Invest In Life: Preparations

Thank you Coby for sharing this morning.

I was sharing with Coby this week that God is working in me because I stood up here about a month ago and told you that I was excited to send people out from this church to others, but apparently I had blinders on when it came to Coby.

I never even considered that God might send him out.

However, it is clear to me and to the Normans, that this is exactly what God is doing.

Now I am excited.

Don’t be confused, it is incredibly difficult, but because this is God’s activity, I am so excited about what God is doing in Coby, Carley, and what He is going to do through them at Alpine.

This morning, we celebrate with them as they walk in obedience to God’s call.

You know, in your past, when someone left a church it was usually because they were unhappy with something.

As you heard from Coby’s testimony this morning, that is not the case.

This kind of testimony is what we should consider normal.

I was sharing with Coby this week when he told me that God was calling him somewhere else, that this is why we do what we do.

This is the very thing that Christ commands us to do.

We are not here to build up a kingdom for ourselves where we are comfortable and life never changes.

God will unfold this in time, but He is beginning to piece together, for me, a long term vision for our church.

We will talk about that later, but before we can get there, we must understand what Jesus wants for us in this life.

Many of us have spent the majority of our lives focused on ourselves.

We talked about that at length last week.

This week we are going to dig into the other side of that coin.

We ended last week by talking about the fact that God is preparing us to bring His love into the world.

Let’s talk about how that happens.

As believers in Christ, we are called to first to be disciples and then there is an expectancy that you will then make disciples.

Have you ever really thought about what it means to be a disciple?

Let’s look at some scripture to help us understand what Jesus is asking.

The first and the one is one I quote often.

Matthew 28:16–20 CSB

16 The eleven disciples traveled to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted. 18 Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The eleven, that were committed followers of Jesus, obeyed him and went to the mountain.

Notice that some doubted and Jesus didn’t pull them aside and tell them they weren’t ready.

He said the same thing to all of them.

He tells them to go and make disciples - teaching them all that they were taught.

If you don’t feel ready, have questions, or just are unsure, it’s okay.

God will use that and grow you as you obey.

A disciple is one that has follows and learns from Jesus.

Luke 14:26 CSB

26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.

It is a tall order to give up the people that you love.

Jesus isn’t saying that we start with that, but He is saying that if it is asked of us, we must.

Jesus is making the point that following Him requires that He is the most important thing in your life.

A disciple is willing to give up everything to follow Jesus.

John 8:31 CSB

31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you continue in my word, you really are my disciples.

If you go back and read the beginning of this chapter, you will see that this is following the moment when Jesus protects the woman from being stoned to death.

He is addressing the scribes and Pharisees that wanted to kill her.

As Jesus is speaking to them, some of them begin to believe.

He tells them that if they “continue in my word, you really are my disciples.”

A disciple hears and obeys the words of Jesus.

John 13:34–35 CSB

34 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Jesus is at the last supper, and has just served the twelve disciples and told Judas to go do what he needed to do.

He tells them he is about to die and leaves them with one last command.

He tells them to love one another.

They didn’t see it yet, but he just showed them what that looks like.

He served Judas just like the others fully knowing that Judas was about to betray him.

A disciple loves like Jesus loves, even to death.

John 15:8 CSB

8 My Father is glorified by this: that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples.

This is one that we are very familiar with.

Jesus has just explained the idea of the vine, branches, and the way in which fruit is produced.

A disciple abides, obeys, and subsequently produces fruit.

Acts 6:1–7 CSB

1 In those days, as the disciples were increasing in number, there arose a complaint by the Hellenistic Jews against the Hebraic Jews that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution. 2 The Twelve summoned the whole company of the disciples and said, “It would not be right for us to give up preaching the word of God to wait on tables. 3 Brothers and sisters, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom, whom we can appoint to this duty. 4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5 This proposal pleased the whole company. So they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a convert from Antioch. 6 They had them stand before the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. 7 So the word of God spread, the disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly in number, and a large group of priests became obedient to the faith.

The church is growing and the needs of the church are increasing.

The church is growing because these men and women were obeying what Jesus told them to do.

As they grew, so did the needs.

The apostles told the church to choose some among them to take care of those specific needs.

The result was that the church continued to grow.

A disciple fulfills their role in the body of Christ.

I believe that God’s intention for our church, part of this vision he is piecing together for me, is to be a church that disciples people, with the expressed purpose of releasing them to disciple others.

What does that mean?

It means that we will invest your life until God sends you out in ministry.

That could be here, it could be to a new church plant, or it could be to an existing church.

We have talked about this before, but I want to remind you that TGP is not a church you can sit at for the rest of your life.

If God has called you to be a member here, He also intends for you to fulfill your calling here.

We are going to Invest In Life, by investing in yours so that you can do the same with someone else.

As you know Christ, in a progressive way, you will begin to share that knowledge with others.

Look with me at Ecclesiastes 11.

Y’all thought I forgot, didn’t you. lol

Ecclesiastes 11:1–3 CSB

1 Send your bread on the surface of the water, for after many days you may find it. 2 Give a portion to seven or even to eight, for you don’t know what disaster may happen on earth. 3 If the clouds are full, they will pour out rain on the earth; whether a tree falls to the south or the north, the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.

The author has made his case over and over again that life and the things in it are temporary.

In these verses, he isn’t telling us to stockpile for our own benefit, but for the benefit of many.

Proverbs 28:27 CSB

27 The one who gives to the poor will not be in need, but one who turns his eyes away will receive many curses.

This is also linked to Deut 15:7-11

Deuteronomy 15:7–11 CSB

7 “If there is a poor person among you, one of your brothers within any of your city gates in the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. 8 Instead, you are to open your hand to him and freely loan him enough for whatever need he has. 9 Be careful that there isn’t this wicked thought in your heart, ‘The seventh year, the year of canceling debts, is near,’ and you are stingy toward your poor brother and give him nothing. He will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty. 10 Give to him, and don’t have a stingy heart when you give, and because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you do. 11 For there will never cease to be poor people in the land; that is why I am commanding you, ‘Open your hand willingly to your poor and needy brother in your land.’

The whole idea here is that we are preparing, but not for ourselves.

We invest in life by preparing ourselves and our lives to serve others.

We are preparing so that when the time comes that we need to help others, we can.

Don’t get confused here and think we have switched gears.

This isn’t the beginning of a to-do list.

Going in the same direction as the rest of what God is saying, we prepare by obeying Christ.

We are talking about living intentionally.

We are talking about living specifically with others in mind.

We are talking about living in a way that everything we do, we are doing it out of love for others in our lives.

Let me share a story of what this looks like because I think we often have a very particular thing in mind when we think of living for others or disciplining them.

Here is a real-life example of something that happened in my life last night.

I have a neighbor that I grew up with and we were really good friends.

Over the years our relationship has been strained by many things.

However, I’ve always felt a nudge from God to love this person well.

As some of you may know, yesterday was the opening of hunting season in our area for squirrels and bow season for deer.

The kids and I spent most of the day yesterday hunting squirrels.

Last night, right at sunset, we were searching for a squirrel that I shot.

I’m about half way up a hickory tree looking for this squirrel and my phone rings and it is this friend.

She shot a deer with her crossbow and was tracking it’s blood trail.

Her dad owns the property beside and behind our house and she was letting me know that if we saw people behind our house with flashlights that it was her and a few others tracking this deer.

In that moment I was wishing I had done a better job preparing so that I could go help her.

Fast forward about half an hour, Bethany and I had rushed around finishing supper, getting kids started eating and getting ready for bed, and cleaned the squirrels we had just bagged.

I was scarfing some food down and Bethany asked if I should go help track the deer.

That was all the confirmation I needed.

I grabbed all my gear and headed out to find them in the woods.

I meet up with her and a couple of guys that have a tracking dog.

As we are wandering around through the woods looking for little specs of blood on the ground I realize that she is using a cell phone for a flash light.

Guess what I have in my pocket, an extra flash light. *God is working.

We track this deer all over the woods and end up in an area that is so thick that the guys with the dog are on their bellies crawling under the briars.

We waited for a while in hopes that they would come back out of the thick area and then decided to walk back out to the rail road tracks and walk down them to see if we could find the guys with the dog.

We’re out there on the tracks and things have quieted down.

Her son, who is the same age as my boys is with us and getting a bit restless.

So to pass the time, I start showing him all the planets that are visible at night this time of the year.

He didn’t believe me so we got out an app that I have that identifies the things in the night sky.

He sees Uranus and declares it as his favorite planet.

We did this for a while and then I decide to walk further down the tracks to see if I can hear them and her son goes with me.

We walked along for a while and he is telling me about his desire for a phone, but his parents said no, but that he can’t use electronics right now anyway because he has a B in one of his classes.

Later she decides that it is time to bring her son home and I walked with them.

After dropping him off at home I walked her back to her parents house and God opened up some conversations.

I was telling her about his desire for a phone and then he told me about his grades.

She said, “He’s so smart that he doesn’t have to study, but in science class they are talking about the solar system and the stars and he says it’s too much to remember for the test.”

Y’all see what just happened right?

This is one.

As we are walking up to her parents house, she thanks me and explains that this is such a big deal for her because, as a single parent, a deer in the freezer will mean she doesn’t have to buy meat for the next year.

This is two.

I didn’t know that and by taking the time last night to help her search for a deer, I was helping to literally put food on the table.

Here is the takeaway.

When we are talking about living for others and making disciples, that doesn’t always look like what we think it looks like.

I was able to love my neighbor in two very tangible ways last night, and neither way required anything of me other than my time.

I was just being myself and being sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

God did a work last night in helping her understand who He is.

Last night, I wandered the woods doing hunting stuff, which I love and my neighbor learned what it means to be loved by God.

Last night, I talked about the stars, which I love, and my neighbor learned what it means to be loved by God.

When Jesus says that His yoke is easy and His burden is light, this is what He means.

Living as God commands us isn’t all hard, in fact, it is incredible.

We have to move beyond the lie that living for ourselves is the only way to enjoy life.

If we will live in a way that prepares us for service when God calls, we will be investing in lives.

If you will bear with me, let me bring this full circle with one last story.

Y’all good for that?

Bethany showed me a book that she read to the girls this week, Miss Rumphius.

The story goes like this, there is a little girl that sits on her grandfathers knee and hears stories of far away places.

She tells her grandfather that one day she will venture to see far a way places and after she will come back and live by the sea.

Her grandfather tells her there is a third thing she must do, she must do something to make the world more beautiful.

And she does, she grows up, and travels the world seeing all that she could.

During her last adventure she hurts her back getting off a camel.

She decides that it is time to settle by the sea and does.

She scatters a few seeds in the rocks in front of the bedroom window of her new home.

Soon she becomes very ill and must stay in the bed, but she can see the beautiful flower out her window.

They are lupines and she has always loved them best.

When spring arrives and she is feeling better she decides that this is how she will make the world a more beautiful place.

She orders five bushels of seeds and spends the next year scattering seeds all over town and the country side.

The next spring the whole area is covered with the beautiful lupines and it is beautiful.

In talking about abiding, we talk often about fruit.

As the branch, we abide in the vine, and the vine produces much fruit.

Do you ever think about what is inside of fruit?

Seeds.

As we abide and God produces fruit in our lives, we are leaving little gospel seeds all over the town, the hills, and the countryside.

We can’t see it right away, but in time, those seeds will sprout, and soon, we will see the beauty of the Gospel growing in people all around us.

This is exactly what has happened in Coby’s life over the last five years, and this is what God wants to do in your life.

God wants you to grow, abide, produce fruit, and then see the gospel seeds that you have planted growing in the lives of others.

Isn’t that amazing?

Let’s pray.