Joining Jesus – 25th February 2019

SPECIAL NOTE
On 1st April 2019, I will be beginning the ‘Joining Jesus’ Podcast and be launching a new ‘Joining Jesus’ discipleship process that will be available at The Rooftop Academy www.therooftop.org

As such, to avoid having too many, and possibly confusing ‘titles’ I thought it would be best for the weekly email that I send to have the same title. Therefore, ‘Stay On Mission’ from now onwards will be titled ‘Joining Jesus’.

If you are being helped by these emails, from 1st March, please feel free to find out more about the podcast and discipleship process.
Here is this weeks article.

1. Take it ‘near’ to people.
After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” Mark 1:14,15

Often as I travel, I preach in churches in many different parts of the world. The places where I have the opportunity to preach are so varied, from large churches in cities of the developed world to small gatherings of people in villages and slums in the developing world. One thing that I have discovered is that wherever in the world I am and whoever it is that I am with, the gospel has power to change lives!

One of the advantages of preaching to a different church gathering each week is that I don’t have to prepare a new sermon every week. This allows me to preach, for a season, the same message in each place that I visit. Over the past few months, the message that I have been sharing has been based upon the amazing words that Jesus said to announce His ministry:

“The Kingdom of God has come near”.

I find these words to be such a great inspiration as I seek to join Jesus in His Mission because these few words provide such a simple but profound insight into what His mission was, and is!

Jesus didn’t come to the world, build a building, call it a church and ask people to come to it. He went to the people, where they were and as they were. He went to the broken, the hopeless, the fallen and the failures and He told them that there is GOOD NEWS! That is because ‘The Kingdom of God has come near’. Jesus was telling these people, who felt so far from God, that He was bringing God to them, right where they were! They could see it, feel it, touch it because He was the Kingdom and He was among them!

This ‘mission’ is so different from the way that many churches understand it. So many are running programmes and activities inside the walls of their buildings and waiting for people to come and join in. Jesus didn’t do it that way – He took the Good News of the Kingdom to the people.

Recently, I was speaking to a gathering of people in La Union, El Salvador. As I preached, I moved away from the pulpit and walked among the people. I frequently stopped and fist bumped a person and said something like ‘it doesn’t matter who you are or what you have done, you may feel worthless and hopeless, but there is Good News – the Kingdom of God is near, it is within grasping distance’. One of the people that I had fist bumped and said this to was a young man. After the gathering he came to me and said that He wanted to follow Jesus! For all of his life he thought that he wasn’t good enough for God and for church. When he realized that Jesus came to Him ‘as he was’ and had the power to change him, everything fell into place.
Our church buildings are surrounded by people who don’t think they are good enough to attend our meetings. If we are to join Jesus in His Mission it is time for us to stop waiting for them to come to us and instead, like Jesus, go close to them and let them see in our lives and hear from our lips, the remarkable truth that ‘The Kingdom of God has come near’.
This week, I encourage you, to take the Good News of the Kingdom to somebody that you know who thinks of themselves as being far from God, but is close to you

Dennis