Paradox of Genius

7 The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. – 1 Peter 4:7-11 There is a paradox that comes with being genius. That paradox begins with the notion that we should never use our God given genius for our sole benefit; yet we should leverage that for the benefit of the entire world at large—as an act of service. It’s an idealistic notion that begins with Peter’s genius that he writes down some twenty or thirty years after the fact. Genius wasn’t given to us so that we solely benefit. It was given to us so that we can nurture it to do something in the name of God. Therefore we must be careful of how we use our genius. Let’s look at verse 11 again: If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. Our genius is to be as if God Himself were to do. Let me ask however, is this how we’re using our genius? I mean the spiritual genius that is within us and gifted to us by faith in Jesus Christ. If the answer is no, why aren’t we? The paradox continued last week to how genius is actually the strength that comes from the transformation of weakness. In fact the case in point comes from Peter’s own life where his weakness in thoughts is transformed into a life seeking boldness in faith. It’s interesting to see that God uses our weaknesses—the people, things, characteristics that annoy us and constantly keep us held back to become the genius strengths that produce within us the praise that goes to God. See, I want you to be aware of one thing, your past weaknesses doesn’t mean that genius isn’t within you yet. It doesn’t mean that we have to wait a while to get there either. Not at all. Let’s go to Philippians 3 and jump right into how to sustain the paradox of genius. I call it a paradox of genius because it’s actually really funny when we think about ourselves as having genius. It’s a paradox because our genius goes unsaid and we’re so inattentive to it. 12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 3:12-14 Paradox of Sustaining Genius #1: Nothing that you have is something God needs, but everything you have is all you’ll ever need. Jesus didn’t need you and He won’t ever need you. Rather, He wants you so as Paul writes, we live life so that we can take hold of what Jesus already gives to us. We had nothing on our own so Jesus had to give it to us. At the same time, this is the paradox, we’re not getting better. Whatever we have, mistakes and all, are behind us and we go forward know that all that we ever needed was given to us in faith. We make the mistake a lot of times thinking that we deserve some type of credit or some type of acknowledgement of what God had to give to us so that we can redeemably function in the least. I’m just saying. You know those people who want to make a big deal about the smallest things they’re doing. Let me give you an example. It’s like when little kids learn how to go to the bathroom for the first time. They go to the bathroom and then they want to show you that they went to the bathroom and they still have their pants down, didn’t even wipe afterward or wash their hands and they grab your hand that you have a piece of fruit in and drag you to the bathroom to show you. It’s like, okay kid, I’ve done this at least once a day for at least 7300 days before you were even an afterthought on the night you were conceived—OMG did you wash your hands? But the kid wants to be reaffirmed like he/she did or has something you need in going to the toilet by himself or herself. Likewise, we do that to God. Despite what I think, I am not God’s greatest gift to woman kind. At the same time, it’s like we’re waiting for something that comes along in the future that blows my mind. Forget about the scars you have; the things that tripped you up previously and get with the program—you have to move on and go forward. It’s like we’re want history to repeat itself. It’s like we do nothing about anything for any reason. It’s horrible. We have to press toward the prize—we’re not going to change, nor will our circumstances change. We are who we are and where we are and when we are. Lets go to our 1st Corinthians 12, and we’re going to stay in this chapter the remainder of the day so just stay there. But we’re going to read this a little out of order. Verse 27. 27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28 And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31 Now eagerly desire the greater gifts. – 1 Corinthians 12:27-31 I just wanted to reiterate here that your genius is not my genius. We all grew up differently and our characters are different and we live differently. You are a genius in your own regard and don’t let anybody take that away from you. The body of Christ is best when we’re balanced, but the essence of genius is obsession. Having said that, lately I’ve been doing my resume over and over again—I haven’t looked that thing in years and the reason I started looking at it was that the ordination committee needs to look at it and I don’t want there to be any questions and if there are questions, I want there to be only a few because it’s already impossible to explain what I do for a living. But in looking at my resume, I noticed, because I started categorizing my decade long list of experiences, that it is imbalanced. My genius is totally imbalanced. I totally have an obsession for the foreigner, orphan and the widow. I do things that benefit those types of people. I do things in my line of work that give me an edge over anybody else. There are things that I can do that you can’t even imagine doing. That’s just very clear. At the same time there are certain things that I just can’t do and I can’t do it because I have no genius in those areas, but you can—that’s the paradox of being a genius through our obsessions. Let’s read verse 4. 4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. 7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. Let’s go to verse 21 now. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty,24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. I want there to be a clear message here when we read this because some of you would say that it’s okay to live an unbalanced life for the sake of your obsessive genius. See, Paul is saying that our lives should be balanced – that’s the idea of many body parts; at the same time the giftings we have are imbalanced. There will be no single person who can seemingly do it all. You can only do well your gifts, nobody is good at everything. As a result, don’t feel bad nor should you be apologetic that you can’t do something that you can’t do. The paradox of genius is that genius is imbalanced—yes, there is something terribly wrong with you and your obsession and that’s genius. It’s a paradox. That’s why everybody is normal until you get to know them and they all crazy. Like nobody wants me to operate on them in surgery; but at the same time, I don’t want my doctor friends to be preaching on Sundays to me. You know what I’m saying? This is why we live in community. This is why we live in families. This is why opposites attract and when the same people come together, it usually ends up exploding in the a million little pieces. Nobody is more or less special because of their giftings; although there is a premium in some jobs that others just don’t have, that’s not the important thing. The important thing is finding your genius, that place where you’re so obsessive that it makes you a genius and living in that imbalance of it. You can rely on other people for everything else. I want to go to verse 15 now. 15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? Here’s my last point about the paradox of genius—We must strive to never live outside our sweetspot but always want to stay away from our comfort zone. You need to refer to my picture. I don’t know how many of you have ever seen this before. This is from one of the best sermons I’ve ever preached (you can ask the college sophomores because they have heard this sermon in multiple iterations). So there are three levels of life: the comfort zone, the sweetspot and then the place of false expectations. While in real life these concentric circles hardly have clearly drawn lines, in my example there is a clear distinction and you need to pray hard soberly if you want these distinctions in your life; but here’s what I want to say about this paradox before we end the series and pray. 1. Our comfort zone is very simple—where we are comfortable. This is what happens when you get lazy, and easily satisfied with how things are in life. You just accept things as they are and use your genius to keep yourself from neither progressing nor regressing. The Bible says that the comfort zone is slavery—we see this with the Hebrews leaving Egypt and they say at the first sign of trouble, “at least in Egpyt we wouldn’t starve to death.” They say this even while there is manna falling from the sky and quail meat to eat. Comfort is bad, unless it comes with cornbread and some BBQ sauced ribs. Haha, joke people. 2. This next circle, where we should be living is our “sweetspot” it is that place that Christ has given to us in verse 18– God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. This is where Paul says in Philippians that we’re moving toward the prize Jesus Christ redeemed for us. This is where we are stretched in our giftings, our genius is being used for God’s purpose—where God’s work is maximized and glory is showered upon Him because everybody know our genius was not that good, but God makes it great! If we look in the book of Joshua, when he is near the end of his life, we see that it concludes by saying Joshua son of Nun was buried in the place God gave to Him. Joshua didn’t have an easy life, but he used his genius to get where God always wanted him to be. 3. This last circle is where we want to be often. I don’t mean that we should reach to be there, but this is where we selfishly want to be because we think that’ll make us happy. Case in point, this is when we start telling ourselves that we want to do such and such a job because it’ll earn $10K more and we’re okay to sacrifice our weekend or our evenings, but we hate it and thought the extra $10K in gross gains would mean happiness, but it really just means that that you’re hating yourself for 62% of that because the tax rate for a single person is incredibly high. It’s a false expectation. When Sarah gave Abraham Haggar to bear a child because God promised children, but she wasn’t getting any, she was under the false expectation that this was how God was going to do it, but it backfired on her and they had to kick Haggar and Ishmael out because of her jealousy, it was false expectations. We are all geniuses. We are all given to us a gift (a genius) by the work of the Holy Spirit. Paul writes in verse 7 that we read earlier: Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. He continues in verse 11, saying: All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines. What is your genius? Have you discovered it? How are you using it? It’s a paradox, isn’t it? Let’s pray.