BEING ON MISSION AS WE WALK IN GRACE
God calls us as his church to be a group of believers who comply with Jesus collectively in doctrine and in follow, figuring out him and making him identified, strolling in grace collectively on behalf of others. Our God-given mission as God’s church is to comply with Jesus collectively till that’s the case for each single individual we will attain. It begins amongst ourselves. In different phrases, we’re to like, pray, minister, serve, worship, disciple, and be on mission till everyone knows Jesus as our Savior and King and are making it identified with our phrases, deeds, and lives that he’s Savior and King.
But, that’s only the start of our mission. For as we try this for each other we should be reaching out to others past ourselves, to deliver them to Jesus in order that they can also know him and make him identified. So, we should love, pray, minister, serve, worship, disciple, and be on mission to assist each individual in Tallahassee know Jesus as our Savior and King and make it identified with their phrases, deeds, and lives that he’s Savior and King.
In fact, that isn’t fairly everything of our mission both, as a result of as we’re known as to achieve Tallahassee, we’re known as to do our half to achieve the ends of the earth. We’re known as to do that not solely as we companion with different like-minded church buildings, however ourselves, sending out short-term and long-term missionaries, planting church buildings, and taking the gospel in every single place we will.
This imaginative and prescient and mission should be earlier than and behind every part we do as a church, from how our pastoral workers prioritizes and serves, to what our committees and deacons do, to how we worship and educate and preach and minister, what our price range displays, and the way we exit on mission.
Nevertheless, if we’re to be and do that, if we’re to seize ahold of God’s imaginative and prescient and be on mission for him, we should know, worship, and comply with God for who he actually is. We should start to understand his overwhelming love and style for all individuals in every single place. We should perceive what he means when he proclaims that he’s a reconciling, saving God. We should run towards him by operating towards his phrase.
We all the time need to watch out we aren’t making God in our picture, a counterfeit idol who suits our preconceived thought of who God should be. We will do that by imagining that God is a God of all justice and no mercy, or of no justice and all mercy. We will do that after we substitute our phrase and knowledge for his phrase and knowledge. God is each simply and the justifier of those that consider in Jesus Christ. It’s solely after we start to grasp and reside into his gospel that we are going to be Spirit-filled, Christlike ladies and men who will reside for him.
One of many books of the Bible that God makes use of to essentially opens up our hearts and assist us know and reside on mission for him is the e book of Jonah. Final yr we started going by way of the e book of Jonah collectively on Sunday mornings, however after two chapters a pandemic hit, and God took us in another instructions. For this primary month of 2021, nonetheless, we’re going to revisit and end the e book of Jonah.
The e book of Jonah may be very artfully crafted, with plenty of little nuances and a cautious construction, to assist us see a couple of great and needed truths: that God loves all individuals of all races, that he’s working to avoid wasting a individuals from all tribes, tongues, and nations, that our mission is to take the gospel to all individuals, that with a purpose to try this we should acknowledge and switch from the sinful attitudes we now have towards others and towards God himself, and that God is totally simply and fully merciful. Jonah is an anticipation of how God so liked the world that he gave his one and solely son, the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God in a single individual, who labels himself the final word Jonah (Matt 12:41), in order that we might be saved.
Coming to know and comply with God in Christ by way of the Spirit begins for us, because it does for Jonah, with listening to and believing his Phrase, operating towards him to reside for him, as a substitute of away from him and his presence. I sit up for worshipping with you over the subsequent few weeks as we search God collectively on this portion of Scripture.
God bless,
