HOW TO BE USED BY GOD
Part 2 04-03-11 Sermon
Forest Grove Church is in the life changing business. That’s a part of our mission – helping lives be changed by the power of Jesus Christ. Last Sunday I began a message on “How to Be Used By God”. I pointed out two very important truths.
One, God has a mission for each of us in life. God has never created a person that He didn’t have a personal life mission for. Jesus said in John 17:18 “In the same way you gave Me a mission in the world I give them a mission in the world.”
The second thing I pointed out is that part of your life mission (not all of it but part) is bringing other people to Jesus Christ. After all, someone told you! Once you become a believer God wants you to pass it on. He wants you to tell other people. He wants you to bring others to Him just like somebody brought you. Paul says in Romans 1:9 “I serve God by spreading the Good News about His Son.”
The great news about your mission is that God does not mean for you to go through your life fulfilling your mission all by yourself. He intends for us to work together. He intends for us to support each other in a common life mission. We’re going to talk about that today.
Some of you have never brought anybody to Jesus Christ and you probably felt a little bad about it. I’m going to show you an easy way how, with other people; you can bring people to Christ.
We’ve got a wonderful example of this in the Bible where a small group of people brought a paralyzed man to Jesus. This story is so important it’s covered three times. It’s told in Matthew 9, Mark 2, and Luke 5.
“One day Jesus was teaching in a home and the Pharisees and the religious leaders were setting all around. They had come from nearly every village in Galilee and in Judea even as far away as Jerusalem to be there. (So it’s a packed out home.) Then some men arrived carrying a paraplegic man on a stretcher. They looked for a way to get into the house and set him before Jesus. When they couldn’t find a way in because of the crowd they went up on the roof, removed some tile and let him down in the middle of everyone, right in front of Jesus. (This is almost comical if you can imagine this. These guys are persistent.) Impressed by their bold belief Jesus says, ‘Friend, I forgive your sins.’ That set the religious scholars and Pharisees off. ‘Who does He think He is? That’s blasphemous talk. God and only God can forgive sins.’ Jesus knew exactly what they were thinking. He said, ‘Well, just so it’s clear that I’m the Son of Man and I’m authorized to do this,’ He now spoke directly to the paraplegic. ‘Get up, take up your bed role and go home.’ Without a moment’s hesitation he did it. He got up, he took his blanket and he left for home giving glory to God all the way. And the people rubbed their eyes incredulous and then they also gave glory to God. Awestruck, they said, ‘We’ve never seen anything like this.’”
From this story we find four life changing principles on how your group ‘can reach one more for Jesus’. Notice this verse, Romans 15:7 “Reach out and welcome one another to God's glory. Jesus did it. Now you do it.” He said, “I was given a mission in the world. Now I want you to do the mission that you’re given.” What did these friends do? They did four things.
I. THEY BECAME CONCERNED FOR THEIR HURTING FRIEND. (COMPASSION)
They became concerned for their hurting friend. This is the principle of compassion. Every mission has to flow out of compassion, out of love. In fact, if you’ve got a life mission and it’s not based on love it doesn’t count. I don’t care what you do in life if it’s not done in love; the Bible says its zip! The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 “If I have not love I am as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.” In other words, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many awards you get, how many things you accomplish in life, how many missions you fulfill if you don’t do it in love God says it doesn’t count.
People need to know that we care. In fact, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. They want to know that you love them. And before you ever share Jesus Christ with anybody you need to show love. Before you ever tell them about Christ, you need to show love. Be concerned. We must care because God cares.
Romans 15:2 “We should all be concerned about our neighbor and the good things that will build up his faith.” 1 Corinthians 10:24 “People should be concerned about others and not just about themselves.” The number one reason why most Christians never share their faith with anybody, never bring anybody to Christ is not because they’re evil people. They’re believers. It’s not because they’re mean. It’s because they’re preoccupied. The number one reason we don’t share with the people around us is we’re not concerned enough about them. We’re more concerned about ourselves. My problems, my plans, my needs, my goals, my ambitions, my desires, my agenda, what I’ve got to do today, tomorrow, this weekend. You will never bring anybody to Jesus until first you get concerned enough about people who don’t know Jesus.
One of the reasons Christians never share their faith is because they’re rarely with non-Christians. They’re always at the church. They don’t know anybody who is not a believer. They haven’t had a bar-b-que with a non-Christian in 3 or 4 years. Why? They don’t have time to invite friends over who don’t know the Lord.
Salt, the Bible says, is only good if you spread it around. Salt in the saltshaker is worthless. Salt is only good if you spread it out on the meat.
Christians are kind of like manure. If you pile them all up together for too long they stink. But if you spread them around a lot it does a lot of good. It fertilizes the world. So we don’t want a big stink in church. We want to fertilize all of Joelton.
The Bible tells us in the book of Mark there were four guys in this small group. The reason why God used these guys is because they were sensitive enough to the needs of a friend. They cared enough to bring a guy to Jesus. They weren’t preoccupied with their own selves.
Your life mission has to start with love. What I’m saying is this: the heart of the matter before we can go to anything else, the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.
How do you know when you’re filled with love for other people? You care about them. How do you know you really care about them? You become aware of their needs. If you care, you’ll be aware. If I don’t care I will not be aware. I don’t know the needs of my neighbor. Why? Because I don’t care enough about my neighbor. I don’t know the needs of the person I work with. Why? I don’t care enough about the person I work with. If you care, you’ll be aware. Awareness is the evidence of caring.
When you care and when you are aware that always leads to prayer. Before you ever bring anybody to Jesus you need to start praying for people. If you pray for people your heart will change. You cannot pray for people and not become concerned about them. Start praying for them. Let me give you three things to pray for when you’re praying for unbelievers.
1. Pray for an opportunity. Paul wrote: “Pray that God will give us an opportunity to tell people His message.” Just pray, “God give me a natural, unpressured opportunity to tell them about You and invite them to church.” God always answers that prayer. Always. He will give you an opportunity one way or the other, to share Christ with somebody that you care about or to invite them to church. Pray for that opportunity.
2. Pray that God will soften their hearts. Whenever you find somebody with a closed heart you can always know it’s a hurt heart. So you have to pray that God will soften their heart. When God has hard ground and He wants to get seed into that hard ground you know how He softens the ground? He doesn’t come with a jackhammer. He sends the rain. So you start looking around saying, “Where are the storms of life in people’s lives around me?” Anytime you see somebody going through a storm you know that God's softening their heart. So you can look around and ask, “Whose heart is being softened around me?” Anybody who’s under stress. Look for people who are under stress. Look for people going through a storm and you’ll know God is softening the hard ground so the seed can be planted. Pray for God to soften their heart.
3. Pray for God to soften your heart. Say, “I’ll be honest God. I don’t care that much about other people. I care more about myself. I care about my own plans and priorities and my family. I care more about those inside the church than those outside the church.” When God softens your heart you get what the Bible calls “a burden”. A burden is an old fashioned word that means your heart is tender towards other people.
Notice this verse “Those who sow in tears will reap songs of joy.” Have you ever been so concerned about the salvation of somebody who doesn’t know Jesus Christ that it brought tears to your eyes when you prayed for them? If that hasn’t ever happened to you, you need to do a heart check. If tears have never come to your eyes over somebody who doesn’t know Jesus, it means you don’t understand how serious this is. Many Christians go to movie after movie and will tear up, sitting in the theater crying great tears for some fictional character. But they’ve never shed a tear for a neighbor who’s going to hell. They’ve never shed a tear for a parent or a relative or a brother or an uncle who is headed in the wrong direction and headed for hell. If I never have tears for people who are lost I really need to check my heart. And I need to start praying not “God soften their heart.” I need to start praying, “God, soften my heart.” You can’t have a hard heart praying for people. So if you pray for people over and over it will soften your heart.
So here’s the first step in fulfilling your life mission. Make a list of nonbelievers that you are concerned about. And then begin praying for their salvation regularly.
Family. I want you to write down the name of at least one family member who doesn’t know Jesus Christ. It may be a parent, it may be a child. It may be a brother. It may be a sister. It may be a grandparent. Write down at least one name of a relative, a family member who doesn’t know Christ. We have to be concerned about people who don’t know the Lord.
Friends. I want you to write down the name of a friend. It could be a brand new friend. It could be a long-term friend. Any friend who doesn’t know Jesus Christ. If you can’t think of any non-Christian friends you’ve got a problem. If you don’t have any non-Christian friends you’ve got a real problem. You’re spending way too much time with Christians. God does not intend for you to spend all your life with Christians. You need to have some non-Christian friends. If you don’t have any non-Christian friends how can you be like Jesus? You can’t. You need some non-Christian friends. Write down the name of a friend who doesn’t know Jesus. If you don’t have a friend who doesn’t know Jesus you need to write, “God, give me a friend who doesn’t know You.”
Work. I want you to write down the name of a coworker or somebody at work who doesn’t know Jesus Christ. If you can think of more than one, go ahead and write more than one. You may have three in the family area, none in the work area.
If you care, you’ll be aware and if you’re aware it will lead to prayer. In the Bible relationships were the key to bringing people to Jesus. Andrew brought his brother Peter. Philip brought Nathaniel. The woman at the well brought her friends. It always starts with your local circle of influence. God has put these people around you that you might influence them. That’s the first step.
The second thing these four guys did was:
II. THEY BELIEVED THAT JESUS WOULD SAVE THEIR FRIEND. (FAITH)
This is the principle of faith. Luke 5:20 “When Jesus saw their faith, He said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven.’” Whose faith is Jesus talking about? The friends! He’s not talking about the paralyzed man’s faith. He says, “their”. That’s plural, multiple. He’s looking up and seeing these four guys letting this guy down. Remember this guy is paralyzed. He didn’t have much faith. So he needed other people to bring him to Jesus.
There are many, many people in your life just like that. They are so paralyzed. They don’t have any faith at all. It’s going to be your faith that brings them to Jesus. This is a very important principle. A lot of people are paralyzed in life. They’re paralyzed by fear. “I’m afraid of losing my job.” Almost everybody knows somebody at work like that. They’re paralyzed by guilt. They know something in their past is just killing them. Shame’s eating them up. They’re paralyzed by resentments over people who’ve hurt them. They’re paralyzed by boredom. They’re paralyzed by loneliness. They’re paralyzed by grief. There are a lot of paralyzed people around you and they don’t have enough faith to believe. So your faith is going to have to bring them to Jesus. It says they believed that Jesus could and would save their friend. So they bring him to Jesus.
God wants to use your faith. That’s the second step. First you get compassion and you get concern. Second you believe that God can save people.
Have you ever met anybody who you thought was hopeless? You thought, “Never in a gazillion years will this person become a Christian.” Everybody has at least one relative like that – the hopeless uncle or sister or brother or father or mother or wayward child. Never in a million years is this person going to come to Christ. They are so far gone they are so lost, they are so in the other direction. They may have even joined a cult.
They are not hopeless. No one is hopeless. Remember what God's word says. Hebrews 7:25 “Jesus is able, now and always, to save those who come to God through Him…” There is nobody beyond the reach of God's love. There is nobody beyond the reach of God's grace. I don’t care what they’ve done or how long they’ve done it. There’s nobody beyond the reach of God's love. You must believe that. Saul was a religious terrorist before his conversion. David, the man God calls a man after God’s own heart, was an adulterer and a murderer. Moses was a murderer. The Bible shows us that there is hope for everyone!
“Without God, it is utterly impossible. But with God everything is possible.” One of the values of being in a small group is that together we can strengthen each other’s faith. Sometimes when my faith is weak and I don’t have enough faith to believe – I’ve been praying for this person for seven, eight years and he still hasn’t come to Christ – when I share that with other people they start believing too and all of a sudden my faith gets strengthened. So there is power not just in group prayer. There is power in group faith. There are some people that are only going to come to Christ when a group of people believe God together. That’s why you need other people helping you bring people to Christ.
Paul says in Romans 1 “I want us to help each other with the faith we have. Your faith will help me and my faith will help you.” The Bible says, “Encourage each other and give each other strength.” So we’re to encourage each other.
You need to enlist the support of others to pray in faith with you for the salvation of the people on your list. In other words, you need to give them the names of the people you just wrote down. And they need to give you the names that they just wrote down. You need to start praying together for everybody on that list. And you pray for natural opportunities to share
The third key to fulfilling your life mission...
III. THEY DIDN’T JUST PRAY FOR THEIR FRIEND, THEY BROUGHT HIM TO JESUS. (ACTION)
Notice it says in Matthew 9:2 “They brought to Jesus a man who was paralyzed and lying on a mat.” If you’re paralyzed you can’t come to Jesus on your own. Somebody has to bring you. There are many examples in the Bible of people bringing others to Jesus. Evidently these guys developed a plan to bring their friend to Jesus. Do you have a plan? If you don’t have a plan to bring people to Jesus, you’re not going to bring anybody to Jesus. You’re going to get too busy. And weeks turn into months and months turn into years and years turn into decades and all of a sudden you still haven’t brought anybody to Jesus. If you don’t have a plan for fulfilling this part of your life mission you’re not going to do it. Satan will make sure you don’t.
So it’s not something you just do haphazardly. The Bible says in Colossians 4:5 “Be wise in the way you act with people who are not believers, making the most of every opportunity.” The Bible says, “Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in so that My house may be filled.” God wants His house filled.
What I want you to do next is this. Looking at your prayer list of unbelievers I want you to select some people. Some people you think you could bring into a church service. And those you could bring to a fun event. Not a group meeting but a fun event like a party or a bar-b-que – something you’d just do together. Some people wouldn’t come to worship yet but they would come to a fun party. Circle the names of those who would come to a weekend service and put a star by those who might come to a group party.
You’ll want to bring people to a non-threatening event. Like you go to a show together, the movies together – something like that. Circle those you could invite to church. Then put a star by the names you say, “I don’t think they’d come to church but they would come to a party.”
The fourth thing that these four guys did to bring their friend to Jesus is:
IV. THEY DIDN’T LET DIFFICULTIES DISCOURAGE THEM. (PERSISTENCE)
This is the principle of persistence. That means if the person you’re trying to bring to Jesus doesn’t respond the first time don’t worry about it. You probably didn’t respond the first time you were invited, the first time you heard about Christ. Don’t get discouraged. Sometimes the seed has to be planted and watered and watered and watered and prayed over and then it grows.
These guys when they finally bring their friend to Jesus, when they get there, they couldn’t even get in. That would be discouraging. We’ve brought our friend this close and we cannot even get in the room. It’s already filled up. But they refused to be discouraged – by the crowd or by the building because they’re determined to get this man to Jesus.
Question: What discourages you from bringing people to Jesus? Criticism? No, the fear of criticism. It’s the fear of criticism that discourages us most of the time. Do you get discouraged if people rebuff you the first time? – “You want to go to church?” No. – Is that the last time you’re going to ask them? I hope not.
The truth is all of us get discouraged sometimes in our attempts to reach friends or family or neighbors or relatives or work associates for Christ. Especially when people seem apathetic, when they don’t have any interest. But we cannot, we cannot, we cannot give up! We can’t. It’s too important.
“Let us not get tired of doing what is right, for after a while we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t get discouraged and give up.” You will eventually reap a harvest if you keep on being persistent, keep on loving, keep on praying, keep on inviting, keep on talking, keep on living the life. Don’t get discouraged. God doesn’t get discouraged with people when it takes them a long time. “…God is patient because He wants everyone to turn from sin and no one to be lost.” God doesn’t get impatient with people. Why should you?
Some of the people you have talked to may not be ready to be “harvested.” They may still be ripening. Someone else may be the one to harvest them. Ask God to send you someone else, to lead you to someone else who may be ready for the harvest.
This is an incredibly exciting time to be alive. My question is this: Are you ready to go through the roof for Jesus?
Do you think these four guys ever figured in their wildest imagination that 2000 years later on the other side of the world a group of Americans, which they didn’t even know of, would be sitting talking about them? No. They had no idea. But here’s the point. The greatest way to leave a legacy is bring people to Jesus. You will be remembered for that. The greatest way to leave a legacy is to bring people to Jesus.
Today I want to challenge you to make a new determination to work harder than ever before to bring people to Jesus. It is not our job to save people. That’s Jesus’ job. It is our job to bring them to Jesus and let Him save them.
The Bible says, “God is building a home and He’s using all of us - irrespective of how we got here - in what He is building. He used the apostles and the prophets in the foundation. Now He’s using you, fitting you brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone!” God’s building a temple and He wants to use you.
Here’s the bottom line: Will you do more than just learn about your mission in life? Will you do something about it? There is a commitment I want to challenge you to make:
To commit yourself to being used by God to help reach at least two people for Jesus. With your group develop a list of unsaved people in your life, bring them to a fun event, bring them to a worship service. Spend time with them and get to know them. Invite them to our groups and activities and to special outreach efforts.
Prayer:
“Father, I want You to use me and I want You to use our group to ‘reach one more for Jesus’. Help us to be concerned about the people who don’t know Jesus yet. Help us to be consistent in praying for their salvation. We believe You can save anyone. We believe no one is hopeless and no one is beyond the reach of Your love. Help us to make plans to bring people to You. Help us not to get discouraged when people don’t initially respond. Help us to try new approaches and be creative in our outreach. Help us to cooperate together as a group. And help us to be willing to do what is uncomfortable in order to reach others. Jesus, You paid a high price to save us. We’re willing to pay the cost to reach others, the people You died for. Thank You for the privilege of serving You. We want people to be in heaven because of our group. We know that this is an eternal investment. We ask You in faith that our group will be able to reach new people for You. In Your name we pray. Amen.
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