Did you know Jesus revealed the secret to success in ministry? Check out this obscure verse in the Gospel of John and its profound implications.

<p>Did you know Jesus revealed the secret to success in ministry? Check out this obscure verse in the Gospel of John and its profound implications.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

FAST Missions

Daniel Vis

Working with God

Today I want to give part 2 of my message from last time, if you remember 2 weeks ago.

And I want to talk about something that's been on my heart for a while, I've been wanting to share.

Last time you may remember, I talked about the importance of walking with God.

We looked at the life of Enoch, and how he came to the point, the place in his life where he was able to live a life that was fully pleasing to God.

Amazing testimony, really, he had learned to walk in faith and to such an extent that God became so real to him that God filled every part of his life.

And when he finally reached that point, God just took him.

And he's, of course, a type of those that are going to be translated at the end of time.

I believe God is looking for people whose lives become so filled with God, they live such a life of faith that everything they do is pleasing to God.

We need to learn to walk with God because we are at the end of time, amen?

We also talked about the secret to living the life of faith.

You may remember, I'm not sure, I quoted this first Romans 10, 17.

So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

Enoch may not have had the scriptures like we did, but he had conversations with Adam and with Eve.

He may have talked with the angels there at the entrance to the Garden of Eden, maybe even had conversations with Jesus himself.

And he had the Word of God fixed in his mind and he meditated and constantly was thinking about what God had revealed to him and it changed his life.

He was able to see more and more clearly into the spiritual realm that's around all of us.

But so many times we just don't even see or don't even discern.

It was a life of a total immersion in the scriptures.

Well, this morning, what I want to do this afternoon, I guess I should say, this morning, I want to shift from the topic of walking with God to the topic of working with God.

Father in heaven, we come to you because we recognize our need.

We are powerless to reach our community, Lord.

Unless you show us how to do it, unless you move on our hearts, unless you give us ideas, you give us direction, unless you come through for us, we are not going to do the work that we've been given.

So this morning, I am pleading with you to begin that process of equipping us for effective ministry.

You know, it's a probably time we start thinking about this.

We have a lot of words, outreach, witnessing, ministry, evangelism.

The reason we have so many words is because this is an important subject, right?

We talk about things like finishing the work or the loud cry or the Great Commission.

I mean, we have all kinds of phrases that we use to describe this mission that we know God has given to us as a people, as this church.

Vian and I, we've been here for 8 years, and most of the time since we've been here, we've focused on part 1, so to speak, that's walking with God, right?

We've talked about the importance of prayer and the importance of memorization, the importance of Bible study, finding principles, making applications, importance of personal obedience, of managing our time and our priorities.

And the focus has really been pretty heavy on discipleship.

But we're about to transition slowly, gently, softly, incrementally towards thinking about part 2 as a church.

How can we move more towards not just walking with God, but also working with God?

I want us to urge us to start thinking about what we can do to reach our community.

To see the answers to those prayers we've been praying.

Have you been praying that the Lord would make our church into a church that is growing explosively?

I want to encourage us to pray for that, but not just to pray, but also to ask God to show us what we can do to cooperate with Him.

There's going to have to be some changes in our thinking or how we do things or new ideas or something.

Something has to change if we're going to eventually reach our community.

Psalms 2 verse 8 says, Ask of me and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

If we're asking, what should we expect God to do?

We've been doing that asking, I know I have, I know many of you have, but it's time to start shifting just a little bit to tiptoeing towards that direction of figuring out, well, what do we have to do to see the answer to our own prayers?

I'm gonna take a little time to talk about this, actually, because I think the reality is that most churches and most ministries are simply not very effective these days.

You would think, given how powerful our message is, How we have answers to the most profound questions of life, you would think that people would be banging down our doors to get to the truth.

How balanced our answers are, how credible they are, how profound those answers are, and yet people are not banging down our doors.

The reality is that most of our churches are in decline.

Few churches are growing, but not very many.

And we can blame part of it on the decline in spiritual interest in the world, but I think a big part of it is simply that the methods we're using are not working.

Things that may have worked in the past are no longer working today because our world has changed.

So we're gonna take some time, we're gonna go on a journey together, not just this morning, but over the next few months as a church to start thinking about these kinds of things and see if maybe the Lord can give us some insight, some ideas, some solutions to help us become a soul winning church.

Got several workshops coming up, some helpful training, some topics, some sermon topics.

We're going to take several months to really think about this, but I think it'll be time well invested because it's important.

All right, I want to make sure you don't go to sleep.

Today what I wanna do is just get back to some basics, some very fundamental, foundational core principles to sort of start that process, just get the wheels barely turning in our minds.

So the first principle I want to talk about is this number 1, evangelism is not optional.

Jesus made it clear that we, every member of the church, we have a work to do.

And that commission extends to every believer.

The call, the challenge, the assignment to reach the world, you can find it in every 1 of the Gospels.

Jesus ended every 1 of the Gospels, or the Gospel writers, ended every 1 of their Gospels with a call to reach the world.

In Matthew, he says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing, teaching them.

Mark 16, he says, Go ye in all the world, preach the gospel to every creature.

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.

In Luke chapter 24, Jesus ends that book.

He says that Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead the third day so that repentance and remissions of sins should be preached in his name among all nations.

I mean, this is the world message that has to go to the whole world.

In John chapter 20, this is maybe the profound of all, Jesus met with his disciples after his resurrection and he pointed to the wounds in his hands and in his side and then he says to his disciples, as my father has sent me, so send I you.

And in the book of Acts chapter 1 verse 8 just before Jesus ascends like 1 of the very last things he says he says you're going to receive power amen after the Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the uttermost it's going to happen this is your assignment this is your mission It's not optional.

Working with God

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