RUNNING TOWARD GOD
God calls us as his church, First Baptist Tallahassee, to be a neighborhood of believers who observe Jesus collectively in doctrine and observe, realizing him and making him recognized. Our God-given mission as God’s church is to observe 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 recognized with our phrases, deeds, and lives that he’s Savior and King.
But, that’s just the start of our mission. For as we do 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 recognized. 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 recognized with their phrases, deeds, and lives that he’s Savior and King.
In fact, that’s not fairly the whole lot of our mission. As we’re known as to succeed in Tallahassee, we’re additionally known as to succeed in the ends of the earth. We’re known as to do that not solely as we accomplice with different like-minded church buildings, but additionally by sending out brief-time period and lengthy-time period missionaries, planting church buildings, and taking the gospel in every single place we will.
This imaginative and prescient and mission must be earlier than and behind all the things we do as a church. From how our pastoral employees prioritizes and serves, to what our committees and deacons do, to how we worship and educate and preach and serve, what our funds displays, and the way we exit on mission.
Nonetheless, if we’re to seize ahold of God’s imaginative and prescient and be on mission for him, we should know, worship, and observe God for who he actually is. We should start to understand his overwhelming love and charm for all folks 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 working towards his phrase.
We all the time need to watch out we aren’t making God into our picture — a counterfeit idol who suits our preconceived concept of who God must 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 once we substitute our phrase and knowledge for his phrase and knowledge. God is each simply and the justifier of those that imagine in Jesus Christ. It’s solely once we start to understand and stay into his gospel that we are going to be Spirit-stuffed, Christlike men and women who stay for him.
One of the books of the Bible that God makes use of to open up our hearts and assist us know and stay on mission for him is the e-book of Jonah. For the following few months, we’re going to take a break from the Gospel of Mark and spend a while collectively on Sunday mornings within the e-book of Jonah. Jonah is a brief little e-book of solely 48 verses in size; you possibly can learn the entire thing out loud in both Hebrew or English in underneath 5 minutes. Regardless of its size, it’s one of essentially the most effectively-recognized, liked, and mentioned books within the Bible.
The e-book of Jonah could be very artfully crafted, with so much of little nuances and a cautious construction. Designed to assist us see just a few great and essential truths: that God loves all folks of all races, that he’s working to avoid wasting a folks from all tribes, tongues, and nations, that our mission is to take the gospel to all folks, that as a way to do this, we should acknowledge and switch from the sinful attitudes we’ve got 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 could possibly be saved.
Coming to know and observe God in Christ via the Spirit begins for us because it did for Jonah. Listening to and believing his Phrase, then working towards him to stay for him, as an alternative of away from him and his presence.
