Have you ever asked that question, "Who am I?" I was recently in California at Saddleback Church attending a conference. I was sitting among all these pastors and small group leaders and it came to my mind - "Who am I? What am I doing here? Am I doing things right? Am I in the right place?" I was quickly reminded by God as I sat there that "Who am I?" is not the right question. The right question, he said, is, "Who am I according to God, according to God's kingdom, according to the call on my life?" That is the right question. I believe the answers are vital if we're going to put into practice this active faith we've been talking about in James. They're vital because before you can put your faith into practice, you have to know the kingdom in which you're working. It's just like a work environment or a home environment or a school environment. If you don't know your environment, you're not going to succeed. If you don't know your boss very well or your resources, how are you going to succeed? They say that college is more knowing your professor, than knowing all the material. That's how you succeed. If we're going to put our faith into practice, we've got to know who we are in God's kingdom.

Will you pray with me? "God, open our minds. Open us to what You would have us hear from You. Still us now. Speak to us with Your words, so that we may know You and know the direction You want for us today. We thank You in Jesus' name. Amen."

Turn to James chapter 1. As we've been going through chapter one, right in the middle of these great verses about persevering through faith, James throws this sudden, random shift. Look at verses 9-10 with me, "Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. But the rich should take pride in their humiliation - since they will pass away like a wild flower." At first glance, this verse is about rich versus poor or the oppressed versus the powerful, but I think not. In the context of what we've been talking about, this is much more about God's positioning of people. If you find yourself in a place of high pride, a high powerful place, and you don't rely on God, James is saying, "You'd better start." But if you've found yourself in a humble place, in a low position, that is the position in which God can use you the most. This is a quick, powerful reminder of whom we are to follow and who we really are in God's kingdom.

To reach that powerful, humble working faith, we've got to understand that we are very small in this world. I don't know about you, but I constantly need a reality check. Who am I next to God? Who are you next to God? You've guessed it already - we're very insignificant. As much as we want to be significant, we are very insignificant. Listen to what Isaiah 40 says about God. Verse 12, "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?" Verse 22, "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy and spreads them out like a tent to live in."

In 1996, the Hubble Telescope decided to do something different. They called it a "deep field look." They picked a small spot in the universe that was dark, nothing there, and for 10 days they aimed the lens out there. After 10 days, when they read the pictures, it was revealed that there are literally thousands and thousands of galaxies never ever seen before - thousands and thousands! It made the astronomers realize that the universe was so much bigger than they had ever thought. Now, they estimate that there are at least 125 billion galaxies - and God knows them all by name. This is what Isaiah 40:25-26 says, "'To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?' says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: who created all of these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name." Even our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is 100,000 light years across and that's just one galaxy out of the 125 billion. Light moves at 186,000 miles per second. That's seven times around the earth in a second. So when we do the math, our galaxy alone is 585 quadrillion 600 trillion miles across. That's just our galaxy! These numbers are so huge that we can't even wrap our finite minds around them. But know this: God is bigger than all of this. Our God is an awesome God. The universe constantly witnesses to this fact.

How do you stack up to that? The problem is when we forget our place next to God and we begin to believe we're more powerful, more influential, more important, more intelligent than we really are. We begin to puff ourselves up and try to control every situation. Not just control it, but control it to our benefit. Then we literally begin to think that the universe revolves around us, or at least it should. Do you know anybody like that? Don't point to your neighbor.

I'm here to tell you that we're not that smart and I've got proof. Let's take a little poll. How many of you have ever locked your keys in your car? How many of you have locked your keys in your car with the car running? We're really not that smart. How many of you have forgotten to pick up a child? You left them at dance lessons and all of a sudden the dance teacher calls and says, "It's 9:00. Where are you?" I haven't done that - I don't know anything about that.  There's an industry called America's Funniest Videos that's making millions of dollars every year for the last 18 years on our stupid mistakes. You'd think in scripture we'd be talked about well as human beings. As we look in scripture are we lions, tigers, eagles, hawks? You know what scripture calls us? We're sheep and goats. I grew up on a farm - and sheep and goats are not that smart of an animal. I don't think it is being defamatory, it's just telling it like it is.  
Growing up, I always considered myself a pretty good athlete. I played a couple of sports in high school. God has a way of humbling us all the time. The first time I went skiing with a bunch of kids in Colorado, I thought I didn't need the lessons. I thought I'd just go up the mountain . . . it took me all day to get down the one run, for those of you who ski. In fact, by about noon I was falling over. I would go three feet and fall over. I was so frustrated. One time, I actually got turned around and went down backwards for about 20 feet. I heard this guy on the lift above me say, "That dude skis better backwards than he does forward."

I think God has seemingly an unmistakable way of reminding us of how small we really are. When I flew to California, I had a stopover in Denver. Flying out of Denver, you see the majestic Rocky Mountains. They're huge. As I was flying out, I was looking, and all of a sudden I saw the little bitty buildings of Denver on the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. I thought, we try to be big, to puff ourselves up, but nothing is bigger than God and God's creation.

This is God's world, and we have to understand our place in God's kingdom, and also God's majesty and power. A great illustration is Isaiah. When the vision came to Isaiah, when he saw the Lord, he said, "I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robes filled the temple." You know what Isaiah's reaction to that was? It wasn't, "Oh man, God is really cool. God is really big." This is what Isaiah said, "Woe to me! I cried. I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."

Several years ago, I was going to lead a retreat for youth ministers. I was really in a spiritual place, a really good place in my life. As I was driving, I turned off the radio and was praying, and I was thinking to myself, "It would be really cool, God, to see you. Wouldn't it be really cool, God? I would love to see you, God." I don't know what happened, but as I popped over a hill, something flashed in my eyes, and literally, it scared me to death. I can't describe what I saw and it was just a flash for a moment, but I was shaking for about 25 minutes. I will no longer ask to see God. I will just ask God to work in my life. God is an awesome God and we are very small when we place ourselves next to God.

However, the good news is that even though we're insignificant next to God, we are big in God's eyes. Now the question is not "Who am I?" That only leads to either fear or pride. The question is "Whose am I?" Well, let me tell you who you are. You are created meticulously by a loving God. You are unique. You are a masterpiece. You are one of a kind. God spent a lot of time creating you. The same God who created all the billions of stars and galaxies and knows them by name, guess what, that same God knows you by name. Not only that, but he knows the very hairs on your head and he loves you dearly. In Luke 12:7, Jesus said, "Indeed, the very hairs of your head are numbered." Max Lucado says the holiest moment of every day is when you wake up, crawl out of bed and look at yourself in the mirror. You haven't shaved, you haven't combed your hair, you haven't put on any makeup, you have bad breath, you stink, but that is the person who God created. That is the person God loves. God knows you. He indeed knows you inside and out. He knows your dreams; he knows your heart; he knows your past and your future; he knows the good and the bad - and still you are the apple of God's eye. God loves you dearly, more than you will ever know and understand. You are big in God's eyes. In Psalm 139:1-3, the Psalmist wrote: "You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways." God loves you!

I never really understood and I probably never will, about God's love until my wife and I started having children. I will never forget having our first child. I was a youth minister at the time, and I didn't want kids because they turn into teenagers. I remember wondering, "What kind of parent will I be?" But I remember as she was delivered and the doctor placed her in my hands, I looked at this baby for about 30 minutes - we just stared at each other - and the love of God came over me, so you know that I would kill any one of you who tried to harm her. I would die for any of my children. I'm a broken person and if that's the kind of powerful love that I can have for a child, just think of the powerful way that God loves you. Hasn't God already died for you? God would do anything for you, to have a relationship with you. This is the God who loves us so deeply. When we begin to grasp that, when we begin to see who we are in God's eyes - we're big in God's eyes, that's when we figure out who we were created and called to be.

God created us for a purpose. When God called Jeremiah, this is what he said to him in Jeremiah 1:5, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." God didn't create us to live a meaningless or unfulfilling life. In fact, God created you on purpose, with a purpose. He did it for your benefit, as well as for the benefit of the people next to you, the people around you in your life. Ephesians 2:10 says, "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Don't you like that? You are God's handiwork and you have been created to do something for God, for a purpose.

I'm an introvert at heart, and I'll never forget the argument I had with God as I was walking across the college campus saying, "God, there is no way that I'm going to go into ministry. I don't want to go into ministry. I don't even like people." I didn't like people. I don't like crowds. God said, "I will change your heart. You take a step and I will change your heart." Literally three or four months later, I began to see myself looking at strangers thinking, "Do they know God? How can I help them know God?" If God can do it for me, God can do it for you. God has created you with a purpose. The first time I led somebody to meet Jesus, I knew that there was nothing better or more fulfilling that I would ever do in my life. God wants you to have that experience as well. There's something about discovering your passion, discovering what it is that God created you to do that really brings out the passion and joy in your life.

My own personal cell group has been meeting for the past couple weeks about what we want to do for the next year. One of the questions we've been asking is, "What is your passion?" It's been amazing. A couple of these couples in our group are saying, "This is what I think God is calling us to do and we want to do it." You see it in their eyes, something just clicked. They found what God has helped them with, and they want to reach out and help other people with it. When you understand who you are in God's kingdom, that helps you discover your passion and purpose in life. That's to benefit you as well as others. When we fully grasp that, talk about humble faith and put our faith into action, that's when we become less and we impact people more. God's economy is not our economy. God has an upside-down economy. We always look for and rely on the powerful, the influential, the pretty, the well-informed, the visual. That's not what God relies on. God relies on the weak, the least and the last. If you want to be first, according to God, you have to be last. If you want to be the greatest in God's kingdom, you have to be the least. If you truly want to live, you've got to die.

Faithful, God-honoring humility is not thinking less of yourself - because you are big in God's eyes - it's about thinking of yourself less. When you do that, God will raise you up. It's when we become less that God can use us to do so much more than we could ever do, because then we are truly relying and depending upon God.

Over the last two years we've created and started six house churches and I've had the great privilege of working with our house church leaders. These folks are like you - people who feel that this might be where God is going. But I've been so humbled and so proud of these people for taking these steps. It's not easy. We don't know what to do or where to go. But we're going to wait and watch God and see what happens. I fully believe that our house churches in those neighborhoods and those communities are going to have a long lasting effect on our Miami Valley. It's not easy. None of them would say it's easy, but it's about God's kingdom and about seeing what God will do with their lives. Everything else is meaningless. The cool thing is that it's God's kingdom to build. Jesus is just looking for faithful people on which to build the church.

When Jesus asked his disciples "Who do you say that I am?" Peter's response was, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Jesus' response to him in Matthew 16:18 was this: "I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death will not overcome it." Jesus will build the church. He's just looking for faithful people.

I used to do an event in Kentucky called Winter Blitz and every year we'd try to get lots of kids to come to this event. We'd have lots of worship and lots of teaching. It kept growing year after year, but there was something in my heart, and I felt that God wanted to do something with this event. I really felt like there were a lot of teens who didn't know Jesus. So for this particular year of 2001, I said, "What we need to do is change venues. We need to spend some money and bring in really good speakers and a really good band." We worked hard. As I sat there on that Saturday night and watched five- six- or seven-hundred kids come down to meet Jesus for the first time, there was no sense of pride. I remember sitting there thinking, "It is such a privilege to sit back and watch Jesus build his church, if we just remain faithful.

When you put aside your own pride, agendas and selfish desires, that's when you allow God to make you become a difference maker. To become a difference maker, God will put you in places around people to change their direction. That's what a difference maker does - changes people's direction. I don't know where I would be if faithful people hadn't stepped into my life at certain periods of my life, pushed me the direction I was supposed to go, kept me back from things I wasn't supposed to do. They were difference makers in my life and I know who those people are.  

The cool thing is that God has allowed me to be a difference maker in other people's lives. This past November, I went to Thailand with our missions pastor, Craig Maxwell. We were looking to see if we could do a missions trip with the "Not for Sale" campaign. Some of you saw David Batstone, our guest speaker about a month ago, and heard about his "Not for Sale" campaign. But what blew my mind, was that people are making a difference in the sex slave trade that probably had no idea they were going to do that. We met this woman named Kru Nam, and maybe you saw the video about her when David was here. Kru Nam realized that in her own town there were children in the sex slave trade business. When she found that out, she rushed into bars and started grabbing kids and brought them out. The first week she had three, and then she had seven, and now she has over 170. I guarantee you that first day she went into the bar, she did not have that in her Day Planner. I guarantee you that she didn't wake up that day and say, "Today I'm going to steal some kids out of the sex slave trade business." But God had it in his Day Planner and has placed her in the position to be a difference maker. We're going back in a month. In fact, there are a couple of spots left if you would like to do that, just to see what God would have us do to make a difference in the lives of those kids, those teens, those girls stuck in prostitution. It wasn't in my Day Planner to go to Thailand. I'm a Costa Rica person. But it is in God's Day Planner. I don't have any idea what God is going to do with us and with this church, but I think God has a marvelous plan for us. We can be difference makers in people's lives.

What about you? Do you want to be a difference maker? Do you want to make a difference and change the direction of people's lives around you? I do. The best part of that is that God does, too. God wants you to be a difference maker in the people around you. God is looking for faithful, humble people who will rely on him and on his power and he will do it. Will you put your faith to work today? I believe if you will, if you promise to do that, if you put your faith in God, that God will do unbelievable things in your life and in the lives of people around you.

Like I said, I'm an introvert, I didn't like people, and yet I'm standing here in front of you talking with you. I'm part of a small-group ministry connecting people together. If God can do it for me, God can definitely do it for you. God will do it; we are called to be faithful.