100 Everywhere Street

Venice Assembly

February 24, 2008

Everywhere. Everywhere.

That’s a big word that’s kind hard to wrap your mind around.

Let’s do a little experiment just to make things a little clearer.

What I’m about to do is ask you to say something out loud, and I want you to know there’s no such thing as a right or a wrong answer. But, it will work much better if you actually verbalize it. I don’t want you to yell, but with a good strong speaking volume I want you to say something for me in just a minute. It not an intellectual exercise, I just need you to say what seems to be the most obvious answer to my question. I fully expect that there could be as many answers as there are people here this morning.

Okay, everybody relaxed. Taking it easy.

Alright, here’s the questions.

What is the first place that comes to mind, (now remember I want you to just say the first answer that comes to mind in the first 2 seconds)… What is the first place that comes to mind when I say the words:

Home? –

Cold? –

Hot? –

And now the last word……. EVERYWHERE? (wait for answers)

You know, I ask myself those questions, I didn’t come up with an answer for “everywhere” even after a lot of thought.

The reason I wanted to do that little experiment, it to talk with you about that word everywhere.

I convinced that if you can’t readily identify with a word or thought, the easiest thing to do is disconnect from it, to sort of “write it off” so to speak.

So when I say this year’s theme, I knew it would be a part of my task to make that word small enough to wrap our minds around, and yet not loose the “bigness” of what the bible talks about when it uses that word, or words like it,

What I am going to show you now is not a presentation that I put together, I found this. But, I thought it would be a big help to us in making everywhere something we could understand and grab a hold of.

The world is well over six billion. So I asked you who lived everywhere, it would be over 6 billion people.. and that number is growing fast even as we speak.

And I know it’s hard to imagine everyone’s issues circumstance within that huge number of 6 billion plus.

But what if the whole world was condensed to say… 100 people.

And the whole world was just one village of 100 people, who correctly represented the other 6 billion people of the earth… what would that look like?

What the screen, and I think you’ll get a better idea.

VIDEO -

It’s not so big, and it’s not so hard to understand when you look at it that way.

Did you notice, only 5 people were even from North America…. On 5 and North America includes a lot more people than just United States of America.

That’s a little clearer picture of everywhere.

Now I want you to look at “everywhere”, from the perspective of the Scripture.

Acts 1:1-8 (NLT) In my first book I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach 2until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit. 3During the forty days after his crucifixion, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.

4Once when he was eating with them, he commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before.5John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” 6So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?”

7He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know.8But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Let’s read that last verse one more time….8But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Everywhere, in that translation is sort of an expanding circle.

In fact, it’s a circle you can see expand right before your very eyes if you read through the book of Acts. It happened just like that. Let me show you that in a graphic.

Everywhere is not a word that supposed to be attached to the world beyond our sight and understanding…. It’s starts here, but it absolutely expands and goes there…way out there; even to the farther regions of the earth.

Uganda, the mountainous region of China, the villages of Nepal, the frozen Tundra of Siberia, the tiny Island of Micronesia, the lost and confused of Salt Lake City…. It’s all included in the Biblical mandate called everywhere.

Everywhere requires Faith

Mark 10:27 (NLT)

27Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But not with God. Everything is possible with God.”

Faith believes that God has gone ahead of us, and that He’s already moving in everywhere.

Faith embraces the reality that the task is bigger than me, but is doable because God is bigger than me.

We really never know what God has cooking that’s going to open the hearts and lives of people to the gospel.

I found the words from a letter in one of the study sources that I use.

It reminded me about how large a part faith places in making a difference everywhere..

ILLUS -

In a letter from Mils and Sandy Becker, April, 1995.

“In the 1920’s Stalin ordered a purge of all Bibles and believers. In Stavropol, this order was carried out completely. Thousands of Bibles were taken and believers were sent to the gulags, where so many died for being enemies of the state.
Last year (1994), a Commission team was sent to Stavropol. They didn’t know about the history of the city at that time. But when the team had difficulty getting Bibles shipped from Moscow, someone mentioned that they knew a warehouse existed outside of time, where these Bibles had been stored since Stalin’s time.
“The team prayed together and one member had the courage to go to the warehouse and ask the officials if the Bibles could be removed and distribulted again to the people in Stavropol. The answer was “yes”.
The next day the Commissioners returned with a truck and several Russians to help load the Bibles. One helper was a young man- a skeptical, hostile, agnostic university student who came only for the day’s wages. As they loaded the Bibles one man noticed that the student had disappeared. Finally,
they found him in a corner of the warehouse weeping.
He had slipped away, hoping to quietly take a Bible for himself. What he found pierced him deeply. The inside page of the Bible he picked up had the
handwritten signature of his own grandmother. It was her personal Bible.
Out of the thousands of Bibles still left in that warehouse, he stole the one
that belonged to his grandmother- a woman persecuted for her faith all her life.

Only God could have prepared the way like that.

Only God can prepare the way for you.

Everywhere requires People

Romans 10:13-14 (NIV) “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (if you can believe that you have some faith, and that’s good)

14How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

The key words is found right there in verse 14, “how can they hear without someone preaching to them.”

It takes someone. It takes a person. It takes people.

Everywhere requires Power

I don’t know if you saw it, but there are two kind of power in our opening paragraph of scripture.

One gets talked about a lot, but there another lurking in there that you and I must pay attention to.

I know that not all of us have been attending church for a really long time, but once you’ve been around a while, you can see this one kind of power that sorta creeps in, and you can actually sees it’s tendency to trip people and keep them from experiencing world changing, “everywhere” impacting power.

First let’s look at what I’ll call Illegitimate Power

Notice what happened in our opening text.

4Once when he was eating with them, he commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before.5John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” 6So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?”

7He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know.

Illegitimate power. (Looking for insight that others didn’t have)

This is “pile up” power. Power that gathers for personal enhancement.

In it’s ugliest form, it’s what Simon the Sorcerer exhibited in Chapter 8 of Acts. He saw power and influence that Peter and the apostles were given by the Holy Spirit for their ministry, and he wanted it for his personal enhancement, and Peter rebuked him sternlhy.

Legitimate Power . (Receiving power to fulfill a mission)

This is “pour out” power. Power that enables one to live and be poured out for a cause

8But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The ultimate expression of God’s power inside of you and I, is in the salvation of someone who doesn’t know Jesus. It’s in the telling and preaching of the gospel story, and that story or that witness being used by God to bring that person to saving faith.

Everywhere requires Partnership

Romans 10:14-15 And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can they preach unless they are sent?

I showed you that video at the beginning, to make the word “everywhere” a little easier to grasp.

But let me tell you the huge reality…. There really is over 6 billion people alive in the world today.

A huge percentage of them have not come to the knowledge that Jesus is the way the truth and the life.

A huge percentage of them would slip into a Christless eternity, and spend eternity in a god-forsaken place of eternal damnation called hell.

Many of them, millions have never had the gospel offered to them in a way they can understand, and they are doomed to believing a lie.

Everywhere requires people, and it further requires people working in partnership with others.

We can’t talk to people behind the walls of Pakistan, and Uzbekstan, and within the walls of China… but Lee, and Travis, and Diane can.. and they’re doing it right now because of partnership.

That’s what this conference is all about…. Partnership.

Everywhere requires faith, it requires people, it requires power, but it absolutely… even with all of those…requires partnership.

If we’re going to make an impact “Everywhere, it’s going to have to happen on three different plains, simultaneously.

PRAY – Every missionary, and really every project need to be covered in prayer by a family or a household of this church.

GO – We’ve got to be involved in a very tangible, real way. We’ve got to physically get involved in reaching everywhere. That’s why our goal is at least 50 people from Venice Assembly on a Missions Trip somewhere this year.

GIVE – We need 150 Faith Promise cards to keep our partners on the field.