Archive for category: Joining Jesus

3. Challenges bring Godly change.
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. Matthew 7:24-29

I mentioned last time that If we are going to join Jesus in His Mission then it is imperative that we DO what He is asking us and don’t give up, even if it hurts!
On the wall in my gym is another poster, it contains these words:
‘If it doesn’t challenge you it doesn’t change you’
I think that these words, intended to encourage people at the gym to overcome the challenges of tiredness, boredom, apathy etc etc also apply, with a slight change, to Christians who are seeking to stay on mission with Jesus. The words I would use would be something like:
‘God uses the challenges that we face to transform us to become like Jesus’.
2 Corinthians 3:18 says:
‘And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit’.

The Holy Spirit, who lives in us, is transforming us, changing us, so that we will become more and more like Jesus. More holy, more compassionate, more loving, more and more like the one who was sent to seek and to save what was lost.
BUT here is the challenge!
Many of us get stuck in our walk with Jesus, things happen, challenges come along and rather than us allowing the Holy Spirit to give us the desire and power to overcome these challenges and change us, we give up. The consequence of this is that we become less and less willing and able to join Jesus in His Mission because the transformation that was taking place in us slows down and then stops. We settle for how far we have come and become familiar with the comfortable place we have reached. We begin to avoid challenges rather than face them in the anticipation that God will use them to change us. What a tragedy!
So, here’s a direct question as you begin this week:
Have you become comfortable with where you are in Jesus and stopped facing the challenges that following Him would present?
If you have then I urge and encourage you, for the sake of Jesus’ Kingdom and all those that He came to seek and to save, to stand up, step out and face the challenges that following Him will entail. If it challenges you, Jesus will use it, and it will change you!
Dennis

‘Don’t be foolish’.
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. Matthew 7:24-29
The crowds were amazed at Jesus teaching!
There were, I am sure, so many things that Jesus said that caused amazement, but, at the centre of this short story that Jesus told is a deep truth that so many of us can so easily miss.
At the core of this story is this truth: ‘When it comes to what Jesus told us, we have to do it, not just accept that it is true!’
I cannot begin to imagine the number of words that many Christians have heard in sermons but in spite of all that has been heard, what has been ‘put into practice? What have we done?
A few years ago, I was in a gym in Virginia Beach, after I had been there for a few minutes, a man came in wearing his gym gear and headphones – he looked the part! Then he went and sat on the rowing machine, took a fitness magazine out of his pocket and began to read it. He was still sitting in the same place, and reading the same magazine, an hour later when I left. I wondered if he thought that just going to the gym and reading about fitness would make him fit?
Then it struck me – do we do this in church?
I like to go to the gym and the gym I go to near where I live, like so many others, has pictures and words on every wall, all of which are intended to encourage gym-users to work hard and achieve the goal of getting fit and healthy.
It is clear that if we want to improve our physical condition then it takes work and application – we have to do the exercises and follow the disciplines! This is just as true with our spiritual condition! If we are going to stay on mission with Jesus, we need to be spiritually conditioned to face and overcome the challenges that we face.
Some of the words that are used in my gym are really inspirational and challenging and I thought that over the next few weeks I would look at some of these and help us to see how what they say are so similar to the things that Jesus said to us as he invites us to join Him in His Mission.
This week, as you reflect on what it means to follow Jesus, don’t be foolish and just listen to what He is saying – put it into practice!
Dennis

3. Acts 2:42-47 – Devoted to Prayer.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
As the first church sought to join Jesus in His mission they were devoted to prayer. It is difficult to be precise regarding how they went about this but I have a feeling that this ‘devotion to prayer’ entailed more than a weekly prayer meeting which was focused on praying only for those within the church. The sense I have is that prayer was a core activity that was the powerhouse behind everything that they did.
I have always found it interesting, since I became a Christian, to discover that we as followers of Jesus always talk about the importance of prayer and how ‘nothing will really happen without prayer’. Yet, whilst prayer is heralded as so important, it is, as A.W. Tozer once said ‘So difficult to get Christians to a meeting where the only attraction is God”. The prayer meeting frequently has the lowest attendance of any meeting in the church.
I am convinced that if we are truly to join Jesus in His Mission then it is vital that we are devoted to prayer. I think that this prayer may be a little different from how we may imagine it. Prayer meetings and individual prayer times are often filled with us asking God to do, or give us, the things that we would like to happen or receive. Sometimes, we even try to persuade God to be concerned for the world!
I would suggest that being devoted to prayer is primarily about being focused on God in such a way that we don’t attempt to change or influence His will, rather, we ask Him to change us, or me. Then we will begin to see things from His perspective and have the passion and ‘confidence-in-Him’ that will enable us to step outside of our own natural limitations and live in the reality of His supernatural, unlimited power to transform the world.
Let me put this simply!
A pastor friend of mine had taken the church that he leads to a Rooftop and encouraged them to look across the community. He instructed them to cry out to God and ask Him to help them to see their community as He sees it and then to transform the hearts of those who gathered so that they would join Jesus in His mission and begin to reach people who are beyond the walls of the church.
Following this he said to those gathered that they could go to ‘The Rooftop’ every day. He encouraged each of them to set aside some time each day to go to a room in their house, open the curtains and look out at the street where they lived. As they looked at the community where they lived they could spend time looking at scripture and praying, the prayer could be something like:
“Lord, transform me, and through me transform what I see as I look out of the window”.
Being devoted to prayer is really about being devoted to God and His Mission. This week, I encourage you to devote yourself to prayer, or, to put it another way, DEVOTE YOURSELF TO GOD.
Dennis

1. Acts 2:42-47 – Devoted to learning.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
I have said so many times as I travel that one of the things that prevents most Christians being effective in faith-sharing is that we worship together but are left alone and isolated when it comes to telling others about Jesus. If we are going to effectively stay on mission with Jesus, we need to ensure that the times we spend ‘gathered’ are envisioning and equipping us to be effective when we are scattered.
In the passage above we read about the first church that was formed. This church came into being following the falling of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. This new church was made up of a few thousand believers who now had to learn what it meant to ‘Join Jesus in His Mission’. There are some things that we can learn from them as we seek to do the same thing today.
I want to begin by pointing out that when they gathered ‘The devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching’. The word that strikes me whenever I read this passage is the word ‘devoted’. Being devoted to something means being focused on that particular thing almost exclusively. When you are devoted to a cause, you work to achieve its goals. When you are devoted to a person, you place their needs above your own.
Being devoted to the teaching of the apostles’ means, I am sure, that what they were taught impacted the whole of their lives – they listened to what they were being taught and then applied it in their daily lives to the extent that it changed the way that they lived. Others in the community saw this transformation and as a result, many more were added!
In Matthew 7:24-27 Jesus makes it clear that we should not just be hearers of the word but ‘doers’. When we gather together either in large or small groups and study God’s word, it is imperative that we help each other not just to find out what the Bible is saying but then to DO it. My way of expressing this is ‘without action there is no devotion’.
As you gather with others this week and study God’s word, ask yourself, and encourage others that you meet with, to ask. ‘Having spent this time learning from God’s word, now what am I going to do with it?’
Dennis

3. Matthew 13: 1-9 ‘The Seed’.
‘That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other see fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
So, the sower sewed the seed all over the place, he ‘scattered it’. But what does the seed represent in the parable? Later in the chapter, in verse 18, Jesus describes the seed as ‘the message of the Kingdom’ this is the ‘good news’ or ‘the gospel’.
The seed is the gospel and in Romans 1:16 Paul writes: “ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile”.
The gospel is ‘The power of God’ and the original word that we translate into ‘power’ is the same word as ‘dynamite’ in English. The seed represents the gospel and the gospel is explosively powerful!
As you read these words, let me ask you a question. ‘Do you believe that the gospel has the power to change a person’s life?’ I am guessing that you may have answered ‘yes’ to that question, but let me ask it again, slightly differently. ‘Do you believe that the gospel has the power to change the life of a person that you know who isn’t a Christian?’ and ‘Do you believe that God could use you to share the gospel with the result that a person’s life would be changed?
There are many things that we believe but do we really believe them?
In Mark chapter 9 a father brought his son to Jesus because he was possessed with an evil spirit. He said to Jesus “…if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” V22.
Jesus responded by saying. “If you can, Everything is possible for one who believes.”
In response, the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
I have a feeling that many of us are a little like this man, we believe Jesus can do it but we don’t really believe it enough to believe that He can do it in and through us.
This week, I encourage you to spend some time alone with the Lord. Focus on the words that Paul wrote in Romans 1:16 and ask the Lord to help you overcome your ‘unbelief’ and then, go and begin to scatter the seed of the gospel among those that you know.
Dennis