After months of establishing basic principles, it’s time to wrap things up with some thoughts on finishing the work.

<p>After months of establishing basic principles, it’s time to wrap things up with some thoughts on finishing the work.</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

Finishing the Work

This is actually another big reason I'm excited is the topic this morning, because at least in my mind, here's how I think about it.

These last 9 months since Vi and I have been here, I've been preaching kind of what I think of as introductory sermons.

We've just been talking about some basic content, laying some foundation, thinking about things together to get us kind of ready and excited for whatever it is that God may want to do in this church.

You remember some of those sermons we've talked about already.

Remember how We talked about how God wants to do a new thing.

I heard someone mention that this morning already.

We talked about the whole idea of disciple-making and spiritual multiplication.

The difference between teaching and training and the whole discipling process.

How it involves learning how to take in God's Word, how to live out God's Word, how to pass on God's Word.

We've been talking about that more recently as we're moving kind of into the ministry phase, thinking about that a little bit.

We've talked about the importance of working with God that is being spirit led in our outreach efforts, of the importance of working together in teams, how vital it is that we link our ministries with small groups because neither work very well when they're separated.

We talked about the importance of spiritual gifts and how they work together in amazing different ways.

And anyway, well, this is my last introductory sermon.

After this, in the first of November, I have a special presentation, a two-part service, morning and afternoon.

I'm not going to tell you what it's about, but that's gonna be something big.

And then we have like Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's.

We got all kinds of holiday themed sermons.

And then next year, by the time 2025 rolls around, we'll have a whole new content calendar planned out for the sermons for the next year.

So this is my last chance to do an introductory welcome sermon.

But anyway, that's my topic this morning.

I want to talk about how to finish the work.

That's the last thing we have to figure out.

Before we dive into that though, what do we need to do?

The Holy Spirit will guide us this morning.

Father in heaven, we are ready to go home.

How many of us are looking forward to a new home?

So much hurt and pain, heartache in this world, and we just wanna see it come to a close.

We want to be able to go and be with You.

But Lord, there's still a work to do, a big work, a vast work, and we don't know how to get this work finished.

We've been trying for a long time, and we've just barely made a dent.

As we look at this topic this morning, I pray that you would bless us, open our minds, our understanding, guide my tongue, and give us direction, I pray in Jesus' name.

So, you know, the problem with old preachers, I'm an old preacher now, is that they got a lot of stories to tell, but then they forget which ones they've told before.

So I may have told you the story before, but I want to tell you a story that came back from my very early days of ministry.

I was just a brand new young preacher, And this was 1 of my very first speaking gigs.

Someone actually paid me money to fly me all the way from California to New York.

They paid for my plane ticket at least to come out and do a week of prayer in a church.

I put my whole heart into the presentation.

And anyway, in the middle of the week, it was like on a Tuesday or Wednesday, I forget which night, but I was in the middle of the sermon and this very tall, dignified looking gentleman came in.

And he was wearing this like super sharp pinstripe suit.

And he came in and he had this serious look on his face.

And he came in about the middle of the church and he sat down with 1 of the people.

And I don't know what it was about him, but He looked like a gangster to me.

And through the whole sermon, he was just staring at me like super intent.

After the sermon, when the evening meeting was over, he pushed his way up through the crowd and came up to me and says, I want to talk with you tomorrow.

He said, I'm going to send my chauffeur down to pick you up tomorrow at such and such time.

And I'm going to bring you up to my office and I want to talk to you about something.

The chauffeur showed up in this nice fancy car, drove me up to his office, his big office building.

The whole building, you know, he was doing some kind of, I don't even know what he was doing but anyway he told me a story he said look the Lord has given me a gift to be able to make money and he said I've started like multiple businesses I'll start a business and within just a matter of a year or 2 it becomes like a multi-million dollar business and then I'll sell it and I'll invest all the money and then he lost all his money in investments.

So he starts up another company and pretty soon just blows up he has this multi-million dollar business he sells out cashes out he invests his money he wasn't a very good investor that was the problem He lost all his money started another company.

He was like on the third or fourth company now.

And he said, I decided that the reason I keep losing these fortunes is because I haven't dedicated this gift to God.

And so he said, what I'm doing this time is I'm praying that God will show me how to use these resources and invest them in his cause, in his work.

And so that's why I wanted you to come up here, because I have a plan, and I want you to share with me your thoughts on this plant.

And so he had this big corporate diagram.

I don't know if you've ever seen 1 of those, but it has all these different interlocking entities and how they're connected in some were like for profits and some were non-profits.

And there are all kinds of, it was this big complicated maze and I was just looking at that like what in the world he says I want you to tell me what you think about this plan now some of the parts I could recognize there was like literature work and there was foreign missions and there was some things that were for generating revenues that would fund the other divisions of it and it was this big complicated plan.

I didn't have any business background or anything at the time.

But I noticed down in the very bottom corner, there was this 1 little box, it was off to its side, and it said, finishing the work.

And so it just caught my eye, it leaped out of me.

So I pointed out and said, what is this part right here finishing the work?

And he said, we believe God still has something to show us to finish the work, And we're leaving room in our plans for whatever that is.

And you know, I've thought about that many times since over the years.

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Finishing the Work

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