Opportunities from God

Intro

I’m reminded of a time back at teen camp about 2 years ago. This was Tuesday night, we had only been at camp for a couple days by now, and we were participating in an afterglow activity. The game was called “Mission Impossible,” and how the game worked is that all the counselors were assigned to stand in the field between our playground and chapel building. The goal for each of the teams of campers, was to get from the chapel to the playground without a counselor tagging you, pick up a rock from the buckets in the playground, and run back to the chapel safely. Whichever team had the most rocks by the end won. I really enjoyed this game; not so much of collecting the rocks, but outrunning the counselors if I could. Now for a teen, trying to outrun counselors while holding rocks, running back and forth and night with little vision is a dream… to a parent it’s a nightmare. I recall about halfway through the game, I was dropping off a rock into my teams bucket in the chapel, and I noticed Flora sitting by herself in the pews.

I went over to her and asked what was wrong. Flora told me that she was running back to the chapel, and couldn’t see in front of her was another camper, who she ran into full force, and now she had a headache and her stomach wasn’t feeling the best.

In that moment, the thought came to mind, to pray for her. I prayed that God could grant her peace and healing in that moment, and that He’d have His hand over her. After praying, I told her I’d come back to check up on her after going out for another run. As I was coming back into the chapel, I noticed that she was walking toward me. I asked her how she was feeling, and from tears, she said that during the prayer, God washed over her with healing and peace and all the pain in her went away.

From that experience, that opportunity, came God moving throughout the rest of that night, through spontaneous prayer, worship, and fellowship.

Every single day, we have thousands of opportunities passing by us without even acknowledging them. Some of those, we do end up taking advantage of, while many many more, we completely overlook. Imagine if we paid more attention to who we came into contact with each day, and from those opportunities, come even more. When we’re interacting with someone, we have many different opportunities to respond and communicate with that person. Even when we aren’t talking to anybody, we have so many opportunities to make an impression through our actions. But I want to focus specifically on opportunities God gives us. Opportunities that impact our relationship with Him, and our relationship with others. Today we’re going to look at 3 different but vital opportunities God gives us every day.

Our first opportunity God gives us is to believe in Jesus. God, believe it or not, works in the lives of those who don’t believe in Him, by presenting the Gospel–Jesus–to those through many different ways, such as: people, songs, messages, books, conversations, art, His Word, movies, and so much more. Through moments of encountering Jesus, we are given the opportunity to believe that He is the light. In John 12:35-36 it says:

Jesus replied, “My light will shine for you just a little longer. Walk in the light while you can, so the darkness will not overtake you. Those who walk in the darkness cannot see where they are going. Put your trust in the light while there is still time; then you will become children of the light.

Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world taking on the likeness and weakness of humanity and represented hope for the hopeless, truth for the misguided, and light for those in darkness. He presented to all who hear His message, to walk in His light, so that we don’t continue to live in darkness.

He saw broken people such as you and I and came to mend and reconcile us back to God if we believe in His deity and divinity while we are still alive. John goes on in verses 44-46 saying:

Jesus shouted to the crowds, “If you trust me, you are trusting not only me, but also God who sent me. For when you see me, you are seeing the one who sent me. I have come as a light to shine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in me will no longer remain in the dark.

But we must also believe that He died for our sins. In 1 Peter 2:24 it says:

He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed.

Just as Jesus came into the world representing hope and light, teaching us to live holy lives, He also took on the penalty of our punishment-dying on the cross carrying our sins. Because Jesus died on the cross for us, we are given the opportunity to be healed in Him from our sinful lives.

In 2 Corinthians 5:21 it says:

For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

Jesus was the only worthy sacrifice to take on our sin because He Himself was sinless. He was and always has been the only perfect, sinless human to every walk the earth.

But to really believe in Jesus, we also have to believe He rose to prove His Lordship. Jesus had to rise again to prove that He was truly the Messiah, that He was the Son of God, to fulfill the prophecies so that we could have assurance in believing that He is worthy of our lives, of our trust, of our dependence. Romans 10:9 says:

If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Through believing Jesus died and rose again, and that He is Lord, we will be saved from our sins that Jesus died for and spend eternity with Him after this life.

We can be thankful that God loved us so much that He gave us the opportunity to believe in Jesus and that He came, died, and rose again for our sins. But there are many more opportunities that God gives us to live a better life, the second opportunity we will look at is the opportunity to have a relationship with Jesus.

Why is it so important to grow close to Jesus? Well, if we believe that He died for our sins, we also must believe in what He taught about. We are given many resources and opportunities to grow close to Him. We need to take advantage of these opportunities so that we will grow in our knowledge of Him. 2 Timothy 3:16 says:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.

God has supplied us with the truth of His Word, that we may understand His character, why it was so vital that a Savior came to save us from our sins, and what makes Jesus ultimately worth following. Through His Word we are given the knowledge of who God is so we can better understand how to follow Him. In 1 John 2:1, John says:

My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous.

Because Jesus gave us His Holy Spirit, we now have the constant opportunity to have communion with God through prayer. Through prayer we build a relationship with God that enables us to see how He works in our lives, seeing His character being revealed through our prayers. Just like a relationship with a friend, you get to know them by talking to them, and being around them. It’s the same with God, the more we spend in prayer and communion with Him, the more get to know Him more.

But another reason is so we will grow in our likeness of Him. Taking advantage of the opportunities to grow in our relationship with Jesus is important because the more we take the time and use the opportunities given to seek Him, we build our character in His likeness. Have you ever noticed that you tend to become like the people you surround yourself with? If you were to always be around people who use inappropriate language all the time or those who gossip 24/7, it would be really difficult for you to not begin adapting to those environments. Well the same is true with surrounding yourself with godly people. If you were to spend your time being around those actively seeking Christ, and yourself spending time with Christ, you’d begin to take on that kind of character, and develop a likeness to them as well.

As we take advantage of these opportunities to grow closer and closer to Christ, becoming more like Him, we will recognize that Jesus didn’t just call for us to be like Him, and believe in Him, but to share His message with the world. We can actually notice that God provides us with one more opportunity, which is the opportunity to share the Gospel of Jesus.

There are two main ways we share the Gospel with others. One of these ways is through our conversations. Colossians 4:5-6 says:

Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.

God gives us the opportunities in our daily lives to share the Gospel with others through our conversations. We need to saturate ourselves with God’s Word, to where it flows into our talks with others. In this conversations, we must be speaking truth and love as Ephesians says. We need a balance the truth we share with others with love, because if we throw other’s under the bus for their sins and why they need Jesus without expressing in how Jesus would, with Christ-like love, then we won’t draw those were conversation with closer, but rather push them away. And if we speak only with love without truth, then those were talking to are going to get the real Jesus, the real Gospel, and end up being more confused then before. With these conversations comes a lot of resistance too. It can be hard to just bring up the topic of Jesus and the Gospel in today’s day because we’ve seen the history of how people react to it.

I remember being at a conference in St. Louis about church planting, and the message we had just before going to dinner was that if we want to see our churches growing, we need to reach out to the lost when God gives us the opportunity. As we were walking through the city a bit later, I glanced to my left to see a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk, and I immediately felt the press to go and talk to the man. But I was under so much weight of my comfortability and stopping everyone else, that I just let ourselves pass by. Yet the closer I got the more conviction I felt. I missed out on the opportunity to share exactly what we were just learning about because of the worry of what that conversation could’ve looked like.

Fear, worry, and over-thinking can prevent us from taking advantage of opportunities to converse with those around us, even when God may put them right in front of us, it’s important that we actually take the step forward to use the opportunities, otherwise nothing comes of them.

These conversations aren’t only for the lost; those who don’t know Christ, but we also need to represent Christ in the opportunities of talking to other believers. God’s message isn’t just for those who don’t know it, but for those who need to be reminded of it, to hear it in effect, to know it’s not a mask that’s put on only around unbelievers. We are to encourage and lift up other believers in their faith and spirit so they will not waver either.

The other way we share the Gospel with others is through our actions.

Following Jesus means representing Him as one of His disciples, taking after His teaching, and putting it into action. In Colossians 3:17, Paul says:

And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.

The majority of people’s first impressions of others comes from their actions, so with that, we are to represent Jesus everywhere we go, so those we may not even have a conversation with will hopefully see Jesus by the way we’re living.

As we’ve mentioned, we can’t just act like a follower of Christ around unbelievers, we are to represent Jesus around everyone, taking every opportunity given to be a blessing to others, loving them, being kind, generous, patient, and joyful.

Some of the most impactful opportunities are the ones where we aren’t just talking about Jesus, but displaying Him, showing who He is and what He’s done for us through what we do; we can’t persuade others about Jesus through conversation and then act like He hasn’t had an impact on ourselves. If Jesus has truly changed our lives, if we truly believe in Him and what He has done, if we truly have asked Him into our hearts, we are to reflect that. Salvation may be by grace through faith, but our works are the result of that salvation in our lives.

With all these opportunities in our lives, it’s nearly impossible to not see that God is so gracious and patient with us. But we can’t just say “thank you” to God for the opportunities, we must take advantage of them. Believing and trusting in Jesus, growing in our relationship with Him, and sharing of what He has done with the world. We see all through Acts how when Peter or Paul are given the opportunity to preach the Gospel after grabbing the attention of the crowds, they take advantage of it. They even prayed in prison that God would continue to give them the boldness to proclaim His message to everyone they could. That’s how the Gospel was able to be spread throughout the whole world, despite the persecution. If we’re struggling to see them, pray for the opportunities to come. Ask God to put you in a place where you may have to depend on Him more, trusting that He’s in control, or giving you the time to grow in your knowledge and understanding of Him, or that He’ll bring about the opportunity to exemplify Christ to someone you meet or talk to. These opportunities are everywhere, are you going to just let them pass by?