Yesterday morning I preached. I preached about missions for God's glory because of God's glory. It is one of the few times that I actually felt spent after preaching. My prayer was that God would grant me the grace to lay it out wholeheartedly and not hinder the movement of His Spirit. I pray that I did just that.
It seems that I very seldom finish a sermon thinking how great it was. But isn't that the point. I don't want people (myself included!) thinking about how great the sermon was but how overwhelmingly amazing God is and how our lives should be dedicated to exaltation of His name.
Maybe God will use this sermon in some way to spur a greater passion for His name among the nations. I know there a couple of you are interested in the sermon. It is available through my xml or itunes feed or you can listen here.
A good friend of mine sent me an article about the church. Many in my generation are often disenfranchised with what they view as an antiquated shell that needs to be trashed. I find that the author speaks clearly and biblically to this type of thinking. It's a good read. You can find the article here.
This Sunday, I have an opportunity to do be a part of two things I love. The first is preaching. I am grateful to have the the opportunity to open the God's word with our church family. The second is missions. Our pastor, Michael Stovall, has asked me to preach on missions. I must say that this is a wonderful intersection for me.
The more I prepare, the more I think about Ethiopia. This place has a large place in my heart. Seeing the people and knowing the work that God is doing there, I can not wait to return. What's best, is that Lord willing, this September I will have the opportunity to go with representatives of Ewing Road Baptist Church and see them take part in global disciplemaking. I LOVE seeing people catch and understand missions. It changes your daily living. The only thing that is going to make this better is that I get to do it with my bride. We met doing missions with World Changers. We hope to take our children on mission with us in the future.
I am reminded that there is great lostness in Ethiopia. The dots on the map to the left indicate groups of people who are unreached and unengaged. There are 5,800 groups like this all over the world. We have been given the amazing privilege of representing Christ to a world that is estranged from Him. May we do it with boldness, tenacity, and the joy of our King.
I hope you will be with us Sunday as we look together at the fact that, "Missions is Non-negotiable." Would you pray with me that God would open our hearts and eyes to how we can become and even greater part of His mission of redemption?
Last September, our community was hit very hard by flooding. We were blessed as a church to suffer no physical damage and to have the opportunity to serve our community. One of the ways that we did this was by distributing over 15,000 bottles of water in the course of two weeks. We found this to be a dire need. And now another area of the country has some of the same needs. This event is even a little more personal to me since my sister is a victim of the Nashville floods. She and her family are fine, but are still waiting to get back to their neighborhood to inspect the damage to her home.
Our church will be collecting bottled water for the flood victims in Tennessee this Sunday, May 9th from 9:00am to 1:00pm at the church. The bottled water will be delivered to Crosspoint Church in Nashville, TN on Monday, May 10th. At this point we are collecting ONLY BOTTLED WATER. Many people helped us with this same need and we want to pursue this opportunity to serve God by serving others.
How can you get involved?
1. Pray for the flood victims in Tennessee.
2. Purchase cases of bottled water and bring to Ewing Road Baptist Church this Sunday, May 9th between 9am and 1pm.
3. Share this event information with those in your network to increase our ability to collect as much water as possible.
It has been almost a month since I last posted. I have been working through a couple of series of posts in my head that I hope to work on through the summer months. Until then, I felt like this video by pastor John Piper does a great job in leading us to think about how we move into Gospel conversations with people we know or come to know.
