Commissioned to be Party Starters and Transformers

Party starters and transformers.

Party Started Video

It is great to be back here, it is great to see familar faces. It is amazing to worship with family and a privalidge to speak to you.

I want to speak on today on our purpose, our purpose as individuals and as a body of belivers, as a church.

Did you know that we are called to be Party Starters and we are called to be Transformers. For some of you your minds are already thinking ‘I do or I don’t like parties’. For others you are may have thought of this..

Transormers video

The reality of my statment that you are called to be party starters and transformers is far greater than than what you immediatly thought.

One Event Feedback

Last weekend a number of us were at The One Event, it was a good time with friends, good teaching, great worship and weather that seemed to have been imported from the Middle East.

While we were there we saw some amazing parties started.

Let me give you a few examples of the parties. This year 269 under 11s made a commitment. 148 11-18’s became followers of Christ. They don’t annonce the number of Adults but the prayer team was busy.

You know when each of these people made a commitment there is a party in heaven.

Luke 15 tells us

Luke 15:7 NLT

7 In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!

Knowing Jesus personally, making that decission to live with God, rather than against him is such an important event. I think sometimes we don’t give it the attention that it needs, just noting that Bob or John became a christian.

Story of the girl in Little Cherry & our kids

We move on from it too quickly. We need to make more of this. I think we have the British attitude, “Well Done” now lets move on before this becomes a little embaressing - we need to be less british and more Roman.

Romans 1:16 NIV

16 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.

Disciples not Converts.

You know the Jesus never asked us to go and get converts? He commissioned each of us to tell the good news and make disciples.

Matthew 28:18–20 NIV

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

The decission point is the first step , it is a Patry that is strartd but we are commanded as a church to go beyond that. We are commanded to be Transformers.

God is a good God. He gives us opportunities for parties throught that tranformation process.

Claire’s story.

This lady 17 years in wheelchair healed last night running walking running upstairs this morning... INCREDIBLE

The landlady at her BandB posted this ... This lady stays at our B&B during the One Event and always has great difficulty getting up and down the stairs. But not this morning! She was literally running up and down them. Amazing!

I tell you this miracle started parties! - through transformation we are called to be party starers as God steps in and transforms lives, broken relationships, broken bodies.

We start paties through our service, through our prayers and through - most of all - through our love. Our love for God, for each other and for those in the world.

Who knows it can be hard to love?

Sometimes it is hard to love those we know yet alone people we don’t but love is not just an emotion. it is a decision, an act of obidience. When we choose to love we do odd and amazing things.

In my wallet like a few thousand other people is the name of a complete stranger. All I know about this person is that they once knew God and they are now far from Him.

It is love that get’s me to pray for this individual i do not know, it is love that got someone to write his name on this card. It is love that I belive will bring him back and it is a Father’s love that will see another party started in heaven and in this persons family.

Love is the driving force behind those words in Matthew. The words that we know as the great commission.

So what is Jesus asking you and me to do.

We are called to Go and tell

Generally speaking, if you asked people what the purpose of the church was, some might say fellowship. Fellowship is good, Jesus said that unbelievers will know we are Christians by our love (John 13:35).

John 13:35 NIV

35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

And it is love that powers the comission.

Others would say the purpose of the church is preaching and teaching. We are called to strengthen, edify, build up, people through God’s Word into maturity in Christ. Due to lack of knowledge, the people perish, Hosea says (Hos. 4:6).

Hosea 4:6 NIV

6 my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. “Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.

There is truth to this too We all want to grow and the Word is important and central to that happening. Part of the comission is to teach.

I would propose though that the immediate purpose of the church is get our of the church.

In The Commission we find Jesus giving His disciples (that is you and me) the essential the point of their and our existence. It can summarized it this way: The church, fueled by Love, the authority and presence of Christ, is called to be God’s vehicle of bringing glory to Him through making disciples of all people, without distinction.

The first act of this is ...

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations...

Get out of the church. - we won’t find many

Stop being a secret Christian.

graph

We are called to make disciples not just converts

Whatever God calls us to, He supplies. He sends us to stony paths, He will give us strong shoes.

Knowing that we are fueled by His presence and authority (notice the “therefore”), we are called to make disciples. I love the fact that Matthew talks about Jesus “drawing near” and Jesus talking about His authority, before we hear the command that we are to make disciples of the world! What a staggering and paralyzing command, unless we knew it was sandwiched between assurances of Christ’s presence and authority!

Notice it does not say, “make converts” or “get people to accept Christ.” The word “disciple” means above all “learner” or “pupil.”

So the idea here is to “make learners.” A disciple is not simply one who has been taught but one who continues to learn.

Let’s be clear here. As soon as you become a Christian, you are His disciple. But I think it is easy to remain a Christian and not a disciple. Many people bumble along as token Christians - saved absolutly. Lovely people - Quite possibly. Disciples, party strarted, transformers, empowered - absolutly not.

We all need to be disciples. to let ourselves be transformed.

Romans 12:2 NIV

2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

I can’t Go, I Can’t teach, I can’t Baptise.

Some of us will offer up the comment that I can’t go, or I can’t teach or I can’t Baptise.

There is one main command in these verses and that is “make disciples.” Three other elements are under this main verb: going, baptising and teaching. - Making disciples is the primary actions - going, baptising and teaching are ways this may happen.

You can intrepret the comission like this... “As you are going about your life, whether to the co-op or sitting around chatting, you should be making disciples. As you are going, make disciples. When you are at work, or college or on vacation make disciples. In other words, Jesus was not telling us to go be missionaries, in the classical Pith Helmet in the Jungle, but missionaries in our life.

The primary expression of the commission is it should be more of a lifestyle.

Going specifically to do things for God, Teaching and baptising are elements that are important in addition to living out you life authentically and openly.

We are called to disciple through instruction.

Some people want salvation but don’t want to put in the time to be strong disciples of Jesus Christ.

They spectate the Christian life.sort of like watching football, you participate on the the edges, but you don’t really have to put in any work.

God’s insturction to us is not Go out in to the world and watch others but to See people transformed to disciples by “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

What Jesus wants is “a generation of followers who are so saturated in [His] thinking, [His] worldview, and [His] orientation that when integrated into the culture in which they are situated, the culture will have to live with the influence of Jesus Christ, who permeates the culture.”[25]

Live it

Which I guess is a long winded way of saying - Jesus wants you to live out being a disciple, by being a disicple we all disciple others.

Every one of us is a teacher. Each of us will have people that look to us as how to behave.

A teacher simply points out the reason for doing something or not doing something and helps others to do the same.

Proverbs 15:32 NLT

32 If you reject discipline, you only harm yourself; but if you listen to correction, you grow in understanding.

We are called to baptise

Water

Obiednience and belonging

The idea is, invite them to me by going. Then bring them into the community as they publicly confess me through baptism. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this, but let me say a few things here about baptism. First of all, baptism is an outward demonstration of an inward change. Have you ever seen a can in a store with no label on it? This would be a problem because you could not tell what is in the can. The label makes known the contents. The label tells you what is found inside. The label says, "I am a can of Baked Beans

I want you to know that green peas live in me!" It is a public declaration to the community of faith that you would like to follow Jesus and be His disciple and be about the Great Commission. So baptism is not what one does TO BE saved; but it is what a saved person does.

WIKI HOW

Spirit

Baptism in the spirt is about relationship and about empowerment.

when we talk in the church today about baptism of the spirit we tend to talk about empoweremnet. We sepetate the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that happned the moment we accept Christ, with the empowering awakening of Spiritual gifts. I think may be that is a false distiniction.

The Holy Spirit brings about the assurance of the presence of Christ, in fact it is the presence of Christ, and the authority that comes with it.

The Holy Spirity is also the integator of transformation as he works in our lives or brings about miraculous change.

Our role is both carrier and infromer, the Holy Spirit is the baptiser.

Any one can pray to recieve the Holy Spirit in power, for yourself and for others.

We are reassured that God is with us.

Matthew starts his gospel with Jesus’ birth and Him being called “Emmanuel,” which meant, “God with us” (Matt. 1:23). God with us and not against us.

God is with us in this comission every minute of every day- It is his power that we do it in not our own.

Ending.

The commission says

Matthew 28:19–20 NIV

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Making disciples is about two things being party startes and being transformers.

Transforming our own lives and the lives of others, being available for God to make transformations and starting parties. Starting parties in heaven by taking the message of Jesus through our love and our lives, letting God step in to save and starting parties on earth as we celebrate transofrmation in lives through discipleship or miracles.