way, we’re acting independently of God’s will. This is sin and He won’t approve of it. Praying to God about our life’s work also just makes good business sense! See the verses below (KJV).
Proverbs 15:22: “Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established.”
Proverbs 16:3: “Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established.”
Proverbs 19:21: “There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless the counsel of the LORD, that shall stand.”
Proverbs 20:18: “Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war.”
Final thoughts
Don’t let the unnatural sacred/secular vocational division deter you from finding out what you really want to do as a life calling. At the same time, spend time in prayer. Ask God your Creator and Redeemer what he wants you to do. Receive spiritual power for your divine task. Then go out and do it! Claim your mountain and change your world!
