Andrew Zimmerman preaches on engaging with God through wonder and curiosity
A sermon delivered at Rivers Apostolic Centre by Andrew Zimmerman on being "engaged in wonder" — drawing on the lives of Abraham, Moses, and Paul to call the congregation to disengage from negative mindsets and re-engage with God.
Summary
Andrew Zimmerman delivers a sermon centred on the theme of wonder and curiosity as essential postures for engaging with God. He draws on the biblical accounts of Abraham, Moses, and the Apostle Paul to illustrate how God consistently invites people out of limited, inward-focused thinking and into a broader, wonder-filled encounter with Him. Zimmerman argues that before a person can truly engage with God, they must first disengage — from cycles of negative thinking, from people who drain spiritual atmosphere, and from fleshly behaviours that produce unrighteousness. The sermon closes with a direct call to action, inviting the congregation to make a decisive move forward in their faith rather than remaining stuck between the past and the promise.
The sermon also draws on Psalm 8 as a meditation on God's majesty and humanity's God-given dignity, and references a quote from William Blake ('To see a world in a grain of sand...') to frame the theme of wonder. Isaac Watts' hymn 'When I Survey the Wondrous Cross' is presented as a model of wonder-filled worship, written after Watts complained to his father — who was the church pastor — that church songs were dull and failing to engage worshippers.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: The Theme of Wonder and Curiosity
Andrew Zimmerman: What I felt from the Lord today was an interesting topic or heartbeat to share on, and it's in relation to being engaged in wonder. To be engaged in wonder. The word that I kept looking into was curiosity and wonder. We often say curiosity killed the cat — very good. But wonder — let me read to you what wonder is. Wonder is a feeling of surprise. Everybody, let your eyes show surprise. It's deep admiration. It's a desire to know something or someone and to see the remarkable. The ability to see the remarkable. Curiosity also goes on to say it's an eager desire to learn, to explore, or to understand something. To discover new possibilities and expand into new places.
I was with an eighty-year-old this week in my office, and I was sharing with her about AI and how you can use AI to help you do things. At eighty, she wrote notes, and she said, "That's great. I'm going to go home and learn about that." And I noticed in her a trait to be a learner — to be intrigued, to be curious, to have wonder. Engaged in the wonder of God.
The Nature of God and the Foundation of Worship
Worship, as we were doing this morning, giving to God is ascribing Him the glory in relation to the attributes of His nature. His nature deserves our praise. His nature demands our praise. And yet He conceals Himself so that we are not pressured to do that, but we choose to. How meek and amazing is our eternal God — that His nature demands our praise and our adoration, and yet He hides Himself so that we may seek Him to find Him.
He is worthy. He deserves worship because of His worthiness. He is faithful. He deserves our praise for this part of His nature. He is perfect in His mercy. He deserves my worship for His mercy. There is not a second that goes by that God goes without praise and adoration. Without Him, the earth would stop, the process of life would cease, and you wouldn't be doing so well without Him. By Him, through Him, and for Him.
I'm going to get in and talk to you today about Moses and Abraham, and I want to look at how God engaged with these men — also Paul — and how the Lord wants to engage us. He wants to engage us.
The Attributes of God
Just close your eyes and enter in. God is infinite. This means He is limitless, having no bounds in space, no limits in power, and no limits in time. Our God is eternal. He exists without beginning or end. He is outside of all temporal constraints. Isn't that amazing? He is omnipresent, meaning He is everywhere all the time. He is omnipotent — all-powerful, with unlimited ability to act according to His will. He is omniscient — all-knowing, possessing complete knowledge of the past, the present, and the future. He is immutable — unchanging in His essence, unchanging in His character, and unchanging in His promise. Praise the Lord.
Our God is more powerful than the communist government of China. And all your phones are listening, and I'll say it again — He is more powerful than the communist government of China. He is more powerful than all of the world's conflicts combined. He is bigger than Australia's one trillion dollars worth of national debt. Isn't that great? This is amazing news. And God's going to give this nation wisdom and skill to get out of that. The Lord is faster than all of the supercomputers and AI that run the world. He is more loving and kind than we could ever experience.
I was reading a story this week — a quote — and it was along these lines: that often when you go to ask life's biggest questions, it's interesting how the smallest details of life get revealed to you. So in the process of the big questions and the bigness of God, He leads us to the little. We've been learning about the seed. How gracious — even for Adam, when he was cursed in the garden because of sin, God gave him the task of farming, so that every day he would be reminded of the power of the seed. He also had to have the struggle with the weed. Oh, how we need a Saviour to deliver us.
Isaac Watts and "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross"
I'm going to play a little bit later a song by Isaac Watts from the 1700s. Isaac Watts was in England and he complained to his dad, who was the church pastor, "Dad, these songs are boring. They don't engage us. They're not even about God." And his dad said, "Well, I challenge you to change that." So Isaac went to his room, apparently, and spent one hour, and he wrote a song. Let me read to you the words.
When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of glory died, my riches gain I count but loss, and I pour contempt on all my pride.
Verse two:
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, save in the death of Christ, my God. All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to your blood.
Verse three:
See from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did ever such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Verse four:
Were the whole realm of nature mine — I'll just pause there. For those who don't understand that older style of English, that means if you owned everything on earth, you had everything at your disposal, this would be an offering far too small — love so amazing, love so divine, demands my soul, my life, and my all.
Selah.
William Blake and Psalm 8
Here's a quote from William Blake: "To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour."
Turn with me to Psalm 8. If you don't want to go there, just let me read it to you. Psalm 8, verse 1. For the leader, a Psalm of David. I'm reading from the Jewish Bible.
Adonai, our Lord, how glorious is your name throughout all of the earth. The fame of your majesty spreads even above the heavens. From the mouth of babies and infants at the breast, you have established strength because of your foes, in order that you might silence the enemy.
God uses babies to silence the enemy.
When I look at your heavens and the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you set in place, what are we, mere mortals, that you concern yourself with us? And us humans, that you would even care about us. But you made man a little lower than the angels, and you crowned him with glory and honor.
Just say, "I am crowned with glory and honor." That's way better than Chanel No. 5. Come on, Aaron. That's way better than Hugo Boss. Can you just say this after me? "I am wonderfully made." Let's say this together: "He thinks I'm wonderful."
You had him rule what your hands have made. You put everything under their feet — sheep and oxen, all of them, also the animals in the wild, the birds in the air, the fish in the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the sea. Adonai, our Lord, how glorious is your name throughout all the earth.
Six Types of Engagement
The word engage means to connect with, to involve in, to interlock with something or someone. Here are six types of engagement.
Number one — your attention and your interest can be engaged: to capture someone's interest, to draw them into a conversation.
Number two — activities and participation: to take part in something, to engage in, to deal seriously with an issue, to engage in community service.
Number three — employment: to hire and book someone's services. We need to engage a plumber. Who needs a plumber? You need to engage a plumber. You can't just engage Google or YouTube. You can try.
Number four — another form of engagement is our commitments and our promises: to make a formal pledge, most often to marry.
Number five — in physics and mechanics, to make moving parts mesh together, they must be engaged. Who remembers manual driving? Who of the young adults has a manual licence? Oh — the last of the breed right there. I said to my daughter Abby, "Dylan, do you think you'll learn manual?" She goes, "Dad, there won't be any manual cars in the next four years." She'll probably have her VR set on and order something and that will do the driving.
Number six — conflict and combat: to engage with an opponent. A troop moves forward to engage with the enemy. We engage with the enemy.
Abraham: Disengaging the Mindset to Engage with Promise
So this word engage — just leaning into it — and Genesis 15 is where I want to go. This is where Abraham is actually engaged in his mind with a futile argument, and he's got a cycle of thinking going on, and it's around this theme: I'm too old, I've missed the boat, I'm not going to get it, I've missed my chance. It's gone. So he's engaged with a mindset. Everybody say, "a mindset."
And I feel the Lord wants to challenge us today that we can't engage in wonder till we disengage with a cycle of negative thinking — with a pattern of mindset that keeps you in a limited place and robs you and God of possibilities, where I am more inclined to see what is not happening than to celebrate that God is moving right now, and I just might not be able to see it because it's so small, so micro, in a micro form — or because in the spiritual realm, my natural mind and my flesh blind me from seeing. So we need to disengage the mindset, but we also need to do something with our flesh. We're going to talk about that.
Genesis 15, verse 5. Turn to your neighbour and say, "You are still peculiar to me, and I'm starting to wonder about you." You should be asking questions. Genesis 15 — the father of our faith. God bless Abraham, a man like us. Verse 3:
And Abram said, "Since you have given me no offspring and no one born in my house to be my heir—" then behold, the word of the Lord came to him saying, "This man will not be your heir, but one will come from your own body. He shall be your heir."
Verse 5:
And God took Abraham outside and said, "Now look up and look toward the heavens and count the stars."
When we are so caught up with the mold inside the tent, we need to get outside and get caught up in wonder at what is way bigger than us and our connection to the wonder of God. The heavens are declaring to us, invitationally, "Engage with God." Yet I am caught up with, "Why is the light flickering in the tent? Who left the fly screen open and there's a mozzie in here — who is responsible?"
So God took him outside and said, "Now look towards the heavens, look up, count the stars if you are able to count them." God is not wanting Abraham to actually fulfil that job. He says, "If you can" — but He's engaging him in something. And then He said to him, "So shall your descendants be."
God's promise is not confined to our mindset. God's promise exists outside of our thinking, in a realm that is limitless, and He's inviting you in to engage. Wouldn't it change up your prayer time tomorrow morning if you were thinking that the prayers you were praying right there were impacting generations to come after you?
So Abraham, in looking up, stepped into the wonder of God and engaged in a conversation. He received a promise. The pathway to the promise came through wonder. So Abraham had to first disengage so that he could engage.
Abraham at the Threshold — Genesis 18
Genesis 18. If we go to the passage around verse 3. So Abraham is now in the tent again — but he's not in the tent. Guess where he's standing? Right at the doorway. And he's living in a place where he's both in the tent but out in the promise. So we can see a shift. He's moved from dwelling in the mindset to now being at the edge of a threshold. Who's at the edge of a threshold right now in your personal life? I believe corporately, Rivers, we're at the edge of a place in God.
Verse 2:
When he lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him. And when he saw them, he ran from the tent. And once he met with them, he bowed himself to the earth and he said, "My Lord, now if I've found favour in your sight, please don't pass by your servant. Please let a little bit of water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree."
So God Most High becomes God Most Nigh and delivers to Abraham and Sarah the promise of the baby. He didn't miss his opportunity to engage in conversation and dialogue. If he was in the tent, God would have passed by. Well, we're not sure — but I'm for my story, and I'm going to take that position.
Moses at the Burning Bush — Exodus 3
Moses. Let's jump into Moses for a quick minute. Exodus 3. Famous story. Moses is on the backside of the desert, looking after the sheep. I'll start at verse 1.
Now Moses was pastoring the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, which was the mountain of God.
Verse 2 — the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. And Moses said:
"I must turn aside now and see the marvellous sight, why the bush is not burned up." When the Lord saw that he had turned aside—
everybody say, "when the Lord saw that he had turned" — God called to him and said from the midst of the bush, "Moses, Moses." And Moses said, "Here I am."
Moses is doing ordinary work, tending sheep at the back of the desert, out of the eyes of man, doing what seems to be the mundane. But he is engaged in a process of learning character, learning to look after sheep. Is this Moses' career? Is he called to be a shepherd forever? No, it's a stepping stone. Moses chooses to turn aside and look. God speaks only after Moses turns. Again, similar to Abraham — once he moved out, God spoke. When Moses turned, God spoke. And Moses answers, "Here I am."
Moses takes off his sandals in the presence of the Lord and engages with God in reverence and in awe and in wonder. Who remembers the Prince of Egypt movie? I actually think in that particular scene, God says, "You will do my wonders." The wonder of God. Moses wondered why the bush didn't stop burning. God spoke out of the limitless into the heart of Moses and awakened him to the mission that was very impossible. Praise the Lord. Wonderful God.
St. Francis of Assisi and the Ordinary Path to the Impossible
St. Francis of Assisi. One of the places that my wife and I are going to in Italy will be to see the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. And if you don't know who St. Francis is or was — a real peculiar man. He was known for engaging with God's creation. Animals would just show up. He'd have things happen with creation that were wonderful and amazing, and most often it was not for any purpose other than to bring wonder — a sign and a wonder. I've been intrigued by this man quite a lot.
Here are two quotes from him. "He who works with his hands and with his head and with his heart is truly an artist." — St. Francis of Assisi.
His second quote: "Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible, then suddenly you are doing the impossible." Isn't that awesome? Suddenly you're doing the impossible. Have you experienced that in your life? You're just doing the day-to-day, the ordinary. You're in your call. You're in your assignment. You're engaged in the things of the Lord. And suddenly the impossible happens. Friends, God wants to break into our ordinary.
The Hymn: "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross"
How do we begin to engage with this? I want to play this song now — the one that I read out earlier to you — and the lyrics are going to be up on the screen. Sing along if you know it, but let's just enter in to what these words are sharing with us, looking upon Jesus on the cross in wonder and awe. What on earth happened on that cross? Whatever happened on that cross involves me and involves you, and we are forever changed because of that. May we never lose the wonder of our Jesus and the cross and His resurrection. So let's enter in and have a listen.
My riches gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, save in the death of Christ my God. All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His blood. See from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown? Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.
Paul's Call in Philippians 3 — Pressing Forward
Today is an invitation to wonder, to engage back with the Lord. There's something about our first love and the mystery of relationship with the Lord — that when we're engaged in that place, we can't come out of that place easily. Paul said in Philippians 3, verses 10 to 14:
"I want to know Christ. I want to know the power of His resurrection. I somehow want to understand the sufferings and become like Him in His death, and so somehow attain to this resurrection. Not that I've already obtained it or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take a hold of that which Christ Jesus took a hold of me."
When did God grab you? When did He get you? When did His grip take your heart? When did He, through breathtaking wonder and awe, come into your life? The Lord wants to re-engage with you. The key is here:
"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken a hold of Him, but one thing I do — forgetting what is—" what? Behind. "And straining forward for what is ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize — the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
The Call to Action: Disengage and Re-Engage
So what's the call today? The call is to disengage with false argument. If that's you today, make a decision to disengage with every argument in your mind that never resolves, only takes energy away from you, and keeps you in a constant state of worry. Stop it. Disengage with that argument.
Number two — disassociate with people who are keeping you in a low atmosphere. They are filled with negativity and hopelessness, and you come under that feeling of despair. Stop it. Disassociate with these people and leave the conversation. Leave the message group. Leave the room. Because what's waiting for you is a fresh engagement with God and the promise on your life. It had to happen for Abraham with Lot. Sometimes it's family — that's the hardest.
Number three — stop feeding the flesh with activities and behaviours that are producing unrighteousness. Stop it. Starve the flesh and bring it to the cross and step back into a place of wonder with God.
Let's stand, and I'm going to let the worship team just create a space for us. And just in your own way, we're going to make time for you to come and just engage — actually disengage, or disengage and engage at the same time. And I just want to declare this. For those who are crunching gears, the Lord says the time for wavering between two places is done. It's time to make your decision. Are you going in reverse to the past, or are you going to go into first gear and move forward? The Lord says the time for wavering between two places is done. It's time to make your decision. Someone may pray with you. Someone might not pray with you. But just come. We welcome you. This is a safe place for you to respond to the Lord. Amen.