God is at work in your enemy’s heart (do you have room in your theology for that?)

How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky, how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you, even your eyes, even your imagination. —Mary Oliver

This past Sunday I preached a message entitled The Princess And The Basket. Yes, it was the story of Moses and the circumstances surrounding his birth, but I told it with a primary focus on the women in the story… Jochebed, Miriam, Shiphrah, Puah, and Bithiah.

Bithiah (Pharaoh’s daughter) was the one who found the basket in the river with baby Moses wrapped up in it. Knowing he was a Hebrew child (and that her father had signed an executive order requiring the killing of all newborn Hebrew boys), she decided to adopt him as her own and raise him in the Egyptian royal palace.

At this point in the sermon, I said:

God is at work. God is at work in your life. God is at work everywhere. The Spirit of God is everywhere. God’s Spirit is wild and untamed. I mean, you can try to box God up all you want, but… good luck with that.

God was at work in Bithiah’s heart before baby Moses floated down the river. Do you see the significance of this?

It’s crazy. God is at work in your enemy’s heart.

Do you have room in your theology for that?

God is at work all over. Everywhere. God is working down the street, in the bad part of town, in the gang member and the drug dealer, in the embezzler and in the tax evader, in the bigot and the racist and the prostitute. God is working in the heart of the up-and-coming and the down-and-out.

You can’t find a place where God isn’t already at work!

Here’s something to consider: The church has often understood itself to be taking “God into a godless world.” But what if what God is wanting us to do is to follow God into a world that God is already redeeming? (note: thanks Rohadi for this thought)

Here’s what I’m driving at… if we constantly look out there and think, “Ew, gross. Such a godless place,” then we will likely be rooting for its destruction, for their destruction.

But if we look out there and think, “Hmmmm. I wonder what God is up to now? I wonder whose heart God is speaking to? I wonder what God is redeeming today?” then we might just have eyes to see.