Genius: God In Me

So this is not a self-esteem series. This is not a feel good series. I’m not trying to make you feel good about whatever potential you don’t think you have. By no means. I know when I look at myself, and this is me, I don’t know how you play out in any of this, I see clearly that I’m not a genius. There is no genius within me. I’m a slow reader with an average IQ and lacking tremendously in EQ. Not to mention, I’m not the most fashionable, nor am I too intuitive. I am average by all means. But, I’m reading the Bible the other day and I realize that the assumption I make about myself while examining myself is completely incorrect. I am not just average. What I thought the teachers in school were feeding me to make me feel better about not being first place, was not a lie. What I mean is that the Bible makes it really clear that all of us are geniuses. We are what you would called prodigies. I know you look at my barely 3.0 GPA in college and in my master programs and you say, “wow? Prodigy doesn’t mean what it used to.” So when we talk about “genius” over the next four weeks, what are we talking about. Well, let me get you a good definition of the word, “genius” to help guide us through the month of February as we talk about Biblical genius. According to Wikipedia, which has no officially become my reliably not so reliable source for all information, “Genius” is an adjective that describes somebody who has exceptional intellectual and or creative abilities. And this trait is usually marked by unprecedented insight and achievement. For example, Albert Einstein was a genius or Stephen Hawking is a genius. Leonardo Davinci, would be considered a genius and so on and so forth. Now let me throw into the mix another definition of the word, “genius” – a word used in ancient Rome, which was “genius” but used in the sense of a “guiding spirit” – that is to say that a person that achieves being, creation and production, as our definition purports, also indicates the presence of a particularly powerful “genius.” This brings us to Colossians 1:27. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. – Colossians 1:27 Let me begin by saying that the “genius” that is in me, that is in you, that is in all of us, is that of Christ. Look at what the Apostle Paul writes in regards to this, “the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” I want you to underline or highlight in your Bibles that phrase – “Christ in you.” Christ is that genius in you that allows you or me to produce anything at all. In contextualizing this passage, Paul is talking about the people who were saved by faith through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. As a result of this, these people who are chosen—the church—there is a stewardship from God that was given to us, which is to work the genius within us for God’s glory. So what Paul is essentially saying if that was too wordy or too confusing, is this: let’s take the idea of re-gifting for a moment. We all re-gift don’t we? Yeah, we all take things that were given to us and pass them off as our gifts to other people. We’re not going to talk about why we do that, but we all do it. Yeah, I know. I mean honestly I take half the gifts I receive over Christmas and busily find other people to give those gifts to. In fact, I only buy half the people on my Christmas list, gifts because usually I can just re-gift things I get from some people to the people on the list who I didn’t prepare for. I know, I’m admitting this to you and I’m not that ashamed, I’m just trying not to be a hoarder. Other reasons we re-gift is because we hate the gift and etc, etc. Right, I’m not here to condemn anybody of re-gifting. But what Paul is saying is that God gave us this gift of salvation through the good news of Jesus Christ. Right, He didn’t spare His own son for us. And what Paul is saying that God wants is that we turn around and take that gift that was given to us by Him and re-gift that baby to other people who don’t have it. If Christ is the genius in me then our lives should reflect that genius to everybody and everything we’re exposed to. I mean that people should notice us because of what is flowing from within us and bleeding over into our lives. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: drug dealers are really good entrepreneurs. They are probably better entrepreneurs than most CEOs, there is a genius within them that allow them to be successful. I know some of you would disagree with me, but humor my example for a second. Drug dealers get people addicted to their product. How many businesses open and fail in any given year? I’m just saying. Secondly, they are impatient with formalities and structures—yeah, I’m saying that they all have a business plan that they are operating. They adapt to different marketplaces, don’t you think dealing drugs in different neighborhoods with different laws is tough, well these drug dealers they do it better than us, and all we’re doing is moving from one cubicle to another. Here’s my last example of their genius—they reinvest their profits. If you study a drug dealer, I’m not talking about the street peddling kind, I’m talking about the real drug dealers that have their own compounds and such; well, you don’t see them being distracted by anything or anybody, they often take their profits and put it back into their business and repeat steps one through three. If you don’t believe me then all you really have to do is watch “Bad Boys 2.” Well, if we have a better genius than drug dealers, why is it that they are bringing more glory to their own genius than we are as Christ followers? Shouldn’t we have the glory of God behind us? For the most part it is because we don’t really believe in our own genius. I’m telling you that we need to believe it because it’s true. Let’s go to Exodus 31. 1The Lord said to Moses, 2 “See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, 3 and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, 4 to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, 5 in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. – Exodus 31:1-5 Verse 3 says that God filled Bezalel with the Spirit of God. I think this is the first time that Bible says this, but more importantly, God is not saying this to Moses in regards to a prophet, a leader, or a priest. The Spirit of God was not filling up something we would traditionally think the Spirit of God would be filling up. The Spirit of God was filling up, for all intents and purposes, a construction worker. Bezalel was a construction worker! So if you start believing that you, just because you’re not the pastor and didn’t go through formal training in a fancy school to get a piece of paper that you haven’t even unrolled, then you’re completely wrong. You have a genius within you that has been in you by the work of God that fills you up with ability and intelligence. I said that “genius” describes somebody who has exceptional intellectual and or creative abilities and each and every one of us has a type of genius. Really we do! I want to take that a step further. We don’t have a genius because we’re trained to have a genius or learned in having a genius. No. Absolutely not. You see the order of how genius works in Exodus? Genius works first by God’s choosing. When you are chosen by God, and all of us sitting in this room are chosen by God, we are filled up with the Spirit of God. You don’t need to earn the genius. Nor are you building to that moment to serve God and do something amazing after you learn something. No. As soon as you are called and chosen, you have the genius latent within your soul. You see, when God calls, He also enables and that is genius. We are all geniuses because God is in me. There are two more things before I close here. I don’t know what your genius is. I really don’t. Nor am I here to tell you what your genius is. I could probably guess at what it is that your genius is, but then again, I’m prone to being wrong. First thing is first, if you know you’ve been called by God, and I don’t mean called to the ministry or anything, but called to be saved by His grace because you have faith in His Son, Jesus, then you need to open yourself up to prayer. You need to get into the habit of meeting with God every single day—opening that Bible in your quiet place, and praying. That will show you how and what it is that you have within you. Furthermore, you have to start doing things. You can’t stay comfortable. You need to go and do things and discover yourselves by putting your faith in God to see what genius you have within you. But you also have to understand that the genius within you is not about you, nor is it for you. That’s the wrong purpose of genius. So, going back to this drug dealer idea that I threw out there at the beginning of this sermon. I could use my genius to being a fantastic drug dealer instead of a faithful pastor in Christ. I could use the same skills that I have as a pastor and use them to be a fantastic drug dealer. The big problem there is that I would be using my genius, given by God, that is Christ in me, for me, when clearly that the genius within me is about the glory of God. It would be intents of my genius to get kids to buy my drugs as opposed to share with them the life giving gift of salvation through Jesus. You know what I’m talking about here? Can we open to 1st Peter. I have a theorem—called “The Genius Theorm.” The Genius Theorem: God has given each of you a gift from His great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well… – 1 Peter 4:10 God gave us all gifts, and it is up to use to use them well. Other translations say this in 1 Peter 4:10, “as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another…” The genius within us must be leveraged, and I say this all the time, it has to be leveraged for the good of other people. That is an act of love that follows in the pattern Christ gave us with his death. I guarantee right now that some of you are not using your gifts out of love for God or for one another and that whatever gains is being made on that genius will never be fulfilling or as fulfilling as you ever will experience when you use that genius for other people. The theorem is that the genius can only fully be recognized and manifested in the act of us pouring our genius out for the benefit of others around us. Joseph, not Mary’s husband Joseph, but Joseph in Genesis with 11 other brothers Joseph and gets sold to slavers and then thrown into prison Joseph. He is a prime example of genius being lived out—that God in me, being manifested wherever he goes and being poured out into other people. He was slave in Potiphar’s house and he was a genius—he stood out for producing. He became a prisoner in jail, and likewise he stood out for God’s gift of interpretation, he was proven to be a genius. He became governor of Egypt, and he was proven to be a genius. We can even talk about Daniel, or Nehemiah or Esther, or Jeremiah and even the 12 disciples that flipped the Roman Empire upside down! Christ is in all of us. That is what we got through our act of faith. So it’s time for all of us to believe that the genius in all of us can be manifested in life around us and actually start doing things that show Christ’s genius alive within all of us. No more settling. No more fearing inability, but believing in doing. This is our potential and we are there through Christ. Let’s pray.