778 points!  At Calvary we have this thing we call God-stories.  Almost every staff meeting I’ve ever led, or Leadership Team meeting I’ve ever participated in, I will ask the question, “Who has a God-story?”  A God-story is simply a story of God@work.  It might be something you have seen God do for you, or through you…or it might be something you have see God do for or through someone else.  It might be something that God is teaching you, a scripture, idea or conviction that God spoke into your heart.  Because the reality is that when God speaks, He is at work — even today.

I think for some people (maybe even for me) some times, it is viewed as a superficial, or perhaps even tedious, exercise — like I’m asking people to just come up with something, when they haven’t seen God doing any big deal, or haven’t heard him speak.  But what I’m really trying to do is train our eyes and our ears to look for the evidence of God’s presence rather than the evidence of God’s absence.

I believe that God is at work around us all the time but the world has trained us to see ___________ (fill in the blank) our problems, our circumstances, our economic downturns, our diseases, our unmet expectations, as the evidence of God’s absence.  In Matthew 6:22-23, Jesus said, “Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!”

I think he meant that there is a way to see the world — and God’s involvement in the world — in such a way that will fill your life with light, and there is a way to see the world — and God’s involvement in the world — in such a way that it will fill your life with darkness.  There is a way to see a 778 point drop in the market which will fill our lives with light, and a way which will fill our lives with darkness.  For example the Dow lost 1.2 trillion dollars in market value today, but did you know that God did not lose a dime?  In fact with full confidence I can say that today’s events are God-stories in the making.

I want to encourage you to look around and ask questions like, Where is God at work?  What is God doing?  What blessing does He want to give to me and give through me?  God what story are you writing in my heart?  What do you want me to do?