Does God Make His People "Jump the Shark"?

Surely you know what it means to jump the shark. It came about dur­ing the fifth sea­son of Happy Days, one of the most iconic shows ever, when Richie Cun­ning­ham and his fam­ily vis­ited Los Ange­les. Fonzie, the ultra-​cool side­kick of the fam­ily was there and entered a side show to water-​ski over a shark.

Rat­ings were appar­ently declin­ing for the show, and they hoped Fonzie in his leather jacket, jump­ing over a shark, would help. It didn’t.

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Jump­ing the shark has come to mean in our cul­ture, a way to get the audience’s atten­tion back on focus. It’s a way to make peo­ple real­ize that some­thing is impor­tant again. Unfor­tu­nately, after the “shark jump­ing,” the peo­ple who do so typ­i­cally go unno­ticed and fade into obliv­ion afterwards.

For instance, there’s a huge inter­net debate on when your favorite TV show jumped the shark. Did “Friends” jump the shark when Rachel and Joey got together?

So, I started won­der­ing, does God make His peo­ple jump the shark? Did “Lost” jump the shark after the first sea­son? Did “Jer­sey Shore” jump the shark after the first episode?

But here’s the real ques­tion: Does God make His peo­ple jump the shark? Does He put them in impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tions to see them suc­ceed, to gain atten­tion then only see their stars fade after that? Inter­est­ing question.

But that ques­tion would have to assume God is malev­o­lent, with a Hol­ly­wood writer men­tal­ity, who wants to replace His peo­ple with the next set of fresh faces to carry about His mis­sions, right? Wrong. The right state­ment is this: God places us in posi­tions to do His work, His way, in His time and for His purposes.

For I con­sider that the suf­fer­ings of this present time are not worth com­par­ing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the cre­ation waits with eager long­ing for the reveal­ing of the sons of God. For the cre­ation was sub­jected to futil­ity, not will­ingly, but because of him who sub­jected it, in hope that the cre­ation itself will be set free from its bondage to cor­rup­tion and obtain the free­dom of the glory of the chil­dren of God. For we know that the whole cre­ation has been groan­ing together in the pains of child­birth until now. And not only the cre­ation, but we our­selves, who have the first­fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adop­tion as sons, the redemp­tion of our bod­ies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:18 – 25 ESV)

Paul wasn’t wait­ing for suc­cess. He was wait­ing for God to work out what God had for His life. And He even­tu­ally did.

Let’s take a moment to look at some of the big moments in the lives of God’s people.

1 Kings 18 shows us an encounter between Eli­jah and the priests of Baal. It’s rather humor­ous in some parts. They dance around their altar, wait­ing for Baal to light it on fire. As these 850 priests dance around wait­ing for fire, Eli­jah who believes in the true God muses, “Maybe he’s asleep? Maybe he went to the bath­room?” (v. 27)

Finally, Eli­jah has his altar doused with bucket after bucket with water. Then he called out to God and this hap­pened: And at the time of the offer­ing of the obla­tion, Eli­jah the prophet came near and said, “O LORD, God of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your ser­vant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this peo­ple may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” Then the fire of the LORD fell and con­sumed the burnt offer­ing and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.
(1 Kings 18:36 – 38 ESV)

Then, after­wards, Eli­jah killed all the priests of Baal. A chap­ter later, we find Eli­jah on the run. God says, “Who are you run­ning from?” He says, “Jezebel.” So, Eli­jah could stand boldly against the priests of a false God but couldn’t stand against one of the most feared women of all time? Did God place him in a “jump the shark moment?”

No, Elijah’s faith became weak when he took his eyes off God.

Want another one? I thought you might. How about the Apos­tle Peter? He stood by Christ at the cru­ci­fix­ion. He swore to go wher­ever Christ took him and to die like He did. But Christ told Peter he would deny him three times. And he did. Was Peter led into a “jump the shark moment” never to be heard of again? To see his apos­tolic sta­tus ruined? Nope. Peter had wavered in his faith.

In John 2o, Christ restored him. And in Acts 2, we see a pow­er­ful ser­mon from Peter, denounc­ing those who cru­ci­fied Christ: Let all the house of Israel there­fore know for cer­tain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you cru­ci­fied.” Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apos­tles, “Broth­ers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be bap­tized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the for­give­ness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your chil­dren and for all who are far off, every­one whom the Lord our God calls to him­self.” And with many other words he bore wit­ness and con­tin­ued to exhort them, say­ing, “Save your­selves from this crooked gen­er­a­tion.”
(Acts 2:36 – 40 ESV)

Peter was empow­ered again by the Spirit of God. He had not jumped the shark. He had renewed his faith and car­ried on.

Imag­ine Moses as He faced Pharaoh and led the Israelites across the Red Sea, only to sin in the wilder­ness. Or David, a man after God’s own heart who had led so well only to fall into adul­tery then even­tu­ally repent. Had they jumped the shark?

No, God would not have it. God watches after His lead­ers. He restores them. He calls them back to their posi­tions. All of us sin and need His great grace after we fail mis­er­ably. In the eyes of the world, sure, we “jump the shark.” But in the eyes of God, He turns our fail­ure into a mes­sage. A mes­sage about how great and incom­pa­ra­ble He is.

I think today of pas­tors and church planters I talk to. Some say, “Well, I’m doing this whether it works or not. If only 200 peo­ple show up, I guess it’s going to be a fail­ure.”

Really? Jere­miah went through his min­istry with two con­verts at best. Maybe all of our evan­ge­lism and out­reach is only to reach two or three peo­ple God mea­sures suc­cess much dif­fer­ently than we do. When Christ was cru­ci­fied, He only had a hand­ful of fol­low­ers. In fact, many times dur­ing His min­istry, all He had were His dis­ci­ples. Suc­cess is not mea­sured by num­bers, but by what God had planned for us when He gave us the idea for our ven­ture. If we mea­sure suc­cess by num­bers, we are truly, “jump­ing the shark.”

He uses our bro­ken­ness to reach thou­sands. And that’s how it should be.

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Ray Car­roll is author of “Fallen Pas­tor: Find­ing Restora­tion in a Bro­ken World.”