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CALLED - EQUIPPED - SENT
Last year I shared with the leadership that our focus as a church is to take people from where they are to where God wants them to be. On the surface, that comes across as a very nebulous statement but when you understand how important the process is to the end result, you will see this statement in a different light.
You see, many of us have spent years trying to serve God with our gifts and abilities. We have written mission statements and spent hours trying to envision a preferred future that would bring glory to God and the Kingdom. The only problem is, we’re big on our ideas and short on listening for God’s direction and leadership in our lives.
When you think about it, there really isn’t any idea that you or I can create, that blows God away. That is because He is all knowing and we are extremely limited in our knowledge in comparison. Now, couple that with the fact that God already had a plan devised for my life, long before I was born.
“And in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.” Ps 139:16
So, why am I spending so much time trying to create a plan for God when He already has a plan for me? In everyday terms, it’s the difference between me trying to create a preferred future for the Kingdom and my taking time to recognize what God is desiring to do or is already doing, and then just getting in alignment with Him.
That is exactly what Jesus did every day while he lived on the earth. He started each day, praying, and ask the Father to bring to fulfillment the plans that God had set in place from the beginning.
If that is true, then we need to spend more time listening to God’s voice and recognize what God is up to in the last days.
One thing we know for sure, Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Then just before His ascension, He told his disciples that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them and they would be His witnesses to their families, their community and even the world!
It is very clear in scripture that every born-again believer is called to be a witness for Jesus Christ in his/her sphere of influence and beyond. If you are wondering what God’s will is for you, stop your quest for the unknown! Start with what God has made obvious to us all! You are to be a witness for Jesus Christ!
If there is one place I am sure God wants us to be, it is engaged in sharing God’s love and message of hope with people.
That is why our primary focus in 2010 is every believer becoming a personal witness for Jesus Christ!
There is no higher call than to share the love of God with lost and disenfranchised people.
This focus of being witnesses fits our overall vision to a tee.
The process we use to move people to God’s agenda for their life is threefold:
- REACHING lost people with the Gospel
- TEACHING every believer
- RELEASING an army of ministers to serve
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10
Our goal is to see every believer at First Church of God loving, learning and living!
- LOVING GOD AND PEOPLE (The Great Commandment)
- LEARNING FROM GOD’S WORD (Ephesians 4:11-16)
- LIVING BY FULFILLING GOD’S AGENDA FOR MY LIFE (Eph. 2:10)
In 2010, our vision focus is to be a personal witness for Jesus Christ in my sphere of influence and beyond.
How do we get there? By recognizing three things:
- I’M CALLED – Accept God’s call to be a witness.
- I’M EQUIPPED – Receive training to be a witness.
- I’M SENT – Actively engage as a witness for Jesus Christ.
Basic Training in 2010:
CALLED – We will be challenged from God’s word this year, to be personal witnesses. Our Missions Weekend guest speaker is Mark Cahill. Mark will challenge us to personal evangelism. Missions Weekend is March 20-21.
EQUIPPED – We will provide a Sunday School and Life Group curriculum that helps people in a very practical way to gain confidence and boldness to be personal witnesses. On Sunday afternoon from 3:00-6:00pm, Missions Weekend, Mark Cahill will provide three conferences to help equip us for personal evangelism.
SENT – We will develop specific witnessing teams and opportunities for you to go and share your faith with others. We will utilize our web site as a tool for sharing and empowerment by listing testimonials that members of the body have experienced as they trusted the Holy Spirit and shared their faith. We will also hear personal stories in our services, how God is moving by His Spirit and people are coming to Christ! The stories are already coming in before we even get started! We also plan to have outreach events planned where people can share the Gospel with others. Another possibility is local missions trips in our community where we can share the love of God with those in need.
It is interesting to me how God begins to bring things into place when we recognize what He is doing in our lives and get on board with Him. Last weekend, I was planning to share another message in our series on “Church God’s Way” but God interrupted our plan and gave us a far better plan. We heard from John James, former lead singer for the Newsboys, a Christian band. I didn’t know that John would share such a powerful and poignant message on evangelism but it was exactly what we needed to hear and came at the perfect time!
As we launch this March into a strong evangelism push, my prayer is that you will recognize that you are called of God, you are willing to be equipped, and that you are being sent by God to share the Good News of Christ with the lost of our community and beyond!
If God has begun to burden your heart for this cause and has given you insight into how we can penetrate our community with the Gospel, I would like to hear about it. I know that to reach our community God will raise up many leaders who will be on the vanguard of this massive effort. Pray that God would raise up the leaders and ask don’t forget to ask Him if He is calling you to be a leader!
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