Do Something Beautiful: The Story of Everything and a Guide to Finding Your Place In It

By York Moore and Ed Stetzer

Do you find yourself chasing “something more”?

We are people seized by longings we can’t seem to satisfy. It’s built into us—in our very bones. We were created with an innate desire to be a part of a world and a story bigger than ours. Sadly, however, most of us spend our lives blind to the fact that this story and this world are right in front of us, beckoning to us to come and play our part. We keep on with our focused, relentless pursuit of everything else and find ourselves dissatisfied.

In Do Something Beautiful, York Moore shows you how to:

• reframe your own story and begin seeing God’s story breaking into your life in the everyday moments
• leave behind mediocrity and be a part of that beautiful story, and
• make your life count for something that matters.

Don’t give up on your “something more.” Chase it better. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Release date: Jul 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9780802496591

Book preview

Praise for Do Something Beautiful

In a world of despair, injustice, and hopelessness, Moore reminds us of the beauty of the cross and challenges us to reflect that beauty in our everyday lives and in our everyday relationships. Do Something Beautiful is a must-read guide to finding your place in God’s story.

TOM LIN

President/CEO of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

This book presents us with a beautifully framed call to live a beautiful and impactful life for Jesus. York brings a distinctly missional approach to abroad range of life’s pursuits and interests, and he does it is a way that is eminently doable and deeply appealing. A worthy read.

ALAN HIRSCH

Founder of Forge International, 100 Movements, and the 5Q Collective

In Do Something Beautiful, York Moore has both told his personal story while explaining the story of everything. Moore not only helps us understand concepts from Scripture like righteousness, justice, beauty, and mercy, but helps us long to experience them and describes practical ways we share them with others.

STEVE DOUGLAS

President of Cru

In a world filled with noise, York Moore is a prophetic voice with a burning passion for Jesus, justice, and people. More than another preacher, York has given his life to fight for the voiceless, marginalized, and build bridges to bring glimpses of God’s Kingdom to earth. Do Something Beautiful is more than a book. It’s an invitation into the story of God, who is making all things new. Spending time with York has enriched, and changed my life, and I believe this book can change yours to see a God who is bigger, better, and more beautiful than your wildest dreams. And the best part … He wants to use you! In a world full of division, pain, and brokenness, let’s do something beautiful."

NICK HALL

Evangelist, Founder of PULSE and CEO of the US Lausanne Committee

York’s book Do Something Beautiful has been a joy to read! He offers great perspective for our current generation’s longing to be a part of the bigger story. Using honest and transparent personal stories, York beautifully portrays the Gospel as the foundation to that inner longing for true beauty. Personally, I love how he did not try to avoid the pain in his own life or those around him, but rather embraced it in order to find God in the midst of pain-that we must be willing to embrace the cost, however high, to do something truly beautiful. The stories he tells will stir your heart to do something beautiful as you walk with Jesus! There is a longing for true revival and awakening all across the earth and its stories and books like these that will provide tools for how to walk in the radical love of Jesus and see revival and awakening!

LINDY AND THE CIRCUIT RIDERS

© 2018 by R. YORK MOORE

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Emphasis in Scripture has been added.

Some details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Edited by Randall Payleitner

Interior and cover design: Erik M. Peterson

Cover image of hot-air balloons copyright © 2016 by Tanachot / iStock (619250406). All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Moore, R. York, 1969- author.

Title: Do something beautiful : the story of everything and a guide to finding your place in it / R. York Moore.

Description: Chicago : Moody Publishers, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018010738 (print) | LCCN 2018023473 (ebook) | ISBN 9780802496591 (ebook) | ISBN 9780802417121

Subjects: LCSH: Christian life.

Classification: LCC BV4501.3 (ebook) | LCC BV4501.3 .M66565 2018 (print) | DDC 248.4--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018010738

ISBN: 978-0-8024-1712-1

We hope you enjoy this book from Moody Publishers. Our goal is to provide high-quality, thought-provoking books and products that connect truth to your real needs and challenges. For more information on other books and products written and produced from a biblical perspective, go to www.moodypublishers.com or write to:

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Printed in the United States of America

TO MY MOM, BECAUSE YOU TAUGHT ME TO MARVEL AT THE WORLD, TO FIND BEAUTY AND PURSUE WHAT IS GOOD, EVEN WHEN EVERYTHING AROUND US WAS OTHERWISE.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: A World Made Right

CHAPTER 2: Do Something Right

CHAPTER 3: A World Made Beautiful

CHAPTER 4: Do Something Beautiful

CHAPTER 5: A World Brought Together

CHAPTER 6: Do Something Together

CONCLUSION: The Righteous and Beautiful Community

APPENDIX A: Finding a Local Church

APPENDIX B: Definitions of Words Used throughout the Text

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

MORE FROM THE PUBLISHER

Friend,

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The Moody Publishers Team

Dr. Cornelius Plantinga, a great theologian and former president of Calvin Seminary, once wrote a book on sin titled Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be. It’s a powerful treatise on sin and shalom, and I cannot think of a better phrase to describe the visceral feeling that we find ourselves in as we navigate through this world we find ourselves in today.

As we look to the world around us, often dark, we discern that even a world that does not know the nuances of hamartiology (the study of sin) can feel the pangs of the world’s brokenness, fracturing, and can identify that gut feeling of the loss of innocence. This brokenness is coming to the surface now more than ever, and our response to this brokenness is crucial. How Christians bring clarity in the midst of a world of confusion will determine much for the witness of Jesus in the world in our generation.

But there is much hope in the world. Roy Hession, in his work We Would See Jesus, says, The glorious, central fact of Christianity is that God has made a full and final revelation of Himself in Jesus which has made Him understandable, accessible, and desirable to the simplest and most fearful of us.

This is infinitely attractive and profoundly glorious. We have access to this salvation in the midst of a world gone wrong and a universe gone sideways. And York Moore shows us the true solution that the narrative into healing, wholeness, and flourishing is found in the light of Jesus. Jesus’ beautiful story encompasses and wraps up what we see in the world. Moore helps us get a glimpse of that light, that narrative, and that beauty that is pervading the world in opposition to the darkness.

Moore helps guide us to some of these healing paths through weaving in personal narrative, solid biblical wisdom, and pointing us to Jesus and His narrative that runs counterintuitive and countercultural to the world around us. It doesn’t simply stay theoretical; Moore shows us how Jesus moves into the real world and connects us with one another as well. We need someone to adjust the lens on how we see brokenness properly framed with the beauty of Jesus and His mission for the world, and York Moore is the man for the job.

God’s story is a world becoming right again, made whole by the One who lived, loved, died, and resurrected to bring us into a great exchange: our sin for His perfection, our brokenness for His wholeness, our death for His life. York Moore shows us that this message of a world becoming right again is the type of message that can shine like a firefly in a dark and despondent world that will one day be the way it’s supposed to be.

ED STETZER

Billy Graham Distinguished Chair, Wheaton College 

Within every person is an undeniable longing we can never totally shake. This book is about that longing. I want to give names to the contours of it and why you feel it, and show you how that longing can begin to be satisfied through understanding your place in the story of everything. So, let’s start with an overview. Everyone longs for a world made right, a world of beauty and joy, of togetherness, where things are right and good. It is no coincidence that this is a near-universal desire throughout time because it is what we have been made for. We’ve been made for a righteous and beautiful community, and while the desire for that reality is within us, we live in a world that is not right, far from beautiful, and fragmented. Just look around at the poverty, slavery, injustice, death, and depression surrounding you every day. Doesn’t something in you suspect that there must be more than this?

A world free from injustice, full of purpose and bursting with beauty may seem like a fantasy, but I believe all of them will come true in the story of God one day. I would like to tell you about that story and help you find your place in it. You have a place in a grand story, a sweeping epic of love, joy, peace, and celebration. The story I’d like to invite you into is one of a world made right and beautiful, where everyone is brought together around God’s resources and God Himself! It is no fantasy—it is a story of power, a transformational story that has been changing people for thousands of years. Before we consider this grand epic and your place in it, I want to tell you about my very first steps into the story of everything.

I’ll never forget that ordinary day in late summer when light from another world came to my home. I was seven years old and we had just moved into our first real house. Before that, my family had been homeless off and on for the early years of my life. Living in and out of cars, abandoned homes, and random apartments seemed like an ordinary, normal way to live—as a child, I didn’t know much better. That summer, however, my parents managed to get enough money together to rent what my brothers and I have come to refer to as the farmhouse. It was nothing more than an old rundown house at the end of an old rundown street, but as I would learn, it was a place filled with wonder and magic.

The farmhouse had an old, musty, collapsing barn next to a field of mud. The muddy field was filled with remnants of a time gone by when the previous occupants grew corn and potatoes. Our life of poverty and displacement seemed as if it had come to an end with that little farmhouse. We moved in late into the summer and I’ll never forget the first truly ordinary day of play. The day was hot and salty. My seven-year-old cheeks streamed with sweat and grit from a long day of playing in the field of mud and in that old barn. We had spent the entire day climbing trees, playing hide and seek, feeding bugs to spiders, and throwing mud and vegetables at each other. It was a dirty and hot day I’ll remember forever! As the day ended and dusk fell, our mother called us inside. While we reluctantly lumbered toward the door, something magical began to happen. At the very end of that ordinary day, above that ordinary field, a sign of wonder began to appear just as night fell.

In the distance, I could hear ringing and clicking, a strange buzz that I’ve now come to know as a cicada bug. Stars began to fill the reddish-blue sky. It seemed as if the world had come to a holy hush for a moment of magic. Another world invaded that field, eclipsing the sweat and the grit and the mud. That invasion ushered us into a moment of wonder, awe, and joy that has marked me to this day. There it was, flickering over the field—blips of light, strange glows of green speckled above the mud and corn. In a trancelike state, my brothers and I stared into the night as that ordinary field flickered into an extraordinary stage of light and wonder. We grabbed an old Mason jar from the barn and ran into the field to capture light in a bottle. Within a few minutes we had a dozen or so phosphorous bugs glistening in our jars. We went yelling, Mom! Our new house is magic! Look at these bugs with butts of light! With a laugh, our mother began to explain what these extraordinary creatures were. As reasonable and scientifically sound as her explanation was, at the age of seven they were still magic to me.

In fact, now some forty-plus years later, whenever a field comes alive with little lights at dusk, my mind, my heart, my soul are connected to that moment when I was sure that the world was filled with magic. Fireflies to me are like an artifact from another world, something so wondrous I find it hard to believe they are just a normal, natural part of this world. Just maybe they are not. The fireflies stir that longing in us for magic, for a better world. Even more than that, they’re a sign that the world I’m longing for—that we’re all longing for—is real and interrupts and breaks into our world for brief moments full of light. The fireflies are harbingers of a world to come: a world that is invading ours, a world that is supposed to be and one day will be. When we get glimpses of such a world, I wonder, What does my life today have to do with the bigger picture of it all?

THE STORY OF EVERYTHING IS ALL AROUND US

The story of everything is unfolding all around us every day. Sometimes