Organisms Adapt, Machines Can't

1/1/2007

It’s orderly, but it’s also living and active and moving and breathing. And it can adapt. If you live near the equator and move to Antarctica or the North Pole, you will adapt. That might not be where you want to be, but you would adapt. If God put you there, since you are an organism, you would learn to adapt in that circumstance. You would learn to lead a life that’s Godly and sacrificial and loving in a whole world that you don’t understand at all.

It’s because you’re an organism, so God will allow you to adapt from the inside. Your normal body temperature will change. All the things you used to do and know will change as you begin to adapt to your circumstances. You’ll learn how to eat seal instead of whatever you used to eat. You will adapt to your circumstances because you’re an organism. But a machine would never be able to do that. A machine that’s built for the equator cannot function on the North or South Pole. It’s not made for that environment and it can’t adapt or change.

We are the most beautiful of all organizations because we’re an organism and we are alive! If we will trust that God lives that way, then we don’t ever need to appoint another leader for anything. We don’t need to have any plan or program or system to protect us from failure ever again. All we need to do is make sure we are full of the Holy Spirit and full of wisdom and we help everybody around us do the same. Then God will do a beautiful work that exceeds our wildest imagination. After twenty years I can say that these things are not only Biblical, they’re also true.

It’s our fear that gets us caught. We’re afraid there will be heresy, or we’re afraid that we’ll stumble and we won’t have a good meeting. Who cares if we have a good meeting or not? It doesn’t matter! We don’t even have to care whether a meeting is good or not. We came here this morning and we didn’t know whether we were going to have a “good” meeting or “bad” meeting or any meeting at all. Who cares? What’s important is that you’re here, we’re here, and we love each other.

Amen!

Whatever happens out from that is just fine. If we all need to go home and take a nap right after lunch because there’s nothing else to talk about, what’s wrong with that? You do it in your family, right? You don’t have to have a “good meeting” every time you see your family.

(Chuckling)

Sometimes you just kick back and relax with your children and bounce them on your knee. Do you have to say something important to your child every single time you see them? Do they have to be motivated, moved, and thrilled to have been with you every time you see your child? No! That’s too hard of a way to live. That’s hard work, yet that’s what a lot of us have done every Sunday morning for the first thirty years of our lives, right? That’s hard!

If you’re only a spectator though, it’s not hard. In that case, you sit back and let everyone else entertain you. They do all the hard stuff, and you don’t grow very much.

And if you’re on the other side of the picture as one of the bosses or pastors, then it’s hard work to make sure everybody is happy. You have to make sure they’re entertained and educated and the music sounds just right. You have to make sure the teaching is good, and that you don’t stumble during your sermon and say something you wish you hadn’t said. That is so hard! It’s hard work doing that machine thing. It’s hard work being a factory that has to crank out the product of more Bible studies, more prayer, better sermons, and better music. We are so tempted to compromise in order to get it to “feel right” that we end up with nothing to show for it after twenty years.

•  Organisms Adapt, Machines Can't