Do You Ever Feel Overwhelmed by the

Greatness and Glory of Jesus? 

You’re Exactly Where God Wants You to Be!

97 Snapshots in 13 weeks!

The heart-cry of the overwhelmed

However, it was apparent as the weeks passed that being confronted with a larger vision of Christ—one that kept expanding Sunday after Sunday and, in the end, included a “galaxy” of 97 aspects of that vision—was a struggle for all of us. Here’s one email I received that is a good representation of the experience of many others:

Good points! I totally get it. This sense of “saturation” is genuine and valid, and it’s an important issue for all of us to confront. This cry needs an answer. However, the prior question is this: Is being “overwhelmed with Jesus” spiritually healthy for us? Is this really necessary for Jesus followers? If not, then I did a disservice to these dear believers.

Let me respond briefly as to why it is healthy and necessary—why we should bravely press ahead to uncover “Snapshots of Christ Today as the Ultimate Fulfillment of Our Lives” (the title of my summer series), not only out of the book of Hebrews but in every single page of the Bible.

Biblically, it clearly is God’s strategy. Often in Scripture, the approach of the living God is to overwhelm his people in order to get them moving forward in new ways. There are so many examples. Here are four.

(1) To Abraham: “You’ll have as many children as the stars and sands.”

(2) To Paul on the very day of his conversion: “You are going to preach about me throughout the gentile world.”

(3) To blue-collar fishermen: “Leave everything right now, follow me, and soon I’ll have you fishing for people!”

(4) To John: “Here I am in my ascended glory, alive forevermore, holding the keys of death and hell.” Remember, John was so overwhelmed that he fell down at Jesus’ feet like a dead man. And that was exactly where he needed to be in light of the assignment Jesus had for him that led to writing the book of Revelation.

Again and again, Scripture shows us that becoming overwhelmed is essential for creating healthy Christians. I believe a big part of the anemic nature of evangelical Christianity in our nation today exists because our view of Jesus has become way too small. 

Therefore, part of the “method in my madness” this summer (and throughout my years of preaching around the globe) was and is to cause believers to become overwhelmed with a vision of the magnitude of the wonders of who Jesus is today—until the very weightiness of the evidence convinces God’s people emotionally, as well as intellectually, that Jesus is SO MUCH MORE than we had ever realized; that Jesus wants SO MUCH MORE for us than we have yet experienced; that Jesus deserves SO MUCH MORE from us in our commitment to live for him.

For years, I have maintained, as many of you know, that multitudes of Christians and churches need to enter into a “Christ Awakening”—doing so to such a degree that we’ll not be able to go back to the “little Jesuses” we’ve unwittingly settled for. 

Incidentally, this was my purpose behind creating a graphic for my listeners this summer that I called the “Photo Album of the Heart,” available online. Week by week, filling out its pages with new sets of snapshots helped us review and pray over what we were uncovering with each passing Sunday—to help keep us overwhelmed with all we were highlighting about our Savior.

There’s no alternative. We must plunge into the depths at every opportunity! For example, a Sunday morning message should be far more than just a graduated form of a Sunday school lesson. It needs to be prophetic because it provides the one time each week for a pastor to plunge God’s faithful people into more of the depths of the fullness of God’s reigning Son and more of our life in him! Plunging was my mission throughout this entire summer.

Don’t forget that currently, in American Christianity, the majority of members of most congregations get direct spiritual input of one sort or another for only 30 minutes a week—THIRTY minutes out of every SEVEN days! Think about that. What’s wrong with this picture?

Therefore, that being the case, that half-hour sermon each week is priceless. It is the one opportunity for most believers to become engaged from their hearts with fresh truths about the PERSON who is the ultimate fulfillment of their lives.

Thus, if they do not leave after those thirty minutes with a little bit larger vision of Christ and greater reasons to put their hope in him, then whatever else happens in that worship service, the church has failed them. Most of all, it has failed our Savior.

My prayer for the church body I’ve shared with the past three months was this: That by this fall, through the power of the Spirit of God, they would become sufficiently saturated with a grander vision of our Lord Jesus Christ so that none of us would ever want to go back to where we were before in our walk with King Jesus, both individually and together.

Let me state it once more: This summer, I was not simply preaching Christ. Rather, I was seeking to preach all of us into MORE of Christ. And that needs to continue—everywhere. In Christ, as Ephesians 3:8 reminds us, there are “inexhaustible riches.” Talk about being overwhelmed! So how can we ever stop magnifying him—enlarging him—to one another? We need to help each other “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18-19).

Being overwhelmed with Jesus lies at the very heart of true disciple-making and spiritual growth. Everything else flows from that. As believers, all of us MUST help each other to know MORE of our Lord Jesus Christ and become MORE for him!

INVITATION: Take a look at the album graphic we created to portray the 97 snapshots HERE. Videos and podcasts of the summer series of sermons can be accessed at the church website HERE.