A Quest For More: Living for something bigger than you - Paul Tripp (2015)

A Quest for More: Living for something bigger than you – Paul Tripp

Chapter 1: A Quest for More

Transcendence: The state of being beyond and outside the ordinary range of human experience.

·        The Bottom line: You were created to be part of something big

o   “The Desire for transcendence is in all of us because God placed it there. He constructed us to live for more than ourselves (p.14)”

o   There was a guy named Jim who had achieved the American dream. He was ambitious and successful

§  “Jim did have it all, yet in getting it all he had denied his own humanity. In his quest for everything, Jim had missed the one thing that separated him from everything else that God made. Jim had constructed his own kingdom, indulged his every dream, and met his every need… But he had discovered that it was an empty kingdom … It was not that Jim had attempted too much. The tragedy was that he had settled for way too little, and that is exactly what he got. (p.15)

o   “The mistake that they have made is that they have shrunk their Christianity to the size of their own lives. They have taken God’s grace and wisdom as an invitation to a better marriage, a better relationship with their children, a better extended family life, better success at work etc. … the point of this little book: God invites you to so much more” (p.16)

o   Sin kills the desire to transcend. It quenches the desire to live for something great. And instead we aim too low. A Kingdom for ourselves. (The greatest enemy of great is good). God has hardwired us to live for His glory, but we have denied our humanity. “We again and again deny our humanity as we settle for something less than the transcendent glories for which we were created.” (p.25)

QUESTION: What is the big thing that you are living for right now?

Chapter 2: More or Less

Pretense: A false appearance or action intended to deceive

·        The Bottom line: Sin causes us to talk about more, but to settle for less

o   “A young person will forget the transcendent glory of an identity that is rooted in the presence, power, and grace of the redeemer. Instead she will live for the pseudo-glory of the approval of peers. She’ll pick up on and parrot her friends’ vocabulary, she’ll take on their sense of style … all because she convinced herself that she needs their approval. There will be moments when she will feel transcendent. She will feel as if her life has real meaning and purpose because she is connected to something bigger than herself. The sad fact is that she has opted for less. The community of her peers has actually become a replacement community for the transcendent glory of loving, worshipful, daily community with the Lord.” (p.27)

Can anybody relate? Genesis 1 is a welcome to transcendence, then Genesis 3 is about tragedy of the shrinking of transcendence. Adam and Eve traded in the participation in the transcendent glory for much less, though it looked like much more.

o   Sometimes, even though grace has expanded our borders until they touch glory, we still reduce the borders of our living to the boundaries of our lives. (p.31)

QUESTION: What is the “Less” that tends to capture your attention?

Chapter 3: A Total Disaster

Autonomy: “The quality or state of being independent, free, and self-directed”

The Serpent offered Adam and Even independent glory. The lie that the enemy tells us is that the key to transcendence is autonomy.

**Important. In the Christian context, for all of us, the danger of this is that our tendency to choose our own autonomy will seep into our Christian lives.

·        “Most of us have learned how to celebrate our inclusion in God’s great and glorious work, while functionally caring for little that does not directly address us. In doing this we have Christianized our autonomy. Essentially, we are asking God to give his endorsement to our attempt to shrink the transcendent glories of his kingdom to the size of our circle of personal concern. And even though we are trying to live inside of God’s boundaries, we have still manufactured a life where self is at the center. It is quite possible for our Christianity to be quite narrow and selfish and to not be aware of the shrinkage. “(p.40)

STOP and reflect. Do we shrink the size of God’s kingdom to our own little kingdoms and our own little Christian ways of life?

·        “We get so excited about the personal benefits of redemption that we lose sight of redemption’s greater goal. Yes, the personal benefits of redemption are amazing, worthy of eternal celebration. But redemption’s agenda is not to make our kingdom successful, but to welcome us to a much bigger, much better kingdom… Jim Collins makes this stunning observation in his best-selling book on corporate management, Good to Great… Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. WE don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain greater lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.” (p.42)

Question: Have you treated the size of God’s grace as if it were no bigger than the size of your personal concerns?

What does all this mean?

Ch1. “It is about living for a greater kingdom than the kingdom of my life, my family, and my job. And where do I live for this greater kingdom? In my life, in my family, and in my job! This book was not written to call you to stop doing everything you have been doing or to start doing a bunch of new things. Rather, it is a call to do what God has called you to do with a vision that is as broad and deep as the glory of God.

Stay where you are. Do your thing within the parameters of God given responsibilities

Ch2 “Things as mundane as … rise to a spiritually dangerous level of importance in the heat of the moment. These are the moments we live in every day. The normal day is a 24- hour collection of little moments. Day after day, week after week, and year after year, these little moments set the character of a person’s life.”

We participate in the glory of God in small little moments

Ch3 “Your sadness with sin should be bigger than the fact that it complicates your life. Your sadness should extend as far as sin reaches. Your celebration of God’s restoring grace should be bigger than the fact that it brings blessing to your private world. No, your celebration should reach as far as restoration is needed. God’s grace really does welcome you to think big and live large. God invites you to be an active and daily part of the “more” of redemption. His restoring grace gives you reason to extend the boundaries of your concern way beyond the borders of your own life. He calls you out of your little kingdom to give your talents, gifts, resources, and time to the glorious concerns of his big sky kingdom.”

In conclusion: “It’s not about you” - Pastor Paul