Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] In the early 20th century, there were these ships, the Queen Mary and the Normandy. They were these floating palaces.
[00:00:10] And they had a very utilitarian purpose. They were the most efficient way to get people from the United States across the North Atlantic to Europe.
[00:00:21] But that efficiency was challenged in the 1950s.
[00:00:25] What happened?
[00:00:27] The Boeing 707 happened. And it was an easier way, a more efficient way to get people across the North Atlantic. What used to take six days now took six hours in this North Atlantic became called. We started to call it the Pond because it was so easy for us to get over.
[00:00:48] So the shipping industry went into crisis. Some of these ships were scrapped.
[00:00:53] Some of them were mothballed. Some of them were converted in ways to just haul cattle and cargo across the Atlantic.
[00:01:02] But there were some innovative ship owners that came up with a new way to begin to generate revenue from their ships.
[00:01:13] Cruises.
[00:01:17] It was a different way to produce revenue. Revenue because they did something very different. The goal of a cruise was not to get anywhere. That's why they called these ocean liners. It was about getting from point A to point B. But with a cruise, you start and you end at the same place.
[00:01:34] The cruise was about being a destination, not transportation. You started and you ended at the same port. And the goal of a cruise was consumption.
[00:01:49] It wasn't travel, it was consumption. They wanted you to buy and consume products and services.
[00:01:55] These old liners, these old vehicles became the destination in and of themselves.
[00:02:02] Crossing the Atlantic was no longer the purpose. It was about cruising. Transportation was converted to consumption and comfort.
[00:02:10] And so the entertainment options just began to explode. Food, entertainment.
[00:02:17] Look at some of the pictures. It's a traveling entertainment piece. There are water slides and wave pools, but it was just a destination.
[00:02:32] Keep that metaphor in mind.
[00:02:36] Because some cultural things started to happen in the United states in the 1950s.
[00:02:41] The baby boom generation that had been religiously going to church began to separate themselves from the church. And so the church began to ask questions. How do we get people back to church?
[00:02:55] Not a bad question. We want people to show up.
[00:02:59] But oftentimes we thought about church as simply a destination.
[00:03:05] What can we do to just simply get people in the doors?
[00:03:09] Get people in the doors and make their life comfortable.
[00:03:14] But that's not what the church was ever intended for.
[00:03:18] The church was always intended to move people from point A to point B.
[00:03:24] Jesus wants his church to go somewhere. He wants to take us somewhere. He wants to take us from a place where we are distant from God, where we are deeply connected to Him.
[00:03:35] He wants it to Be a place where we can be distant from the people of God. But now we would be close and connected to the people of God.
[00:03:44] And sometimes we can be distant from the purpose, the mission of Jesus. But the church was designed to be a place for us to be about his purposes in the world.
[00:04:00] So in this series, Courtney mentioned it. We're talking about what does it mean to be an all in follower of Jesus. And we've mostly been looking at these invitations that Jesus gave to follow him and how in those invitations he defined what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. But today we're not going to look at an invitation. We're going to look at a commission.
[00:04:23] Sometimes the text of scripture that we're going to look at is called the Great Commission Commission. It was Jesus defining where it is that I want an all in follower of Jesus to go point A to point B. Where are we going?
[00:04:40] These are the last words of Jesus in the book of Matthew to his all in followers.
[00:04:48] Matthew, chapter 28, verses 18 to 20, sometimes referred to as the Great Commission.
[00:04:55] Then Jesus came to them and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
[00:05:02] Therefore, oh, therefore go and make disciples of all nations.
[00:05:12] This is where Jesus wants us to go. How do we do that? By baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And then Jesus says this, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age. I'm not gonna leave you alone in this mission. I'm going with you from point A to point B. But this is where we're going. It is about making disciples.
[00:05:42] What is making disciples? Well, Jesus defines it right there. Part of it is baptizing. And baptizing is another way to talk about evangelism.
[00:05:53] What people did in the early church when they made a profession of faith, when they said, I want to bow my knee to Jesus, the thing that they did is that they were baptized. Meaning I'm identifying all of my life with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. It was a way of saying, I am in with Jesus, I am going wherever with him. Shameless plug.
[00:06:16] Next Sunday we're going to be baptizing people here. If you are a follower of Jesus and you've not been baptized, come ready to be baptized.
[00:06:26] It can be your day. That is a piece of making disciples is the evangelism piece. But there's also the teaching that we actually teach people to obey everything that Jesus taught in the Way we talk about that around here is part of it is we teach people to take their next steps. Whatever it is that Jesus is asking them to do, their next step of obedience, we help them take that. That's what it means to teach people to obey everything that Jesus has commanded to make disciples, which simply means learn. To be a learner means that we help people to know and to follow Jesus.
[00:07:10] Simply put, what is this command of Jesus?
[00:07:14] He's saying, if you want to be all in with me, I'm asking you to finish what I started.
[00:07:21] Jesus came to bring the good news of the gospel and he came to build the gospel of the kingdom into the lives of people.
[00:07:30] It's not just about being a disciple of Jesus. It is about making disc disciples of Jesus.
[00:07:36] And those that followed him understood that and that's exactly what they did.
[00:07:43] And as we sit here in the 21st century, we've got to understand that it is the same commission that Jesus gives to us and he promises his power and his presence are going to be with us.
[00:07:59] But here's what's happened often in the church.
[00:08:04] This commission, this command of Jesus instead of being central to the life of believers, has often become optional in the life of believers.
[00:08:16] Dawson Trotman, who was the founder of the Navigators all the way back in 1955, he said this. He said, in every Christian audience, I am sure there are men and women who have been Christians for five, 10 or 20 years, but who do not know one person who is living for Jesus Christ today because of them.
[00:08:40] What is he trying to say is we don't invest our lives into the lives of other people.
[00:08:49] But the early disciples, those all in followers of Jesus, they understood it wasn't just the message of of Jesus that was sacred and holy, but the methods of Jesus. He modeled what it looked like to invest your life into the life of other people.
[00:09:07] This idea of making disciples, it means that church is not a spectator sport, it is not a consumer mentality. We can't lower the bar of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Courtney said it, she said that I say this and I'm gonna say it again this week. We can decide whether or not we follow Jesus. We can decide if we want to be an all in follower of him. But we don't get to decide the job description.
[00:09:32] Jesus has defined the job description and it is about making disciples.
[00:09:38] And here's how we say that around here. We say together, meaning all of us together. What do we do? We lead people.
[00:09:47] We lead people that Word there, lead. There's lots of different words we could put in there. We lead people, we shepherd people, we disciple people, we mentor people.
[00:10:00] But we are about taking people toward that place of becoming all in followers of Jesus. We're always going to be about taking next steps, all of us, and we do it together.
[00:10:14] Which means that nobody sits on the bench, nobody gets a pass. If we want to be an all in follower of Jesus, this is what we want our life to be about.
[00:10:24] And it's open to everyone.
[00:10:27] Everyone is invited as a follower of Jesus to build our lives into the lives of others.
[00:10:33] And here's what happens. As we actually choose to be one of those all in followers of Jesus, we actually try to imitate him. We've talked about that. We've. We live the kind of life that he lived, we carry on his ministry, and in many ways we become like him in his character and his ministry.
[00:10:53] And what happens over time as we imitate Jesus and we do the things that he did is that we actually grow and we mature, we become different.
[00:11:05] There's a ministry in Post Falls, Idaho called Real Life Ministries that talks about this idea of, of biological growth. It makes a parallel to our spiritual growth. Oftentimes the Bible does the very same thing. But I really like how they described it because there's different places we can find ourselves in our growth toward maturity.
[00:11:26] What they talk about is that at the very beginning of our faith journey, we're what we would call an infant.
[00:11:34] And as we look at each of these, I want us to think just a little bit about how we take in food.
[00:11:42] Because an infant, they can't take in food by themselves.
[00:11:46] A baby, when it is born, if it is not fed, if it is not changed, not only will it not thrive, it will not survive. It needs to be fed. The same is true for us spiritually. When we come to faith in Jesus, we've got to be in an environment where we can be fed by others around us, where we hear clear truth from the scriptures, where we get encouragement to continue on in our faith walk with him.
[00:12:17] But we don't stop at being an infant. At some point, we actually grow and we become a child.
[00:12:28] As we become a child, we. We actually start to develop a little bit of independence.
[00:12:34] And when we develop that kind of independence, we actually learn a little bit how to feed ourselves. Now we can't provide everything that we need for ourselves in terms of sustenance in life, but when food is given to us, we can actually eat it. We can actually start to Decide about the things that we're eating, we become a little bit self oriented.
[00:12:59] But if you've ever had a child, if you've ever been around a child, being self oriented can really become self centered very easily.
[00:13:11] Mine, mine, mine.
[00:13:16] We don't teach kids to say that. They just come up with that because they want to be the center of the world and they just have so many questions. What else do children often say besides mine? They ask why, why, why?
[00:13:35] Because they're trying to integrate all this information in this life and in this world and try to integrate that all together.
[00:13:42] And they need help in doing that.
[00:13:46] But we don't stop with a self centered feel, faith. Eventually we get to a place where we become a young adult.
[00:14:00] Now a young adult, they can feed themselves.
[00:14:04] If you've ever had a young adult in your home, they can do that really well. They can mow through a refrigerator like nobody's business.
[00:14:13] They can eat and they can feed themselves and they can do it in large quantities.
[00:14:18] And they're starting to develop a sense of self identity and there's this desire to become a little bit more independent and they start to take responsibility for all the things that need to happen in their life and in their spiritual growth. They come to that place where we would call them self feeders, not just physically, but spiritually. They learn to read the Bible, they learn to pray, they learn to connect with, with other believers. And even Courtney mentioned this as well. They learned to be generous. It's always amazing to me how many teenagers we have in our church that set up recurring giving in their life. I'm just thinking, that is so amazing.
[00:14:59] But they're starting not to just think about themselves. They're actually starting to think about how do I leverage my life for the sake of others.
[00:15:09] But ultimately, if we continue to grow, we come to a place where we become a parent, a spiritual parent into the lives of people.
[00:15:23] Now, you know, if you've ever become a parent, there is an incredible focus change in life, isn't there?
[00:15:32] It can't be just about you anymore. It has got to be about how do I help others survive, how do I help them grow up. That's the picture of a spiritual parent.
[00:15:47] Your life suddenly has to become incredibly selfless and incredibly sacrificial. For the sake of others.
[00:15:54] You've got to sacrifice your time, your emotional energy, you got to sacrifice your sleep.
[00:16:03] But that's what you do when you're a parent. You're not thinking about how to just get your needs met. You're Always thinking about, how do I meet the needs of others?
[00:16:14] And this is what it means to grow as a follower of Jesus. We move from the place of being a consumer to being a multiplier.
[00:16:27] It's not just about us anymore. It's not just about us getting what we want and what we need. It's about, how do I actually start to think about meeting the needs of other people.
[00:16:40] But here's the reality.
[00:16:42] Anywhere along this journey, we can hit a wall and stop growing.
[00:16:51] So when you think about being a spiritual parent, it doesn't matter how many years you've been a follower of Jesus, how long you've been in the church, it does not automatically mean that we will become a spiritual parent. It's not about age or how long we've been involved.
[00:17:09] Think about this. Think about again, this language of being fed. How many times I just think about how many times I've heard people say, well, I come to church, but I'm just not being fed now. Is being fed a legitimate desire?
[00:17:25] Absolutely. Absolutely. We want to be fed. But what it tells me is that if that's the question, this is where a person is. Because they're thinking, if I'm going to be fed, somebody else has to do it.
[00:17:39] But people that are young adults and parents, they're not asking, who is feeding me?
[00:17:46] They're actually asking the question, who needs to be fed?
[00:17:51] Who needs to be fed? Who can I help grow in their faith? That's the question that spiritual parents ask.
[00:18:01] And I think about this interaction that happened. This is after the interaction that Jesus had with the Samaritan woman in John chapter four. But he's having this conversation with his disciples, and they're talking about physical food. But Jesus wants them to understand spiritual food. And so here's what he says when he's explaining this to his disciples. John, chapter 4. Starting in verse 34, he said, My food, my food, what keeps me alive. He's talking spiritually here. My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
[00:18:41] What is the work that he came to finish? It's the work that he gave to us, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you. Jesus says, that is my food to do that. And then he goes on to say, don't you have a saying, it's still four months until harvest? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields. They are ripe.
[00:19:09] Harvest.
[00:19:10] What's Jesus saying?
[00:19:13] If your food is to build into the lives of other field, there is other people.
[00:19:20] There is a vast group of people that you can build into.
[00:19:27] Who's feeding you?
[00:19:29] Who is feeding you? Here's what I will say if we're going to take Jesus seriously here.
[00:19:36] If you choose with your life to feed other people, you will never go hungry.
[00:19:46] You'll never go hungry.
[00:19:48] You know what that's like, to build into the lives of other people. You always learn more than they do. You're always fed more than the things that you do for them.
[00:19:58] But I can also tell you this.
[00:20:00] If our posture is, who's feeding me?
[00:20:05] You'll always be starving.
[00:20:07] There will never be enough.
[00:20:10] And that's what I would say is the problem in the consumer culture. Often in the church, there's too many people wanting to be fed and not enough people asking the question, who needs to be fed?
[00:20:25] But the reality was the disciples, they got it, they understood, and that's how they lived their life. When Jesus left and he handed them the baton and he said, finish my work, that's exactly what they did. They began to build their lives into the lives of other people.
[00:20:44] And the APostle Paul in second Timothy, in one verse, he explains and gives us a visual picture of this ministry of multiplication into the lives of other people.
[00:20:55] Now this one verse, this is Paul writing to his disciple Timothy.
[00:21:00] It says, and the things you have heard me say, who's me?
[00:21:06] That is Paul right there. Who's the you? And the things you have heard me say, that is Timothy.
[00:21:16] What Paul is saying is that, Timothy, I've invested my life in you.
[00:21:21] You, the things of the kingdom.
[00:21:24] Now, Timothy, here's what I want you to do. The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses. There were other people besides Timothy. There were witnesses that Paul invested in as well. There were other people that heard these things. But he says, Timothy, entrust to whom reliable people.
[00:21:52] Find those people that are hungry, that need to be fed.
[00:21:57] Invest in them, Timothy.
[00:22:00] And then he says this. Reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.
[00:22:12] Timothy, build into the lives of people.
[00:22:15] And build into the lives of people in a way that they will actually know how to build into the lives of others. And you see the implication. Who will build into the lives of others? Who will build into the lives of others? Who will build into the lives of others. Friends, that is the A to B of the Christian faith. It is not a marathon. It is a relay race, generation after generation, handing the faith to people.
[00:22:41] It only takes one generation to drop the baton and everything stops. Jesus is always looking for those people that are willing to invest in the lives of others, who are willing to go from A to B with him. And that's why in the Great Commission, he says, surely I'm with you always. Even to the end of the age, I'm always with you.
[00:23:05] So here's the question.
[00:23:07] Who are you leading?
[00:23:10] Who are you feeding in this life?
[00:23:14] Who are you intentionally investing in?
[00:23:19] Let me just say this. My purpose in asking the question is not to try to raise guilt or shame if you don't have an answer for that, or it's not to make you proud if you do help, an answer for that, but it's just to ask the question. Because Jesus is asking the question, who are you investing your life in? Are you taking a hold of that Great Commission and investing in the lives of others?
[00:23:44] Now, I will say this.
[00:23:45] My description of what I've talked about here, this idea of multiplying our life, it is very simple, very simple.
[00:23:55] But if you've tried to do this even for a minute, you know, this is incredibly hard.
[00:24:03] It is messy, it is frustrating. It can be so discouraging. It's never a straight line. It can be incredibly time consuming. In fact, you're probably saying, oh, those are cute little lines that you're drawing there. From Timothy to the reliable people. In those cute little lines, you kind of want to throw punch me because you know how difficult it is.
[00:24:28] And the truth is, that's why most people don't do it or they choose not to stay at it.
[00:24:39] But here's what I want to invite us to.
[00:24:41] I want us to push through.
[00:24:43] I want us to begin to think about Jesus. How would you. If you. If you're gonna be with me in multiplying disciples, how is it that you would want me to do that?
[00:24:54] I wanna just address a handful of things that I think could be things that are coming up in your mind right now. There would be those roadblocks for you, those resistances in you.
[00:25:04] I imagine that there are some of you out there that if you could just raise your hand, you would just say, I don't feel qualified.
[00:25:11] I don't feel like I know enough to invest in the lives of. I don't know the Bible well enough. I don't think I'm mature enough. In fact, I'm struggling in my own life with sin. How am I going to help some other people?
[00:25:23] And if you wait until you think that you're an expert in this, you will never do It.
[00:25:30] And what we have to remember is that commission that Jesus gave was given to people that were just figuring it out in some ways, for the very first time. Read Paul's letters to these churches. I mean, they were jacked up. There were so many things that were wrong they were trying to figure out, but they were going for it.
[00:25:51] You don't have to be an expert.
[00:25:54] I'm so grateful that the person that reached out to me and shared his faith with me and began to disciple me. He had only been a believer for a handful of months before that. He was brand new on the boat, but he was willing to grab me by the hand and just say, I don't have it all figured out, but I'm going after Jesus. Do you want to come with me? Let's figure this out.
[00:26:14] I was so grateful that God did that. And I'm also so grateful that at some point I took the plunge and I said, you know, I want to invest in the lives of other people.
[00:26:25] I'd only been a believer for about a year, and I was asked to lead a Bible study.
[00:26:30] And it was a train wreck, an absolute train wreck in so many ways. There's so. I don't remember a ton about that Bible study, but what I do remember is one question that a guy asked. This was like the depth of the question that this one guy asked. We were talking about the humanity of Jesus, and his question was, so are you telling me that Jesus farted?
[00:26:53] Another guy in the group, bless his heart, he rolls his eyes and he's like, come on. Right? Yeah. Like, hey, Peter, pull my finger.
[00:27:03] I remember that because it was funny.
[00:27:07] But I also remember feeling like an absolute failure.
[00:27:11] I remember in tears at one point telling these group of folks, like, I. I'm just so sorry. I just. I don't feel like I've been helpful in your life. And there are probably so many ways that I did fail, but what I did learn was that this matters and I want to get better at this.
[00:27:29] And it's so funny to me.
[00:27:31] I don't share this because I think that I did anything great. But one of the guys that was in that Bible study, he is now the lead pastor of a huge mega church in California. He survived my failure, and God is using him in this world. I had another opportunity for a guy that came up just a handful of months ago, and he came up to me and he's like, did you lead a Bible study when you were in college? And I was thinking, well, I worked with Campus Crusade. I led lots of Bible studies. He's like, no, no, no. When you were a student, did you lead a Bible study? And then it's like you, you know, it's like 40 years later, but you're starting to see his face, and it's like, oh, no.
[00:28:07] This guy knows how bad that was. He's probably thinking, how in the world did this guy ever become a pastor?
[00:28:17] Here's what I've learned.
[00:28:19] Anything that's worth doing is worth doing poorly until we get better.
[00:28:30] Anything that is worth doing is worth doing poorly until we get better.
[00:28:36] And I would just say this. It's so worth it. Those of you that have invested and have pushed through and disciple people, you know that there is no greater joy.
[00:28:50] Push through. Take that very first step.
[00:28:54] Some of you, I imagine you might raise your hand and say, I just don't know what to do. I wouldn't know what to do. I wouldn't know where to start. Let me just give you three principles that I think need to be part of whatever it is that you're going to do to invest in the life of. Of another person.
[00:29:10] First, it's got to be relational.
[00:29:13] It's gotta be life on life. It's gotta be about spending time together.
[00:29:19] That's what it takes. That's what Jesus modeled for us. He spent time with people.
[00:29:24] But it's also got to be intentional. And when I say intentional, it means that we are actually focused on Jesus. That our time that we spend together isn't just about hanging out, filling out our march madness brackets or elk hunting. Those things can be part of it, but there's gotta be an intentionality. Is Jesus a part of this?
[00:29:46] And lastly, it's got to be transformational.
[00:29:49] And here's what I mean by this. I want to make a contrast between transformational and informational. Sometimes we just think all we need to do is just teach people stuff, that we need to make them smarter. Yes, we need to teach things, but we also need to allow us to be transformed. And here's how we're transformed is when we take the words of Jesus, when we take the promptings of his Holy Spirit, and we start to, with other people, with another person, ask these two most powerful questions. I believe one of those questions is God, what are you saying to me?
[00:30:25] If we believe that God speaks through his Word and through prayer and through the nudges of his Holy Spirit, we've always got to be asking that question moment by moment, day by day, day.
[00:30:35] God, what are you saying to me?
[00:30:37] But it's not Enough just to know what God wants to say to you.
[00:30:43] We've got to follow up with God. What do you want me to do about it?
[00:30:47] That's the next step question.
[00:30:49] That's what brings transformation to our life? We can learn all the time, but until we actually ask those questions and say, God, what are you saying to me and how do you want me to live that out and in my life, our life doesn't change. It's gotta be relational, life on life, intentional, centered on Jesus. And it's gotta be transformational where we're asking questions, God, what are you saying to me? And what is it that you want me to do about it?
[00:31:16] And the last thing that I think people might be raising their hand to say is this isn't this whole disciple making thing. Isn't that your job, Bob?
[00:31:28] Isn't that what we pay you to do?
[00:31:32] I mean, I joke with some of my friends. They kind of joke with me is like, man, I wish I had a job that only had to work half a day on Sunday.
[00:31:38] That would be amazing.
[00:31:41] Our job is about feeding others.
[00:31:46] We lead people, all of us.
[00:31:52] It's not me lead people.
[00:31:54] We lead people. We disciple people, we mentor people, we shepherd people.
[00:32:00] I want to read you a chunk of scripture from Ephesians, chapter 4. This is the Apostle Paul in a much greater eloquence and a much more expanded version talks about how the church is to lead people.
[00:32:15] Starting in verse 11, it says, so Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and the teacher to equip his people for works of service.
[00:32:27] So that here's the result. So that the body of Christ, that's all of us who are in Christ may be built up until.
[00:32:35] Until when? Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of. Of the fullness of Christ.
[00:32:48] We keep doing this till everybody becomes spiritual parents. And you know what? As soon as everybody becomes spiritual parents, you know what God does? He brings infants into our midst and we just keep growing people.
[00:33:02] That is the mission of the church. And then Paul says in verse 14, then we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves of blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.
[00:33:20] Instead speaking the truth in love.
[00:33:26] That's what we do when we mentor people, when we disciple people, when we shepherd people. We speak the truth in love. And here's the result. We will grow to become, in every respect, the mature body of Him. Who is the head? That is Christ.
[00:33:43] Meaning that we are on board with him. We're on board with his mission. We are moving from A to B from Him. The whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work together.
[00:34:08] We lead people.
[00:34:12] That's what Paul's saying.
[00:34:14] That's why we're here.
[00:34:16] That is the commission of Jesus.
[00:34:20] So I will ask the question for your assignment, because I want you to ask this question. What is your next step?
[00:34:29] Maybe. What is your first step toward investing in the lives of others?
[00:34:34] The way Jesus talked about making disciples?
[00:34:38] Maybe asking the question, who's in your life?
[00:34:42] Who's in your life right now that God may have there for a reason that you could invest in them? Maybe it's helping them on the evangelism side, helping them know who Jesus is and what it is that Jesus has done for them.
[00:34:58] Maybe it's teaching them to obey. Maybe it's someone that's young in their faith, and maybe it's someone that's at the same place in faith as you. But you just want to do it together. You want to lead each other. What is your next step?
[00:35:13] And here's what I believe we need to do. We need to get our antennas up.
[00:35:18] If this is the command of Jesus, if this is the commission that he's given to us, that means that it's true. The fields are white for harvest.
[00:35:30] We need to look around. We need to ask the question. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to bring people to our mind.
[00:35:37] Ask God. What are you saying to me about this? And what is it that you want me to do?
[00:35:44] There's so many times that I talk with people about the struggles of making disciples in the context of the church. And people are like, are you just discouraged? Do you ever just want to give up?
[00:35:57] Are you hopeful?
[00:35:59] I'm hopeful.
[00:36:01] I am so hopeful.
[00:36:04] Because what I know is that what we're talking about here is deeply on the heart of Jesus.
[00:36:14] This is what he said in Matthew, chapter nine. If you've ever walked into our staff wing, you'll see that this is on the wall there. And as long as I'm here, and as long as they let me have a job here, that's gonna stay on our wall. Because this is what we bleed around here. This is what matters to us.
[00:36:31] It says, when he saw the crowds, that's Jesus. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, meaning it wrecked him on, on the inside.
[00:36:41] Why?
[00:36:42] Because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.
[00:36:49] When Jesus sees any crowd of people, this crowd of people, and there are people that don't have a shepherd in their life, it wrecks him on the inside.
[00:37:00] But what does he do?
[00:37:02] He turns to his disciples, those all in followers of him.
[00:37:08] And he told them this. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.
[00:37:15] What was true in Jesus day, I believe is still true today.
[00:37:20] The harvest is great.
[00:37:22] The fields are white for harvest.
[00:37:24] But there's not enough people who are willing to step in and impact the lives of others. There's lots of people who say, feed me.
[00:37:34] There's not enough people who are asking the question, who needs to be fed?
[00:37:39] But then Jesus said this.
[00:37:42] He said, ask.
[00:37:45] Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore to send out workers into his harvest field.
[00:37:52] This is why I'm hopeful.
[00:37:55] Because when I walk by that saying that scripture in our staff wing, I pray and I ask and I believe that Jesus will answer the prayers that are on his heart. And I believe that some of you in this room are going to be answers to that prayer. And I'm going to continue to ask. Our staff are going to continue to ask. Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers in to the harvest field and it'll make a difference. And it will move the church from point A to point B to the place where Jesus is asking us to go. And I know. And I know that some of you still thinking I'm not qualified.
[00:38:40] But here's what I know to be true.
[00:38:42] Anything, anything that is worth doing is worth doing poorly until you get better at it. Take the first step.
[00:38:55] Take the first step.
[00:38:57] Let's pray.
[00:39:04] Jesus, we just want our lives to be surrendered to your call on our life.
[00:39:14] Jesus, thank you that 2000 years ago you stood in front of those closest to you and you gave them a commission to make disciples. Who will make disciples? Who will make disciples? And Jesus, we sit here today alive in you because there were people who gave their life and gave their time, gave their energy to build into the next generation.
[00:39:41] Jesus, give us the courage, give us the vision, give us the willing to stick to it in a way that will allow us to hand the baton to the next generation. Jesus, we do not want to be those that drop the baton.
[00:39:58] Use us, Jesus. Use us in the lives of others.
[00:40:03] And Jesus, it's in your name that we pray.
[00:40:06] And all God's people said, amen.
