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07551 September 5, 2007
Enjoying the ride
God does miraculous things in ridiculous situations, Cannon says
by Jerry Van Marter Presbyterian News Service
NASHVILLE - His voice and pace rising and falling like a roller-coaster, the Rev. Jerry Cannon told 500 participants at the National Presbyterian Evangelism Conference here Sept. 1 to "relax and enjoy God's ride."
Preaching from I Kings 17 about Elijah's encounter with a poverty-stricken widow, Cannon - a fifth generation Presbyterian who's pastor of C.M. Jenkins Memorial Presbyterian Church in Charlotte - said that obedience to God leads to "miraculous things being done in ridiculous situations."
The widow in the Kings story was down to her last bit of flour and oil, preparing to make the last few loaves of bread before she and her family starved to death. "It didn't make sense for God to send a hungry Elijah to a woman who had no food."
Rattling off biblical quotations, statistics and citations from the denomination's Book of Order at a breakneck pace, Cannon said: "Sometimes God has to take us through some things in order to get to some things; God allows certain things to come our way so when we see God's way we won't go astray; sometimes God has to show us an empty place so we can see a full place, God has to show us death before God can show us life, give us trials before triumphs, show us our failures before granting us forgiveness, point out our shortcomings before giving us Holy Spirit."
And because Elijah and the widow were both obedient to God, Cannon said, God provided what they both needed. "Poverty was real in the widow's time. There was famine and drought in the land - she had worries and frustrations," he said.
Likewise, he continued, "Elijah was living by a stream and the ravens brought him food ... ravens, who make their living off of dead things. Elijah had no system of support other than what God provided for him. And the widow had no resources other than what God promised to her through Elijah.
"We have to have the kind of faith to know that God will lift us up," Cannon said. "That's the problem in the church - we think we can take care of ourselves."
God doesn't need anything from us, Cannon said, "but we need a relationship with God because we can't make it without God." God is saying to us, he continued, "to put our trust in God and not in our bureaucracies and structures and programs. If Jesus Christ is lifted up, it does not matter our structure, our programs, our politics..."
That assurance of God's presence is what enables us to "relax and enjoy the ride," Cannon concluded. "God says, 'Do what I want you to do...and I will be with you all the way,'" Cannon said. If we stay connected to God and God's will, "it will be a wild faith ride, a spiritual ride, a ride like you've never been on before but God will see you through."
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