As I watched the students go through the True Love Waits Ceremony Sunday night I was blessed to witness their bold courage and excited to see what God was doing through them, and that got me thinking this morning…

Those thirteen students didn’t get on that stage by accident; they didn’t just stumble in on Sunday night and say, “Hey, I think I’ll do this purity thing tonight.” No, they got there through intentional work on their part, their parents and their church. The general principle holds true: people don’t get where they are without intentional work. Godly kids don’t raise themselves, bills don’t magically get paid by the bill paying fairy, beautiful yards take long weekends of hard work, socks don’t fold themselves, and churches don’t grow just because they’re, well, there.

Everything in life takes hard work: jobs, yards, relationships, churches and disciples. Remember what Jesus said to those first disciples? He told them to “make disciples”; He didn’t tell them to build a building and then sit back and wait for people to show up. The “Field of Dreams” philosophy of building a church is not biblical (“build it and they will come”). That is the church building strategy of the lazy person.

Some people are under the impression that building a building equals building a church. I wish it were that easy. Building a church takes hard work. We are promised that God will do His part (“upon this rock I will build my church” [Matthew 16:18]). But what about our part; what work are we supposed to do? Please read on.

We must begin by consistently praying for ourselves and others that we might impact the world for eternity right now. Pray for boldness and opportunity; pray for clarity and reception; pray for God’s Spirit to use God’s Word to birth God’s children.

This will also involve us getting the gospel into our hearts so that we can pour it out into other people’s lives. We need to be intentional about reading, studying, and hiding God’s Word in our hearts. It’s can’t be about a program or memorizing a plan. It must become about an every day relationship with the God of creation. What He puts into our hearts on any given day will be exactly what we need to give as an answer for our hope to those who ask (1 Peter 3:15).

Certainly making disciples involves intentionally building meaningful relationships where God has strategically placed us. We just need to allow God to use where He has providentially planted us in this world to reach people with the gospel.

Finally, we need a courageous boldness to share with those people how God radically changed our lives and how that same God can change theirs as well. We don’t need to have all the answers, but we do need to have all the love to share the most beautiful news we’ve ever heard.

Grace & Peace,

We are where we are spiritually because of somebody else. Two facts I would like to share with you this week…

First fact, our salvation began with what God did for us. We are saved because God loved us and gave His Son to take our rightful place on the cross (Romans 5:8). We brought nothing to the game; God did it all. Our response to this elaborate display of love was faith, and the Bible is clear that we didn’t even conjure that up on our own (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Next fact, we owe our knowing about what God and Jesus did for us to someone (or “someones”) in our life. They are the ones who shared the gospel with us at some point. It was their testimony or life or words that the Holy Spirit used to convince us of our need for a Savior. These are the faithful people who loved us enough to confront us with our lost condition and tell us how God could transform us into a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The above two facts lead me to a concluding question: “Why are we content to let it stop with us?” Every Christian is called to reproduce their lives in others. Jesus put it this way: “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). We are called to make a strong commitment to the great commission. Being a witness of the gospel is not optional in the Christian life, it is an obligation.

Paul felt such a pull to this calling that he wrote about it to the Christians in Rome.

¹⁴I am under obligation both to the Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. ¹⁵So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. (Romans 1:14-15)

He expresses his pull toward evangelism by using the word “obligation” that can also be translated “debt.” If we owe somebody money we are quick to pay it back. Why do we become negligent in paying the debt of sharing the gospel with others?

Grace & Peace,

William Shakespeare wrote a play called “All’s Well that Ends Well.” In other words, if the story ends well then living the story is good too.

After reading the last five chapters of Revelation I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that everything is going to end well for believers. Those ending chapters not only close out a great prophetic book of the Bible but they are also a divine exclamation point on human history. Yes, for believers it ends very well indeed.

Actually the story of human history has a beautiful beginning as well. Reading the opening chapters of Genesis inspires us to adore a God who intimately constructed the universe. He created a perfect place where the human race would not just survive, but thrive. He places the first couple in an extravagant garden and gives them a great big “YES” – “enjoy it all and honor Me through your enjoyment.” And He only gives them a little “no” – “don’t go there, stay away from that which I know will destroy you.”

It’s neither the beginning nor the ending that causes us trouble, it’s the middle. We quickly discover in Genesis that every thing goes south in paradise for Adam and Eve (Genesis 3). No, it didn’t take them long at all. And this is where all of us live – in the middle. We’ve lost our enjoyment of God, we mess up living with others, we’re depressed more than we’re happy, we fight, struggle and just muddle through life hoping to make it to the next fun event. We mark off time hoping retirement will bring us the joy we lost. What a miserable existence.

You see, the problem is that we’ve allowed today’s circumstances to rob us of today’s joy. Bad things dictate our joy when it should be God’s promises found in the Bible that bring us joy. To change the trend we must saturate ourselves with the promises of the gospel we find in God’s Word every day. Yes, every day. The battle for our joy in God is an every day battle, so we must drink deeply of God’s Word every day to refresh our souls.

I’m not worried about the end; remember it ends well for all God’s children. And if it ends well then shouldn’t today be a good day as well? Yes it should. Let’s take our cue from the Psalmist,

This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24)

Grace & Peace,