The Mission: Engage
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Good Morning Harmony!
Today’s message is the third in our series talking through our updated mission statement, another familiar word, engage, so today’s message shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise. But before we really get into it, let’s pray.
Ok, so just to have a bit of a recap, we’ve updated our mission statement to be this:
Our mission is to develop authentic believers who strive to connect people to Jesus, teaching them to engage in discipleship, and who desire to multiply the Kingdom in the process.
and we still have the same guiding verses from Matthew 28: 19-20:
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,
teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
And we’ve talked about being authentic, and how we have to be authentic in our relationship with God and each other, and we’ve talked about how we have to be connecting with others to bring others to Jesus in an authentic relationship with Christ, and today we’re going to talk a bit more about that as well as engaging people.
And our vision statement for this is this:
We desire to engage every person through discipleship.
Jesus is for all ages and all peoples, so we teach the unchangeable Word of God to all ages and all peoples.
And last week we talked a little about cars and how if a part is not bolted in or connected properly, or the wrong part is bolted in, then failure of that part can occur.
Now today we’re going to use that car analogy a bit farther, but don’t worry, we’re going to keep it pretty general.
So the three main parts we are going to discuss are the engine, the transmission, and the wheels. Every car has these three components, even the new electric ones, and so that is what we are going to look at today and how we can relate this to engage.
And within this concept, we are the transmission.
Now the transmission is a vital piece of hardware for a car.
And the first thing we’ll see is that in order for the transmission to work, it has to be connected to the engine. The engine in this sense is God’s power - we have to be
1. CONNECTED TO GOD’S POWER.
God is the driver, He’s sending fuel to the engine, which provides the power to the transmission, and that’s you and me.
Paul talks about this power in Ephesians 3:
For this reason I kneel before the Father
from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.
I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit,
How do we receive this power?
We’re authentically connected to God and each other relationally, and we’re praying for one another, and we’re receiving that power that God has given to each of us.
In Acts 2:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.
Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles.
They prioritized their relationship with Christ, and they saw God’s power at work. God’s sending power on each one of us who have called out to Him and are walking in a relationship with Him.
He’s sent the fuel to the engine, and that engine has more power than any we could ever imagine. As much as I like Dodge cars, they have nothing on the amount of power God’s engine has. The fastest car in the world has nothing on the amount of power God’s engine has.
Because God’s power can do all things, right? God’s power can part the seas, bring down walls, stop the rotation of the earth, bring sight to the blind, heal lepers, and save sinners like me. God’s power has no equal, and even if all of the other powers on earth came together they still wouldn’t rival the power that God has and the power that God has given to us.
And that’s exciting! That’s the power we have living in us. And we get to be transmissions of that power.
And as transmissions we are
2. FOLLOWING GOD’S PLAN.
How do we follow God’s plan -
Let’s pich back up in Ephesians 3:
I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit,
and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love,
may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love,
and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us—
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
God’s the one shifting the gears. We’ve got to comprehend God’s love, we have to have Christ dwelling in us, and how do we do that church?
Believe it or not this isn’t a unday morning only transaction. If you think you’re getting everything you need here in an hour to provide you the capability of understanding and using that power that God gives, you’re slipping.
Your a slipping transmission.
It’s said that you can only remember about 7 minutes of a message that you hear. 7 minutes of an hour. You’re leaking 53 minutes of teaching.
Now maybe some of you can remember the majority of the message for a few days, but by Sunday you’ve leaked everything and you’ve got to be refilled again every Sunday. And when we go a couple of weeks like we had to earlier this month, you’re empty.
And some of us may have forgotten to put the drain plug in the transmission, and so it’s gone before you even leave the parking lot.
This is why discipleship is so important. If you aren’t in a small group, you absolutely need to be. If you can’t make it to a small group that’s ok, start having coffee with someone to pour into each other’s lives. That’s where true discipleship is. That’s refilling the transmission fluid. That’s putting the drain plug in.
God calls us to this.
These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart.
Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead.
Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates.
And we are all children of God, so Ephesians 6:1-4 tells our children to listen, but it’s also telling us to listen to our Father:
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, because this is right.
Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise,
so that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life in the land.
Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
We’re to teach and train each other and our next generations to follow Jesus and to have a solid relationship with Him.
We’ve got to get it out of our head that accountability is some sort of bad word. Accountability is a one another thing, not a one-sided thing. You hold me accountable, I hold you accountable, it’s a shared responsibility.
I’m the first to admit, I don’t like to work out. I don’t like physical exercise, and I really didn’t like command PT. But there was a time where it was one-on one, or just two or three of us, and I actually enjoyed that time. And I was being held accountable, and I was holding them accountable, for going to the gym.
An engaged transmission can’t slip. If it does, it’s irritating at a minimum, and it leads to failure of the transmission. We have to be working together to be engaged and learning and holding one another accountable to that learning.
Connected to the engine of God’s power, engaged through discipleship, and that is what it takes to
3. GET GOING.
Connected to Jesus and being engaged in discipleship leads us to get the wheels going in serving Him.
God’s power in you does nothing for you and does nothing to further the Gospel if it isn’t connected to the wheels to get going. Do you understand that? If you are connected to Jesus, you should be actively seeking to do what He says and the very first thing He tells us to do is make disciples, and that means that we have to be disciples.
Now how did Jesus make disciples?
He taught them, and He sent them, right? Think about last week where we saw Jesus sent out the 72 in groups of two.
After this, the Lord appointed seventy-two others, and he sent them ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself was about to go.
And they went! And the power of God was seen in these town, right?
But let’s look at the end of chapter 9:
As they were traveling on the road someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus told him, “Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
Then he said to another, “Follow me.” “Lord,” he said, “first let me go bury my father.”
But he told him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and spread the news of the kingdom of God.”
Another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go and say good-bye to those at my house.”
But Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Now understand something here - Jesus was hearing excuses. The first man said he’d follow Jesus, and Jesus told him basically that it’s not a comfortable life. The next man wanted gave the excuse that he had a funeral to attend, and the third man said he had to go and say good-bye to his family, and at the surface level these seem like valid reasons to give.
But Jesus sees through things. These men wouldn’t come back. These men were looking at the cost to follow Jesus and couldn’t make that connection, so they weren’t engaged in the discipleship ministry that we are all called to do.
We’re having a church clean up day Saturday - I’ve got a meeting that day. We’re going to go have an event in the park - I’ve got to go see my sister that day. We’re going to go hand out water bottles at the park - I’ve got a headache, I’ve got to wash my hair, I’ve got to...
And some of these may be fully valid excuses. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go see your sister, or that you shouldn’t be on that business meeting, or even that a headache is a bad excuse. But what I am saying is that if you continue to come upe with excuse after excuse to not be participating in discipleship events meant to grow you, then perhaps you need to evaluate where you and Jesus stand.
Because Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23
Although I am free from all and not anyone’s slave, I have made myself a slave to everyone, in order to win more people.
To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; to those under the law, like one under the law—though I myself am not under the law—to win those under the law.
To those who are without the law, like one without the law—though I am not without God’s law but under the law of Christ—to win those without the law.
To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some.
Now I do all this because of the gospel, so that I may share in the blessings.
There’s a difference between an excuse and an “I’m not comfortable doing this”. If your excuse is made simply because you aren’t comfortable with being in a particular situation, then what Paul is really saying here is that he stepped out of his comfort zone and he obeyed Christ.
Paul understood the words of Christ when he was talking to those men that made excuses in Luke 9. And Paul said you know what, the price is worth the cost.
So how do we get there from here?
First, we who are in Christ have received power - and a part of that power is our own spiritual gifts.
1 Corinthians 12:4-11
Now there are different gifts, but the same Spirit.
There are different ministries, but the same Lord.
And there are different activities, but the same God works all of them in each person.
A manifestation of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good:
to one is given a message of wisdom through the Spirit, to another, a message of knowledge by the same Spirit,
to another, faith by the same Spirit, to another, gifts of healing by the one Spirit,
to another, the performing of miracles, to another, prophecy, to another, distinguishing between spirits, to another, different kinds of tongues, to another, interpretation of tongues.
One and the same Spirit is active in all these, distributing to each person as he wills.
And Romans 12:3-8
For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.
Now as we have many parts in one body, and all the parts do not have the same function,
in the same way we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another.
According to the grace given to us, we have different gifts: If prophecy, use it according to the proportion of one’s faith;
if service, use it in service; if teaching, in teaching;
if exhorting, in exhortation; giving, with generosity; leading, with diligence; showing mercy, with cheerfulness.
So the very first thing we see is we each have spiritual gifts, and we don’t have each other’s spiritual gifts.
So there are Spiritual Gifts surveys in the foyer on the engage table, or you can scan the QR code in your bulletin, or you can just go to our website at HBCMO.org and download one.
And here’s what I’d like you to do - if you haven’t done one of these in the past say three years, please take one or download one and complete the survey. Often times the results will change a bit, because of our discipleship level along the way or whatnot, and it’s important to have the current spiritual gifts in mind as we go on to the next step.
And the next step is simply to either bring in the hard copy of the results and hand them to me, or to go on the website and fill in the information there - and that message will go directly to me.
We’ll use that as kind of a guide to help offer you opportunities where you can use your gifts - you will get specific invitations to things that match your gifts and talents that God has given to you.
Now with all of that in mind, we all need to understand something here - it’s a survey. It’s a piece of paper, and it’s only as accurate as the information you put into it, and it can be wrong at times. It may leave out something that you want to do, and that’s ok, because we’re still going to announce the opportunities to the body, and you can still speak up and serve - this is simply a way for us to work to be intentional in giving you service opportunities.
and as we go through these things we’re going to provide feedback - so that we can all grow and mature in our walk with Christ.
And one last thought before we close today. If you’re here and you’re saying to yourself, you know, things like I’m already mature, I don’t need this. I don’t need a small group. I don’t need to be held accountable. I don’t need to do this. Today’s message wasn’t for me. I want to challenge you.
If that’s where you are in your thought process, I want you to look around here and at our community as a whole. The next generation believers are desperately needing a relationship with Christ, desperately needing discipleship from you.
And the excuse that you don’t know how to relate to the next generation, or those people, or whatever it is - how does that relate to the words of Paul? How does that sound to Jesus? That excuse does not excuse you from the duties that God has called you to.
To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; to those under the law, like one under the law—though I myself am not under the law—to win those under the law.
Young people, look around. because the same thing applies. If you’re telling yourself that you can’t learn anything from the previous generation, or that you can’t relate to them, there are older people and people younger than you that need a relationship with Jesus. That excuse doesn’t excuse you from the duties that God has called you to either.
To those who are without the law, like one without the law—though I am not without God’s law but under the law of Christ—to win those without the law.
We all are called to make disciples, and that requires us to be connected to the engine, so that we can be engaged in discipleship as the transmission, moving the wheels of sharing Jesus with the world.
To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some.
Now I do all this because of the gospel, so that I may share in the blessings.
Today, let’s lay aside every excuse, let’s be connected to God’s power, engaged in the work of discipleship that God has called each of us to, and let’s get going in serving Christ.
Father, as we come before you today, help us to be the authentic believers that you have called us to be. Let us be connected to Your power. Lord show us every excuse, show us anything that gets in the way of engaging one another in active discipleship and Father remove those obstacles that are there. Strip us of all that would be in the way of who you have called us to be and make us new again today with the desire to keep you as our number one priority. Lord we want to be your light in the darkness, we want to see people’s lives changed for You.
As we close out today’s service, maybe you’re here and you just, you know what, you just know you’re not in a relationship with Jesus. You’ve been trying to fool everyone around you, you’ve been playing the game, so to speak, you’ve been going to church and you can use all of the Christianese you want, but there’s something still missing. You haven’t been made a new creation, and you have been going to church because that’s what you think good religious people do.
God is speaking to you today, and He’s saying come, follow me. Come, find rest. Come, and I can set you free. You have to be reconciled with God, it was earlier in the message. How do you reconcile things with God?
First you have to be willing to admit you were wrong. You admit that you are a sinner, because everyone of us is one. Second, you have to be willing to trust, so we place our trust in the belief that Jesus did exactly what He said He was here to do - He lived a sinless life, He died without sin, and three days later He rose from the grave defeating death hell and the grave for you to live and be free. He died the death He didn’t deserve to save us from the eternity we did deserve. And then third, you have to choose to follow Him. You confess that Jesus is Lord and you choose to follow Him. That’s it - you don’t have to give money, you don’t have to physically DO anything because that’s not what he wants - He just wants the relationship with you.
To start that relationship is as simple as having a conversation in your own words with God that goes something like this:
Dear Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner. I believe You died for my sins. Right now, I turn from my sins and open the door of my heart and life. I confess You as my personal Lord and Savior.
And the you just add at the end of that personal conversation, in Jesus name, amen.
As the music continues softly for just a moment longer, as the Spirit moves you, right where you are or here up front at the altar, give it all to Jesus -
Father, thank you for Your message today, help us to live our lives for You, walk with us as we desire to be true to you and your mission you have given to us.