Doing Back Flips for the Lord
By J. Lee Grady
I’m always excited when I get a chance to speak to college audiences, mainly because I know I can wear jeans and a T-shirt when I preach. (Who invented the stuffy suit and tie costume, anyway?) But the best thing about meetings with college-somethings is always the high-voltage worship.
At the Breakaway young adult conference in suburban Atlanta, which was held last weekend at an FFA camp, a praise band called Simple Fool poured out their passion and led 200 people into God’s presence. Some of the kids came to the altar and knelt on the floor while we sang. Others got out in the aisles with their hands raised. A few journaled in their notebooks or sat with their heads bowed. No one was forced to worship in a certain way, but everybody seemed lost in God.
Then I noticed Jake.
He was the slim kid in a brown T-shirt who had moved to the side of the auditorium so he could have more room. During the second song he paced back and forth for a while; then he arched his back, held his arms out and suddenly did a complete back flip, landing on his feet with a thud. He then thrust his hands in the air. This was his offering of worship. (For liability reasons I need to warn you: Don’t try this at home.) I took a mental note of Jake’s unique enthusiasm and said to myself, This will make a great sermon illustration!
My message that night was “Becoming Wild for the Lord.” My text was Ezekiel 1:4-13 NASB, the prophet’s description of the living creatures that worship God around His throne. Those bizarre beings, who “gleamed like burnished bronze” (v. 7), had four faces: “Each had the face of a man; all four had the face of a lion on the right and the face of a bull on the left, and all four had the face of an eagle” (v. 10).
A pretty strange scene, like something you might see on the Sci-Fi Channel. I suggested to the audience that these creatures symbolize what can happen to human beings when we are filled with the Holy Spirit. An ordinary man or woman who encounters Almighty God can be transformed into a wild believer.
The animals mentioned in Ezekiel’s vision represent aspects of God’s passionate nature. The bull is a symbol of apostolic strength and vigor. The lion depicts evangelistic boldness. The eagle is a biblical type of prophetic vision as well as missionary speed. God wants us to walk in a fierce, radical anointing—yet too many of us have settled for a quiet, domesticated faith.
I encouraged the students at Breakaway to be wild for God. I wasn’t advocating fanaticism—that is zeal that is not tempered with wisdom. And I was not encouraging religious hype—which is fabricated and unconvincing. (And very annoying. Christian young people can detect it a mile away, and I promise you they will boycott it.)
I was calling my young friends to embrace the audacious courage and selfless zeal that has motivated Christians in every previous generation to abandon their lives for the cause of Jesus. The early disciples were inflamed by this wild anointing, and it is what stirred them to carry the gospel to every corner of the Roman Empire. Christians today in places such as China and India carry this passion, and it is what enables them to face persecution—or even martyrdom—with outrageous devotion.
Such wildness is typical in the churches I frequently visit in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Why do we settle for less?
After dozens of young people at the Breakaway event came to the altar to acknowledge their call to the mission field, I invited Jake to come to the front of the stage and do one more back flip. His crazy behavior would not have been welcome in most churches, but when he landed on his feet in our meeting a holy pandemonium erupted. With the help of Simple Fool’s music, we danced before the Lord with total abandon for 30 minutes until my T-shirt was soaked.
I gave Jake a high-five and thanked him for taking my sermon literally. We were both hot and sweaty, my feet were tired, my side was sore from laughing and I probably smelled like a wild animal. As far as I am concerned, that’s the way church is supposed to be.
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J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma.
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