A Window of Opportunity | Joe Dobbins | Twin Rivers Church

Today I want to share a message called a window of opportunity and I don't know if you have this. I have a list of questions I plan on asking when I get to heaven. Top of the list is why create calories? And then follow up with why does everything that tastes good have so many of them? Okay. Why create mosquitoes? What was the point in that? Another one would be why did you choose to take two people who were so different and knit them in marriage together? You know I look at Kayla and I and I think my gosh we couldn't be any more different on nearly everything even concrete things like time. You know to me time is a very concrete reality that no matter where you are in the world five minutes always equals 300 seconds. But to Kayla time is a very theoretical idea that is something that moves and grows and expands and contracts. To her five minutes is just when she arrives that's just all it is. Could have been an hour in your time but in her time it was five minutes. And 98.7 percent of all of our conflict is about this one issue. And so I want to ask the Lord why did you why did you put this together in this way? And the only thing I can figure at this point is is he just did it for his entertainment that was just all the only purpose in it. You know it's interesting we have two different types of time Kayla and I but did you know the two different types of time? That the word time when translated into English comes from two Greek words that express two very different thoughts when it comes to time. One of them is called chronos time. It's our traditional understanding of time it's linear it's sequential that Monday always comes after Sunday the 2 p.m. always comes after 1 p.m. It's the idea that time is unfolding and you and I in chronos time we can't go backwards and we can't go forwards in it. We are contained in chronos time. Now let me say this we are contained in it but God is not. The Bible says he is timeless that he can see the end from the beginning that he's the first and the last that he understands and has already written out the days of your life in a book and it contained because he is outside of chronos time. Now the second word is called kairos time. Kairos is different than chronos. Chronos is sequential. Kairos is supernatural. It's the idea that there are moments where God in his timelessness steps in and does something that should have taken more chronos time. Like that he walks in and turns a divine moment into to a regular moment for you. It's the idea that he would walk in and open a window of opportunity where he's going to do something extraordinary. It's when heaven's calendar and your calendar collide and maybe you've experienced that before when you had debt that should have taken you years to get out of but all of a sudden there was a kairos moment where God paid it all off or sent someone to

help you advance in it. Or maybe there was a moment where you should have this idea to advance it it should have taken years to do it but all of a sudden in one connection God opened a window of opportunity that moved everything forward quickly. There are these moments in our lives where things should have taken more chronos time but because God intervened we had a kairos moment where God did something extraordinary. I bring that up because our nation right now is in a kairos moment. Tom Rayner is a respected researcher that looks at faith across the nation and he was on a podcast this week and he said this he said for years I have studied the trend of Christianity that is in a downward motion he said for 50 plus years men have left the church interest in Christianity has dissipated and most churches were basically filled with senior adults which is why you've heard people say things like the church is only one generation away well when churches are filled with senior adults one generation leaves nobody to follow. He said I predicted for years that the church was going to go the way of the church in Europe which was that it became stagnant it faded away and was replaced by Islam and then he said this but I was completely wrong. He said God has intervened in our nation and what was a downward trend has seen an incredible resurrection and he's right because men are now the top attending gender in church. The number one attending demographic is no longer senior adults it's the youngest people Gen Z and millennials now outnumber senior adults. In addition to that the interest in Christianity is at a 50-year high seen in Bible sales and Christian entertainment topping charts and Christian music topping charts that across our nation there is a kairos moment. God has opened up a unique supernatural window where he is doing something he hasn't done in decades and he's also doing a open to kairos moment in our church. I've been pastoring this church for for nearly 11 years and I would just tell you that what we're experiencing now is not normal. Our services have filled up until we we have to keep adding services. Baptisms. Today we will cross over 400 people being baptized this year. In addition to that, salvations will top nearly 2,000 people this year. More people are in life groups than ever before, and that's just the numbers. If I could tell you the stories, I'm not talking about somebody who just got mad and left for a season and came back. Atheists have been converted this year in our church. People who have been in addictions have been set free. People who swore they'd never go to church are now helping lead the church. God is doing an extraordinary thing. There is truly a window of opportunity, and I bring that

up because I don't want you to think it's just for our nation or just for our church. It's also for you personally. I don't know anybody that wants to live a life that doesn't matter. Never heard anybody say, you know what my goal is is I want to wake up, I want to get ready, I want to go to work, I want to come home from work, and I want to, you know, eat a dinner and then watch a little TV, scroll my phone till I fall asleep, and I want to do that every day for 40 years. No, the people that I talk to, they go, I long to do something significant, that I want to make an impact, I want to know my life mattered, I want to know that God used me, that I offered myself to him, and that he did something extraordinary with it, and if you're like that, I just want to say this is a window, that right now people are more open to the gospel than they've ever been, that in fact more people are open to faith. You could share your faith and see results right now like you've never seen before. You could give right now and there's more impact on the other end of your giving than ever before. Your serving makes more of a difference than ever. You are truly in a window of opportunity where God is going to use your life in a significant, significant way, unlike any other season that I've ever seen. But here's my concern, that you would not know how to participate, and that you wouldn't recognize windows open and windows close, and Kairos moments happen and then they close. And so what I want to do today is I want to teach you how to seize a window of opportunity. I want to make sure you know how to be a part of a miracle that God might be inviting you into. And I'm going to do it by taking you to one of the most common stories that's in Scripture, what is known as the feeding of the 5,000. It's a miracle Jesus performed, and I'm going to read it to you from Matthew chapter 14, verse 14. Let's look at it together. It says, when Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick. As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, this is a remote place and it's already getting late. We should send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy themselves something to eat. Jesus replied, they do not need to go away. You give them something to eat. Well, we only have five loaves of bread and two fish. Now, where

did they get this? They found a little boy and took his lunch. It says, well, bring it here to me, Jesus said, and he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking five loaves and two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. And then notice this, then he gave them to the disciples and the disciples gave them to the people and they ate until everybody was satisfied. Now, you may not know this, but this miracle is the only miracle besides the resurrection that appears in all four Gospels. Jesus does a lot of miracles, but this is the only one besides his resurrection from the dead that appears in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Now, that pauses me to say, wow, this must be significant. For God to repeat himself four times, that's significant. So you start to ask, well, why is that? Because if we could be honest, there are more life-changing miracles in the Gospel. I mean, some people regain their sight. Other people are able to regain their mobility. Some people are literally set at liberty from demonic possession. I mean, can we just be honest, this is lunch. Like six hours after this moment, the miracle has passed. And yet, God says, no, this miracle is one I want to amplify four times. And I think it's because it's the only miracle with which God partners with the disciples to provide it. That this is a miracle that teaches us that sometimes God doesn't do all the work, he invites us into the work. Now, let me be clear, God is self-sufficient. He doesn't need us. As a matter of fact, he can do whatever, however, whenever he wants. But like a father who's building a house and has a preschool son, he invites him into the process. The son swings the hammer, he picks up boards. He doesn't actually contribute to the process, but he's there because the father wants him near. But that is, in effect, how God invites us into miracles. They don't need our contribution. He doesn't need us to take us. He doesn't need what we bring to the table He just wants us to have a seat at the table because that's where he's at and so he invites us into these miracle moments and this should be very kind of assuring to some of you because for some of You you've disqualified yourself that God can use you You've said because of my past or because of my absent of capabilities currently God can't use me

No, no, this miracle proves that he can this is called the feeding of the 5,000 But if you study it out 5,000 represents the number of men that were present there were actually about 20,000 people But they didn't count the women or the children So this is interesting though because Jesus the miracle the person he partners with is a little boy It's almost as if he's announcing the one the world counts out I've invited in you don't have to bring much to the table for me to use your life I want to use you to do something supernatural, but it's not because of what you contribute It's because I want the connection. And so what I want to do is I want to give you the three things It's not real complicated that it takes to be a part of a miracle Because I believe God wants to partner with you to do some miracles. Here's the first one. You have to be Perceptive, you know, one of the the underappreciated values of Jesus is really his patience with the disciples I mean, he's so patient because they are so dense and There are multiple times that he invites them into moments and they just miss it and this is one of them You know that they come to Jesus that Jesus we should send all these people home. It's getting late We should feed him and he looks at them and says will you give him something? That's the invitation, but they don't see it as an invitation. They began to to basically highlight two things The problem and their personal circumstance that they don't see this Opportunity because first of all, they just see the problem this crowd that's hungry All they see is 20,000 people who are hungry and their lack of resources They just see the problem and then they just see their own personal circumstances, which just means Jesus. We're kind of tired We don't feel like opening a catering company right now. We'd rather leave ourselves Why don't you just send them away because we're hungry and those two things the problem in the personal circumstance It's interesting because all these years later followers of Jesus are still missing their miracle moments simply because that's the way they see Most of us all we see is problems. As a matter of fact, I would say this we are a problem-assessed people I mean we talk about you get talked to somebody go and talk about economic problems. We'll talk about political problems We're gonna talk educational problems. We're gonna talk about marriage problems. We're gonna talk about neighborhood problems. We're gonna talk about work problems We've got whole channels dedicated to itemizing our problems And if you get on social media What you'll see is it's just a big list of problems everybody's sharing their problems to compare if their problems are worse than your problems

That's just all we're a problem-assessed people But what's interesting is that the problems aren't the problem. The problem is is that as the Church of Jesus Christ We're not here to describe problems. We're here to declare. Nothing is impossible to him who believes when you walk into a room You're not here to give us a description of what's wrong You're here because God sent you to redeem and make something right and in this moment the disciples They're just going well Jesus with all these people and the slack and what they should have said is who cares There's 20,000 people who cares we got no food We got a Jesus and that's enough to fix a problem and and for us that's the kind of church I want us to be listen I want us to be a place where we don't get together to just talk about our problems and pray about our problems and then We go out and tell everybody all about our problem I want us to be people who walk in knowing we have been commissioned by Christ We have been filled with the Holy Spirit that we walk in because we God has sent a solution to whatever Problem may be finding people. We're here to educate the uneducated. We're here to adopt children. We're here to feed the hungry We're here to help the captive We are here to do whatever needs to be done because when God saw there was a problem He raised us up and sent us in redeeming the solution. That's the kind of outlook you have to have. Otherwise You're gonna miss the miracle But the other thing is is is they don't just see the problem. They also see just their personal circumstance and in this room today There are some of you have what would be considered minor problems. You had a bad week And then some of you have major problems and your marriage or a diagnosis And and and I don't want to disregard your problems, but listen to me I do want to acknowledge that I think we all could we have a tendency to become a little self obsessed you know, um If you don't believe that we have a propensity to be self-consumed Let me just say that I found out recently that we take 90 as a species. We take 92 million selfies a year The Average person this year will take 450 selfies So many selfies are we taking that orthopedic surgeons now have something called selfie wrist

It's a carpal tunnel like syndrome where we hold the phone so frequently on ourselves That people are having to have it corrected and wear braces You know, I use my phone probably about as much as anybody does You know to do all kinds of different things. That's a great thing about it You can do you can run a whole organization from just your phone. I found out recently though and I iPhone, there are two functions of an iPhone that cannot happen at the same time. You cannot shine the flashlight on someone and take a selfie at the exact same time. By design, the engineer said, you can't illuminate someone else and also be focused on yourself. By design, God has not, has made it to where we can't be a part of miracles and be obsessed with ourself. We cannot go into dark places and shine and also be overwhelmed with what's going on in our personal circumstance. Listen, you can't be the light of the world and take a selfie at the same time. At some point, there has to be a moment where we perceive that God's trying to do something beyond ourselves. Jesus walks into this crowd, if you study it in context, he's just found out that his cousin has been killed and he's exhausted from a ministry tour, but the Bible says he saw the needs of the people and began to meet them. You know, when I walk into a crowd, generally the first thing I think is, who do I know? Who can I talk to? How can I be comfortable? Me, me, me, me, me. I'm trying, and I'm going to invite you into it, I'm trying, that when I walk into a room, when I walk into a gas station, when I walk into a park, when I walk into an office, that I start asking God, who do you want me to see? Because I recognize I'm not going to see any miracles if I'm focused just on myself. Here's the second thing that's going to have to happen is you're going to have to be compassionate. I've read this story hundreds of times, and for the life of me, I saw something this time I've never seen before, which is this, the boy that Jesus uses to provide the lunch, it's interesting, he's the one who provides the lunch, but he's the only one who didn't

need lunch. I mean, think about it, this boy walks in, 20,000 people hungry, he's like, I'm good. There's no need. So that tells me, he did not provide this out of personal desperation, he provided it out of a compassion. Here's this little boy's heart, I will not consume what has been given to me while recognizing so many people are still hungry. I think it would do good, every once in a while, for us to remind ourselves what we've been given, because I think we are a little—our disposition is to, at times, only want what's next for us. Can I just remind you that as a church, here's what you've been given if you're a follower of Christ. First and foremost, you have been given salvation. That you have been given eternal and abundant life, that Christ giving His life for you has come in, and the Scripture says, has changed a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. That you have been given the Holy Spirit, that you have never known a day that God is not with you, that He's never left you nor forsaken you. You've had instant access to mercy, to wisdom, to knowledge, to encouragement. You have been given the Word of God, and it's not just a book, you've been given literally the voice of God for any circumstance, in any moment, in any day, and you've been placed in the family of God. This is not a place you just attend, this is not an audience today. God in His sovereignty has placed you in a family. That means today, you walk in with a need, this room can fix it, through the power of the Holy Spirit connecting you. You can receive prayer from people today, you can receive encouragement, that if you have a practical need, someone here can meet it, that you have friends that are here, people of character, people of concern, that you have been placed in a body that literally all of your needs can be met, and you have been given all that, but we have a tendency in our Christianity to kind of go, but what's next?

What's the next song that's going to inspire me? What's the next sermon that's going to enlighten me? What's the next revelation that's going to, you know, kind of launch me into my next season? What's the next opportunity I can have for God's calling on my life? If we're not careful, we show up ready to consume. And it's no wonder we miss out on the Kairos. Jesus walks in in verse 14, and here's what it says, he saw the great multitude, and he was moved with compassion. One of the reasons I think many of us miss our window of opportunity is because we don't know the difference between sympathy and compassion. Sympathy is what you feel in general concern, but it never moves you to doing anything about what you're concerned about. So let me describe it this way. Sympathy is when you recognize with your mind there's a problem, you feel empathy in your heart for those suffering from it, but this never moves from your head to your heart to your hand to do anything about it. Compassion, on the other hand, is when you recognize it with your mind, you feel it in your heart, and then you take your hand and do something about it. For many of us, we have confused compassion and sympathy, and we feel for people, but we're not. doing anything for people. And if you were to go to the thesaurus and actually look at the antithesis of the word compassion, it would not be hatred. It would be apathy. Here's what the picture of it is. It's that I recognize there's a need and I feel bad they're in need, but instead of meeting it, I put my hands in my pocket and expect someone else to do it. I was driving on the interstate a couple years ago and the kids were in the car and we pulled up on a ramp. And when we pulled up on the ramp, there was a panhandler who was there asking for money. And immediately the kids said, Dad, can we give him money? Because they're very generous with my money. And so I went into evaluation mode. You know, first of all, I've watched Dateline. I know some of these people are it's not true that they're in need. They're going to leave here and go around to their luxury vehicle. And

so I'm evaluating, are his clothes dirty enough? Does his hair look unkempt? Is his sign spelled correctly? Because if you're in need, you can't spell, you know, whatever I'm looking for. And then the next thing that came to me was, well, you know, even if I gave him $50, which is pretty generous, it's not going to meet this need. I mean, if you're out here panhandling, you really have a need and $50 isn't going to meet it. And this is all happening in nanoseconds, right? I mean, it's just in moments. And then the light turns green and when the light turns green, I pull away without doing anything. And I just said to the kids, Hey, they said, well, dad, we didn't do anything. And I said, yeah, well, maybe next time. And from the back, Ellie says, but dad, we didn't even tell him Jesus loves him. And then it just dawns on me, here's a moment. And I missed my mission that Ellie's right. See, I think we just made it too complicated. Can I, can I just help you? I think we reason ourselves out of the windows God gives us. I think we come up with these ideas of like, are they deserving or, or, or will this matter or can I do enough? Or am I even the person or someone else? And we, before it's all said and done, the lights changed and we move on missing the miracle moment we've been given. And, and, and, and so let me just clear it up and just say this, we're complicating it. People, you don't need a 501c3 to love. We don't have to have a board meeting to love. There doesn't need to be an appointment to love. There doesn't have to be an application process for love. We don't have to take time and consider the best strategies for love. We don't even have to consider if they're deserving of love because Christ tells us we're all undeserving yet we received it ourselves. We're just making it too complicated. And I know for some of you, you're thinking, yeah, but, but what if I do it wrong or what if it's not enough? Let me just say, it would better you take the chance and do something small that Jesus could multiply. Then you do nothing that he cannot multiply. It would be better for you to be messy and incomplete and even ill-timed because the scripture tells us Jesus can do a lot with messy and incomplete and ill-timed. He just can't do anything with apathy. And so for some of us, I think we have to recognize today, feeling sympathy for people is not the same as being compassionate and seizing a window of opportunity. And then the last one's this, it's not real hard. You're You know, this miracle more than any other miracle in scripture has a lot of math in it. So if you're a math person, you love this miracle. I thought just for those of you aren't

math people, I thought we'd do some math today. You know, that'd be fun. So here's the math of the miracle. 20,000 people need to be fed. Let's add the 12 disciples. Not enough. Okay. Go back to the drawing board. 20,000 people need to be fed. We got five loaves and two fish. Still not enough. Okay. Well, one more time. Let's try 20,000 people plus five loaves and two fish times. We're getting into algebra. Jesus, more than enough. The Bible says out of this, every person is fed and there are 12 baskets left over just for those who are Bible students among us. How many disciples are there? There we go. Yeah. So it was interesting to me that I did the math and we reviewed quite a few numbers, but do you know the one number that I'd never seen before, but I saw this time is actually the most important number for the miracle. You know what the number is? Zero. That's how much the boy kept. Think about it. I mean, it would have been reasonable for this boy to go, okay, I've got five loaves and two fish, so here's what we'll do. I'll give two loaves and one fish. I'm going to do a little bit for me, and then Jesus, you can do something with this. But that's not what happens. Instead, a year and a half later, I'm going to do a year and a half later, and Young boy gives everything. And I think this is interesting because he just recognizes this is a window of opportunity. This isn't like every other moment. This is not Kronos, this is Kairos. And so he deduces this. If this is a window of opportunity, it's not time to do the reasonable. It's time to do the unreasonable because when we do the unreasonable, we experience the extraordinary. That there are moments with which God opens up the heavens and descends in our lives in a way that we do something extraordinary because we get an invitation to be a part of something extraordinary.

That in this moment, let's not do the reasonable, let's do the extraordinary because this is a window. And this is actually a principle that appears all throughout scripture. For example, when Abraham recognized that he was having a Christophany, which is this face-to-face conversation in the Old Testament with Christ, he figured out this moment. The Bible says he gave one-tenth of his entire estate because he recognized this is a window. This isn't normal. I will be unreasonable because this is not normal. When David recognized that God had given him the opportunity to transition worship in Israel from the tabernacle to a temple, though David would never see the temple, he thought, this is the only chance I'll ever have. And the Bible says that of his personal wealth, he gave $20 billion equivalent because he said, this is extraordinary. I'm not gonna do the reasonable, I'm gonna do the unreasonable. Solomon, when he dedicated the temple after its completion, the Bible says he gave so many livestock to be sacrificed that in modern day, he could have fed 30 million people because he recognized this doesn't happen every day. Therefore, I will do something extraordinary because this is a window.

And as much as those three gave, they didn't give as much as this boy because he gave everything. And so for some of us, we're like, what do you get if you give everything? Like, what do you give if you're unreasonable at times because you perceive there's a window? Well, let me say, I'll tell you what the boy got, but let me tell you first what he didn't get because I think in our Western Christianity, sometimes this has been taught to you give and God's gonna multiply it and give it back to you. Okay? And if we're not careful, we can almost like put God as like this thing we, like an investment scheme or something like we give to him because I need him to. So let me just be very clear to the text. Here's what it says. The boy gave a lunch. He did not get 20,000 lunches. He got lunch back, right? I mean, he didn't get 20,000 lunches. And sometimes we kind of almost perceive it like that. Like, well, he gave lunch and so multiplied, come back. No, he got one for one. And he's not treating Jesus like a slot machine, like put in a coin and get 20,000 fish and 20,000. Who wants all that fish and loaves anyways, right? No, no, no.

He recognizes in a window of opportunity, this is serious. We're not gonna play with God. I'm here to partner with God. But here's what he gets. Something much better than lunches. First of all, he gets to see the miracle. You have to enter the text to understand this. This is, the Bible says that what we read is almost like the behind the curtain staff meeting. We should feed him. I don't know, we don't have enough. What do we do? Here's a boy with lunch. This was not, everybody didn't hear this. All they were told is an announcement. Hey folks, sit down in groups of 50 and we'll serve you lunch. Means most people thought, oh, great. They hired catering. That's wonderful. They didn't know that there was this, nobody's got lunch and this boy's got lunch and Jesus is praying over lunch. They didn't know. Most people consumed this and never knew what happened to provide this. Not this boy though. He saw the full miracle. Can I tell you the people who sacrifice the most

usually see the fullest extent of what God does. They see the behind the scenes. They connect the dots. God gives them a view of his real working. And then here's the second thing that the boy gets. It's very simple. He gets to be closer to Jesus. So what do you mean? We read this stuff and it's just, our minds build these false narratives. This is 20,000 people. This is an arena of people. This is a concert of people. And this is not in a place that's been designed for acoustics. This is a hillside. So that means that most people could not even fully see Jesus. That he stands on a raised hill, that by midway back, he looks like a small kind of figure. Most people couldn't see his facial expressions. But three-fourths of the way back, nobody can even hear Jesus. They're just passing what he says through other people. Like nobody gets to see him closely, but this boy does. Because they bring the boy to Jesus and he gets to put his gift in the hands of Jesus He gets to see Jesus's eyes. He hears the tone of his voice He sees the facial expression with which he is so proud at the faith

Demonstrated in this moment and based on other passages where Jesus encounters children I believe that Jesus gets down and blesses this boy for what he has done And listen you Jesus paid the price on the cross for us to have a relationship with him. You don't give to have a relationship with Christ But your sacrifice does increase intimacy with Christ after that relationship is established That when we give more of ourselves We experience more of him This Boy is so perceptive. He sees this is a Kairos moment and and he offers everything and out of that He experiences Something that he could have never experienced again, and he sets an example that is carried into eternity Because he recognized this is a window Two months ago I I Was on a walk and I was praying just about different things and the Lord really Downloaded the kind of the central theme of today's message in my heart and it was for me before it was worse for you Obviously and I was just so gripped That there are windows Kairos moments and then I felt like the Lord just leaned on my heart that that walk became holy and he Challenged Kayla and I as we approached this impact offering to live more open-handed than we ever had And it was so deep what I felt like the Lord did in me I came home and I told Kayla and then we would be just paying to pray about it because I felt like the Lord was Challenging us in a profound way to do something more than we'd ever done before because we recognize this is a window We've never had before In 2007 Kayla and I got married bought a house got some life insurance and we also opened a joint savings account

We Didn't have much to put in it then but little by little we saved each paycheck and it you know It kind of started to build and then eventually we got to the place where we could put more in it And then we got a place where we sold homes and you put the profit in it and you put you know Sell a car and put a profit in people give you a gift and and little by little, you know I mean all these years later 18 years later. It's it's you know, it's it's it's our savings account And Today it's our impact offering If you look at that account as of this morning It says zero Now I don't say that For any other reason than this First of all, I want you to know I never asked you to do anything that I myself have not done and Number two to stir you with as much seriousness as I can that we are in a window And that this is not common therefore you should not treat it as common We don't open campuses every Day, we don't do some of the ministry. We're doing every day God has opened a window and he's inviting us into it and I don't want to personally see that there was a move of God and That I wasn't willing to partner with him So we have done what's unreasonable Scary we prayed together this morning when we held hands we said God you gave us this and now we're giving it back to you And we pray you receive it as a gift of faith to recognize. We see what you're doing, and we don't want to miss it And I just share that with you because I don't want you to miss it either. We're in a window of opportunity