Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Romans 12:3-8, emphasizing the importance of serving others as a core value of the church. He discusses how to serve effectively by recognizing our gifts and viewing ourselves with humility, avoiding pride. The practical application encourages congregants to engage in outreach opportunities, such as Vacation Bible School and local missions, while also fostering relationships with those who do not know Christ.
Welcome and Church Information
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Amen. Well, thank you, choir.
If you have your Bibles, we'll be in Romans chapter 12 this morning. Romans 12, if you have a child under the age of first grade, they want to go to Children's Church, they can be dismissed at this time. First grade and younger will be in Children's Church down the hallway here.
And Romans chapter 12, we'll recap as you're turning there.
Over the last couple weeks, we've been talking about our core values. And this week, we're continuing our third core value of going and serving.
And so we talked about glorifying God and then growing together and now going and serving. Two weeks ago, we talked about why do we serve? What's the purpose of serving?
We talked about the duty's sake, to deliver the oppressed, and to demonstrate who we are. And then last week, we talked about who do we serve? Who is our service directed toward?
We talked about how it's directed toward our service will satisfy the longing that we have in our heart. It'll be rewarded.
And we want to be just like Jesus who modeled service in his life, so it's a model for us. And so today, we're getting even more practical, and we're talking about how do we serve? How do we serve in this life as a church?
And so Romans chapter 12, verses 3 through 8 is where we'll be at. The verses will be on the screen. But we'll have you stand at this time, and we'll read these couple of verses today.
The Bible says, For I say, through the grace given to me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God has dealt
with every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, all are members in not the same office. So we've been many, or one body in Christ, and every one members one of another,
having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us. Whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith. Or ministry, let us wait on our ministry.
Or he that is teaching, let us teach. Or he that exhorted on exhortation. He that giveth, let him do with simplicity. And he that rules with diligence. He that shows mercy with cheerfulness.
Lord, we thank you for this day. Lord, I pray that you have your will and way in the service today. Help us as we serve you. Help me as I preach this morning to have the words to say that are going to glorify you.
Importance of Community Service
In your name we pray. Amen. You can be seated.
As we have mentioned the last couple of weeks, we believe that the church should go into our community and serve others.
And so as we think about serving others, the question begs the difference for how do we serve? I came across a story that one of my heroes of the faith, Charles Stanley, gave an illustration of, in the late 1800s, a dangerous seacoast notorious for shipwrecks, there was a crude little life-saving station.
The station was simply just merely a hut. Some bamboo was put together and a little place for the ones that were there to stay and to sleep. And there was only one boat.
But as the few devoted members kept constant watch over the turbulent sea with little thought for themselves, they would go out every day and night tirelessly searching for those that were in danger, as well as those that were
lost. Many, many lives were saved by these brave band of men who faithfully worked as teams in and out of life-saving situations. By and by, it became a famous place. Everyone in the area knew about it.
Everyone in the area knew that these men were giving of them lives. And some of those who had been saved said, I want to help and come alongside of the seacoast and become associated with this little station. They were willing to give their time and energy and money to support this objective.
New boats were purchased. New crews were trained. The station, who was once an obscure, crude, virtually insignificant place, began to grow.
Some of the members were unhappy that there was just a hut that was unattractive and poorly equipped, and they felt more comfortable that that place should be provided. And so emergency cops were replaced with furniture.
Rough handmade equipment was discarded. Sophisticated, classy systems were installed. And the hut, of course, had to be torn down to make room for the additional equipment, furniture, systems, and appointments. By its completion, the life-saving station had become a popular gathering place.
Its objective had begun to shift and is now used as a sort of a clubhouse, an attractive building for public gathering. Saving lives and feeding the hungry and strengthening the fearful and calming the disturbed rarely occurred,
if it ever did occur. Few members were now interested in braving the sea of the life-saving mission, so they hired professional lifeboat crews to do the work. Where the original goal wasn't altogether forsaken, however, the life-saving motif still prevailed in the club's decorations.
In fact, there was a lifeboat that they had saved, and they put inside of a nice preserved room with memories that people could go by and observe with soft lighting and nice noise behind it, so people could go by and observe the vessel that was once used to
go out and save people. About this time, while some members were looking at this ship, a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and one of the crews brought in loads and loads of cold, wet, half-drowned people.
They were dirty. Some were sick because they had been in the water all night. They were lonely. Others were different from a majority of the club members. The beautiful new club suddenly became messy and cluttered.
The special committee saw that there was a shower house immediately built outside, away from the club, so the victims of the shipwreck could clean up outside, so they didn't have to come inside. At the next meeting, there were strong words and angry feelings, which resulted in a division among the members.
Most of the people wanted to stop the club's life-saving activities and all involvement with shipwreck victims. As you would expect, some insisted upon saving lives.
That was their primary objective, and the only reason for their existence was to minister to anyone's needs and to help regardless of the beauty of the club or the size of the decorations. They were voted down.
They were told they were not wanted to save lives of various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters. They could begin their own life-saving stations down the coast.
And so those men and women picked up, and they moved a ways down the coast, and they began another club. And they began to say, we're going to go and we're going to help serve people. And yet, as humanity does, it evolved into yet another club.
And those people that were in that life station, as history repeated itself,
came across another example of what had just happened, where some wanted to save and some wanted to serve, and others just wanted to come and hang out.
And you can visit this large coastline today, and it's exclusive with impressive clubs, along with this shoreline, owned and operated by professionals who have lost their involvement in saving of lives that are around.
Shipwreck still occurs in those waters, but now most of the victims are not saved. Every day they drowned at sea, and few seemed to care, because they lost their mission and their objective.
I fear, church, that oftentimes this is what the modern church is. The modern church has lost their effectiveness. They have lost their desire to be a soul-saving station and a life-saving station, and we must regain the desire to be a station that is going to go and serve others,
that is going to go out and reach our community. And in order for that to happen, we have to understand, how do we do this? How do we serve in this type of way?
Self-Reflection and Humility
Which brings us to our first point of the message today. What is your view of yourself? What is your view of yourself?
Verses three through six talk about this, and we'll discuss this, but as a way of thinking through verse three specifically, I'll read it.
It says, For I say, though the grace is given to you to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according to what God has dealt every man a measure of faith.
When I was in Idaho, it was my first ministry that I was a part of, and first time on staff.
I was part-time when I got hired, and my wife was teaching in the school, and we began working for about six months, and then after about six months, they made me full-time, and so we're in ministry,
and we're serving, and we're doing all that ministry requires of us, and it came time for my yearly evaluation.
Okay, how many of you teachers or even in the professional workforce have some type of yearly evaluation? Raise your hand.
Okay, so I'd never heard of this, right? I'm a college student, just came out of college, and my pastor sat down with me, and he said, Hey, we're going to have an evaluation. This is not to tell you how wrong you're doing.
It's just to evaluate your ministry and what you're doing, and so I thought, Okay, cool. He said, But I want to preface that by saying this.
He said, I want to help us by understanding that you're going to go through, and you're going to fill out an evaluation, and I try every year in my ministry, and as my one year comes up, we'll incorporate
this here. He said, I will do an evaluation of you,
and I will go through, and I will grade you. He said, You will go through the same evaluation, and you will grade yourself, and you will grade on how well you've done, and where you think you're at. He said, I do this for two reasons. He said, We don't have to match.
He said, But if I think you're doing really, really poor in an area, and you think you're doing the best you've ever done in that area, then there's probably something wrong there. He said, But it could be the other way.
You could think that you're doing really, really poor in an area, and I think you're nailing it, and you're knocking it out of the ballpark. He said, So your view of yourself is not right, and we need to re-evaluate, and bring our view of ourself back into this.
And so, as I began thinking about this, we have to understand that we're not too high, or we're not too low, to do anything for the ministry, or for the sake of Christ. And so, as we would go through this evaluation,
you know, there'd be times where I'm like, Man, I don't really think I'm doing that great. And he would say, No, James, he said, You're doing really good in that area. These are the areas you need to work on. And oftentimes, this is what happens in our life.
We need to be re-evaluated, re-brought into the mindset of what Christ has done for us, because oftentimes, we will think of ourselves more highly than we think we should. I'm married to a wife that often will tell me the things that I'm doing wrong.
I have a couple of men that laugh, because they have that same wife that will correct us and tell us when we're doing wrong.
And so, it is good for us to have that, because even in this scripture through Paul, says that we should be humbled in this area. I thought of it like this, Avoid being all about you.
When we begin to think of ourself and what we're doing, and how we're reaching out and serving others, avoid it being all about us. C.S.
Lewis said it like this, a great author, a great writer, many of you have probably read or watched his movies, that have been put in the movie form. But he said this, He knew of no one, except Christians, who ever admitted to being proud and conceited.
But yet, our Christianity today will often admit to being proud. We'll admit to being,
thinking we know we have everything figured out. When I was in college, one of the statements that we would always say is, I'm humble and I'm proud of it.
And oftentimes, that's our attitude is, I'm humble enough, but I'm going to be proud that I'm humble. And I'm going to make sure everyone knows that I'm humble in this area.
Did you see that I gave that person my shoes the other day? Did you see that that person needed a coat? And so I get, and all of a sudden, we begin to brag about the things that God says just to keep to yourself. And we must accept who we are.
We must accept that we don't have it all together, and we cannot do everything, which allows us to be able to rely on others. You see, the church as a whole is a unit, a body of believers that are relying on one another. The foot cannot do everything.
Right? It's got to have the other foot. It's got to have the hand. It's got to have the brain.
It's got to have everything else as part of the body of Christ. And it helps us to rely on one another.
One of the things Scotty said, he had eye surgery this morning. He said when his eye is, his right eye, he can't see out of it right now, and it's fuzzy. He said, when that gift is taken away, the other senses are enhanced. And you guys know this.
You guys know that when you begin to get sick, your senses of taste and smell begin to get better because other parts of your body are restricted. And this is what happens when we begin to understand that I am part of the body.
I'm part of what God has called me to do. And I have to help others in this mindset. He says this in verse four, be of sound judgment. Be of sound judgment.
Know that we are not ours and whose we are. Our bodies are not our own.
And Christ is saying here through the writing of Paul is, we must understand that Christ has redeemed us in each and every one of us and that we must think soberly about those things. He continues on and he says in verse four, he says that we have gifts.
He says that we are many members of one body and not all members of the same office. And we must not think that someone has been given more than us. We are all redeemed by Christ.
Christ came and he died on the cross for each and every person that's ever lived in this world. And we have all been given a gift of salvation.
And neither one of us have been given more or less than what Christ has given. And so therefore we take that as a model as we talked about last week and we say I'm gonna love everyone the same.
And that's so hard to do, isn't it? We talked about this morning in Sunday school about the Beatitudes and about how we should love those that hate us. Love those that mistreat us.
When someone comes and punches you in the face, you turn the other cheek. And oftentimes, as Scotty said, we don't wanna turn the other cheek, we wanna turn their cheek. Right? Because that's our humanity.
And so oftentimes we have to take this and we have to say, I'm not any better than that other person.
I'm not any better than what they are going through because they may not know Christ and they may not know what Christ has done for them. And so therefore I must love them just as Christ has loved me and gave his life for me to be a ransom for many.
As we continue on this thought, I'm laying a lot of introduction as we begin to get to the main part of the message.
Unity in the Body of Christ
Verse five, he says, we have to see ourselves as a unit on mission for the cause of Christ. Look at verse five again. I think it's on the screen. So we've been many, are one body in Christ and everyone members one of another.
We are all part of a body of Christ. We're all different.
One of the things that I often read as I go through this study of the body of Christ is this, we all have different personalities. Aren't you glad we're not all the same personality? We're not all in Eeyore.
It's good to have an Eeyore, but it's not good for everybody to be in Eeyore. Okay?
It's good for, if we go through the Winnie and the Pooh, you can go through all the different ones. It's good for each of them to be different, but if they were all the same,
it would be a pointless show. And so each and every character on there is different for a reason. It's the same way in our church. We all have different personalities. We all have temperaments. Our histories are all different. We all come from different places. We all come from different backgrounds.
We all come from different ways of life. And we, as a body of Christ, must understand that we are different in that area for the betterment of Christ. The ability that Christ has equipped us with is different in each and every way.
Not everyone can get up here and sing as great as me. And so we're grateful in that area. And so we're grateful that Christ has given us different abilities.
Okay? So when we begin to think of what Christ has given us and how God has ordered us and deliberately ordered his church to have the order of the human body.
Think about it. If you were to chop your arm off today and lay it up here on the altar, how effective would that arm be outside of the body?
It'd be useless. In a matter of moments, the cells would begin to degrade, the tissue would begin to rot, and it would die. It would be ineffective by itself. And so the arm must be connected or, as a good term here, interdependent upon the rest of the body.
The arm in and of itself is no good unless it's connected to the body.
And we, in and of ourselves are, I hate to put it like this, are no good unless we're connected to the church. And then when we begin to be connected to the church, we begin to see life.
We begin to see that what Christ has done for us and will do through us because we're connected to the source of life.
And Christ says we must be connected to these things.
And we're gonna talk about those gifts here in a minute. But the bottom line is in verse six, we all have different gifts. The gifts come from God and are his righteousness.
They're not for ourselves. They're not to serve us, but rather to serve Christ. And to say, how can I use these gifts for the glory of God? As we continue on, we ask our question is, what are God's gifts?
Verses six through eight begins to lay this out for us because he begins to say that there are different gifts. And we have these gifts differing according to the grace that has been given to us.
It says, whether prophecy, let us prophesy, the proportion of faith, or ministry, let us wait on ministry. And he that leadeth, teacheth on teaching. He that exhortation, on exhortation.
And he that giveth, let him do with simplicity. And he that ruleth with diligence, so that he shows mercy with cheerfulness. And so there's many, many gifts. You can look at 1 Corinthians 12. You can look here.
You can look at some of the other epistles. And you're going to list and have tons of different lists of gifts.
And you can do a spiritual gifts test. And if you've ever wondered what your spiritual gift is, come and see me and we'll talk through some of those things. But the basic three categories of gifting is this. You ready? The first one is this, speaking.
This is the prophecy, the teaching, the exhorting, and the knowledge.
Okay? This is speaking in front of people. This is a teacher. This is someone who is a preaching person. This is someone who just likes to educate people. Okay? This is the exhorting.
Maybe you're like, well, Pastor James, I'm not really good at speaking in front of large groups of people, but I'm really good in like a small group. Three or four people.
You give me a group of three or four boys, or three or four girls. Man, I'm going to excel there because I'm able to pour into them. Well, then you would have the gift of exhortation, or speaking, or telling others about Jesus.
And through the knowledge of Christ, you have this gift. And so that's the first one. You begin to ask yourself, you begin to say, okay, is this me? Is this what I need to do? Maybe it's the second one, which is leading. This is the government. This is administration.
This is wisdom. You ask yourself, maybe you're really good at creating spreadsheets. Maybe you're really good at organizing events, and getting all the details together, and figuring out the nuts and bolts of everything, where you would talk to someone else, and they would be like, you know what?
I just want to do the event. I don't care how we do it. I just want the event done. And you're looking at someone else, and you're like, no, no, no. What time are we meeting?
What time are the eggs going out? What time is the food getting here? What time are we eating? And they're like, I've got to know minute by minute what's going on. This would be that person, the person of leading and administration.
And then you've got the person that is the gift of serving. And it's laid out in three ways, giving, mercy, and hospitality.
This is someone who's serving others rather than themselves. This is the person that says, I don't care how much I have as long as I can give it to others. It was a story, and I'm sure I'm going to butcher it. If you haven't noticed, I don't plan a lot of my illustrations.
I just sort of let the Holy Spirit lead. So sometimes they fall really good. Sometimes they don't. But there was a man that,
Allie's pastor was flying one day, and he got on a plane, and he asked the guy beside him, he said, hey, I've got a quick question for you. And I've shared this before.
I've got a couple former teenagers here. He said, if you were to die today, are you sure that you would go to heaven? The guy looked at him and said, what did you just ask me? He's like, oh man, I'm on this guy who's going to really obliterate me. And he said,
ask me that question again. He said, if you were to die today, are you sure you'd go to heaven? The guy pulled out a $100 bill and gave it to him. I was like, okay, that's pretty cool.
He said, ask me again. Okay. He said, if you were to die today, are you sure you'd go to heaven? And he pulled out a $100 bill and he gave it to him. He said, ask me one more time. He's like, okay, now we're getting freaky.
Is he going to like punch me in the face the third time? Or is he going to keep giving me the hundreds? Like how many times do you want me to ask you this question? So he asked him again, same thing happened. And he said, I've been traveling.
He said, I travel all over the world. I'm a platinum multimillion mile flyer.
And he said, I've sat on hundreds and hundreds of airplanes. He said, that's the first time anyone's ever asked me that question.
He said, I'm a Christian. I believe in Jesus. And if I were to die today, I would go to heaven.
He said, and I fully believe that God has called me to be a multi-billionaire. Hold on. Can I get that calling? Right?
I want to be the multi-billionaire. Like, that'd be great. He said, God has gifted me in a way to lead businesses and lead others. And he said, I have been given so much I want to give back to other ministries. He said, I've got a massive mansion in Georgia. I believe one year,
Allie and her entire teenage group, which was over 100 kids, flew down there. He paid for it. They went to his house. They had a conference in his house. And they stayed in his house because he wanted to be a servant.
This is people who give. This is people who have mercy, who have the gift of hospitality. We all don't have that. But God says that he has given some of those gifts.
And we begin to ask ourselves as he lays these things out, as we begin to judge ourselves and to think of ourselves less likely than others, and we begin to have humility in everything we do, we begin to say, how are we doing with the gifts that God has given us?
And the question you may ask is, Pastor James, I don't know what my gifts are. I don't know which one of these three things that God has given me.
And so I wrote down a couple of questions that you can ask yourself. If you want to jot these down, maybe on the back of your notes you can. The first question is this, what do I enjoy doing?
What are the things that when I do it, like I feel the most pleasure in life? Like it's, maybe it's golfing, maybe some of you are like, I want to just golf all day long, and if I could be on the golf course seven days a week,
five hours a day, hanging out with some guys, that would be great.
Well, maybe God's calling you to lead a golf tournament for the church. Maybe God's leading you to use your gifts of doing that for a great thing. And you begin to ask yourself, what do I enjoy doing? The second thing I may ask yourself is this, what ministry am I attracted to?
We've got ministries that are going to be going on, and we're unveiling new ministries, all the time, as me and my wife are here, we're praying, and we're planning some things, and you begin to say, okay, Pastor James,
you're doing these things, and I'm really attracted to that, but I don't ever see myself doing that. Well, that's great.
I don't want you to do everything. I want you to ask yourself, what are you attracted to, and how can you invest?
How can you give? Another one, and this is one of the ones that I probably struggle with, is this, what do you notice?
Okay, you walk into a building, some of you are like feng shui queens, and maybe kings,
okay, some of you may have never heard that term, and you're really just like stuck back a little bit, but maybe you come in, and you notice that the tree, the plant up here has turned just a little to the right,
and the first thing you do when you come in is you have to straighten that plant,
and you walk over a little more, and you see the notes over here aren't straight, and so you got to straighten those up, and you walk out in the hallway, and the table is just a little crooked, so you got to straighten that, like you notice the little things,
you notice when the door is not shut all the way, or the carpet's got a little seam in it, or the paint's peeling somewhere, and you have the gift of noticing the little things, well, your gift may be that you just want to help facilitate things being better,
and so you begin to ask yourself, what do I notice, am I noticing the little things that are going on, what am I burdened about, what has God in the source of your life burdened you about the most,
talk to often times, I'll talk to people and they'll say, Pastor James, I don't really see myself teaching, but man, if I could just come and I could just serve a couple hours, and I could just, maybe just
give my time here, give my time there, or write some cards, and send out some cards, man, I just love doing those things,
that's the gift that God has given you, don't try to be something else, do the gift that God has given you, and then the last question I will ask is this, what is your life experience, because your life experience will help drive you into the direction that you need to serve in, maybe your life experience is this,
Pastor James, I come from a broken home, my mom and dad split up when I was a young kid, and I was abused as a kid,
I was, this is not my story, but I was abused, maybe I had a stepdad, or an uncle that abused me, and God redeemed me out of those situations, and now I'm living for the Lord now, and I just want to serve, maybe share my story with people,
some of you may know I have a podcast, and part of my podcast is just people sharing their stories,
had a lady that called me last week, and asked me to come, and come on her podcast and share my story, because our story is powerful, because our story is different from everyone else's story, and when we tell our story, other people are encouraged, and someone's going to come and say,
I've struggled with those same things, but I've never told anyone, but I can relate to you,
can we sit down and have coffee one day and just talk, and all of a sudden, your experience will open up opportunities for you to serve in the church, these are not all-encompassing questions, there's more than these
questions, but this is just to help you sort of get to know where you're at and how you can use your gifts for the Lord,
but then we get to the bare bones, the nuts and bolts of where we're at today, and we'll spend the last couple minutes here, how do we use our gifts, or how do we use them?
Paul says in verses six and verses eight, two words, he says, let us, and then in verse eight, do it, let us do it,
and when we put those together, all of a sudden, it's, we've got these gifts that he begins to talk about, and then at the very end, he says, now that you know what your gifting is, don't just sit on it,
go out and do it, go out and use those gifts for the glory of God, and he says, go out, and he says, I'm commanding you to use what you have received,
I'm commanding you not to be the servant that Jesus illustrated in his parable where three men came and one was given ten gifts, one was given five, and one was given one, and the one with ten and the
one with five went out and they, they used their gift and they served and they did the things they needed to do, and the one that had one said, I'm just scared, I don't want to do anything, I'm
just going to sit on my gift because if I just sit on it, then at least my master is going to be happy. I fully believe if the one that had one gift would have went out and used his gift and would have lost everything,
when the master came back, he'd have said, well done,
my good and faithful servant, because you were given little, and you did everything you can with the little,
but oftentimes, we are given little and we say, I don't want to do anything because I'm afraid to use it, and God says, because you're afraid, I'm taking it away from you.
I can't make you be that billionaire, that billionaire that's God called to be able to give because you're not faithful in the little things,
and so we begin to ask ourselves, where are we at and how do we use them?
Outreach and Community Engagement
We talked about last week about how we can go out and we can serve others, but today, we're going to lay it out in two ways. The first way is by serving through outreach. This is, as I talked about with Scotty's ordination,
doing the work of an evangelist, and it looks different in every single one of us. Doing the work of an evangelist is different in every single one of us.
My daughter came to me this past Wednesday and she grabbed a stack of the tracks up here. I don't know if she got the idea from Jackson.
I know Jackson did this a little bit, but she said, Dad, I'm going to take this stack and I'm going to lay it on every single one of my classmates' desk at school. I said, that's awesome. You're just taking a small step of just sharing the gospel with people.
You're able to take that that's going to have the gospel and you're inviting them to church, you're telling them about Jesus, you're doing the work of an evangelist.
She would probably be nervous as all get out if she were to stand up and talk to someone about it, but she could hand that track to somebody. She can say, hey,
I want to invite you to come to church with me. I want to invite you to come and hang out and grow with me as I'm growing in the Lord.
I laid out three things that are coming up this summer that you can begin praying about, about how you can help and serve. The first one is our Vacation Bible School.
I don't know, I have not been to Vacation Bible School here, but Vacation Bible School at every other church I've been at is the biggest mode of outreach that I'm a part of.
More people from the community come into the church the week of Vacation Bible School than any other week of the year. And so maybe it's saying, you know what, Pastor James, I just want to help serve food to the kids that come in. Maybe I just want to help teach.
I want to be a part of the games. I want to be a part of the different things that are going on and we're serving in that area. In April, I'm sorry, in August 5th through 10th, we're taking an entire week to do local missions. We're calling it Serve Week.
Our hub is going to be the community center. We're working with different organizations of ways we can serve meals, ways we can serve in people's yards by cleaning up limbs and tree and debris.
We're looking at ways where we can go out and do some prayer walking and pray through our community and pray down streets and have opportunities to share the gospel with people.
But we're looking at every single day that week doing something on mission and serving in our local community.
So it's a little bit of ways out, five or six months away, where you can begin praying and asking the Lord, how can I serve that week? Maybe it's, you know what, I'm retired and I can be there every day just to help our volunteers get a meal
because they're going to be serving, they're going to be working and we're going to have to feed people, we're going to have a lot going on and so we're going to need people to serve the church as the
church is serving but we're going to need people to go out and to serve in the same way. And so that's our local mission.
How can we go out in our direct community and serve them in our community? And then the third thing we've got coming up in September
Upcoming Mission Trip to Nicaragua
is we've got a mission trip to Nicaragua. We're going to go down in Nicaragua this is September 3rd through 10th and we're going to be working with a local
Nicaraguan pastor who recently planted a church in Nicaragua and we're praying about if we can support him and support that mission for a couple of years and how we can begin to partner with them overseas and maybe make backpacks for the kids that they're serving.
Maybe they've got a vacation Bible school and that pastor calls me and says, Pastor James,
hey, I don't have the people or the means or the financial ability to put together some gifts but do you think your church could put together some maybe 10, 15, 20 backpacks and maybe just some basic household items and come down.
I'm going to share the gospel with them. They're going to hear the gospel.
They're going to know that Christ loves them but we're going to give them a gift as well. Right?
What did Jesus do when the crowds came to him and the crowds were pressing upon him and they were ready to eat? He said, okay, let's go ahead and feed them
and meet their physical need and while we're meeting their physical need, we'll tell them about their spiritual need. That's the gospel in action.
That's the gospel at work and so we're going to go down and we're going to sort of do an exploratory meeting and be able to meet with him and talk with him. It's going to be a limited group to about four people
so it's not going to be a huge trip this first time but we want to go down and we want to see and pray over this ministry and see how we can help this organization
serve in the gospel. So that's our area of outreach. A couple of things coming up. There's going to be others but those are some long-term planning that we've got but what are some opportunities? That's the second way we've got. Opportunities to serve and to show hospitality.
You see, I did not plan to even preach this message this week. It was planned to be preached earlier but a couple of months ago, Allie Green came to me and she said, hey, we've got this Who Day. It's a world of opportunities
and we're going to have different people. I think it was 50 people this year came in from all walks of life and they're just going to share some things. Will you come in and talk about ministry, missions, and podcasting?
And I said, you know, that's a great opportunity so I'm going to take advantage of it.
So I went into West Wilkes this past week and I had four in my first class and eight in the second class and guess what I got to do? I got to share my salvation testimony with 12 people.
I told them how the Lord redeemed me from my sin, how I was in ministry in Idaho and Arkansas and here in North Carolina and how God has led me on mission to five different countries all over the
world and how I've been able to be a part of a podcast and share the gospel through the radio waves.
It was an opportunity that came up and at the time I was like, I don't know how my schedule is going to look but I'm just going to say I'm going to do it and make sure my schedule fits for it because opportunities come up around us all the time
Seizing Opportunities for Evangelism
and the question is how are we taking advantage of those opportunities?
How are we taking advantage of saying I want to be conscious of the opportunities that are around me? Conscious of the things that are going on around me so that I can serve others and share the love of Christ with them? This is what I want to challenge us.
As we begin to close down, Terry can come and start playing. I want us to challenge you in this way. Use the month of March. We've got three more weeks of March,
four weeks if you look at it a certain way, three or four weeks and during the month of March, pray and think about one family that you know that is lost.
When I said that, you may have immediately thought of a family that you know that doesn't know Jesus, that's not in church, that's not around them and for the next three to four weeks, pray for that family every
day. Lord, give me opportunities to talk to this family about Jesus over the next month and between now and April,
think of a time where you can invite that family to your house and have a meal with them.
Now you may say, Pastor James, that is completely out of my purview of what I do. I don't like people coming to my house, I don't like going out with people, but I intentionally want you to try to have a dinner with that family in the result of sharing Jesus with them.
In the result of saying, hey, I know I asked you to come over and I just want to, you know, ask you about your salvation testimony. Ask you about Jesus. They may tell you beforehand because they know you're a Christian, they may say, I'll come as long as you don't talk to me about Jesus
and say, okay, that's great and have them come over
and if you've got kids like I do, every night, Brody, Jade, what do we do every night before we eat? Before we eat, we pray.
Every single night before we have our meal, we pray. Every night before we go to bed, I sing with my kids and I pray with them and have this as an opportunity for them to come into a household that loves Jesus, that serves Jesus
and let them see what Jesus does that makes a difference in your family.
And use this as an opportunity to say, you know, I may not be having an opportunity right now to share Jesus with you, but I want the effects of what Jesus has done in my family to be spilling over and them to see that in your everyday life.
So as we sort of wrap up, how do you view yourself?
Are you thinking of yourself too highly? Are you thinking of yourself greater than what Jesus thought of himself when he said, I'm going to come into the world and I'm going to die for the world and I'm going to serve everyone around me? I'm going to wash my disciples' feet.
How do you view yourself? What are your gifts this morning?
Maybe one of those three things began to pop up and you say, you know, I really like leading or serving or speaking and that's sort of the area that God's called me into. Are you using them or are you letting them go to waste?
And then, and finally, really the question we can ask is how can you get involved? Or how can you start to be involved?
See, we had last week as we closed, I shared about having small groups come up and I'm not going to lie, me and my wife are a little nervous.
We're asking 11 people to give up of their Wednesday night to come and serve other people. This is what my thought was. What if no one signs up? Right?
What if no one decides that this is important? 11 people giving of their time, giving of their Wednesday nights and as of right now, the best of my knowledge,
three of those 11 spots are the only things that are vacant. One person helping out in the three-year-olds to five-year-olds and we need two guys to step up and say, I want to serve young men, young boys, first through fifth grade and teach them for eight weeks. That's the only thing that's missing.
We've got our adult small groups, we've got our girls, we've got our nursery, we've got our youth taken care of, everything else that's taken care of. We got home and we began talking about it and I was just like, you know, this is awesome.
People are wanting to do this, people are wanting to be a part of the mission but there's still others that can help.
There's still others that can step up and say, I want to be a part of it. Simply put, how can you serve and how are you serving this morning?
How are you giving of yourself sacrificially which is what we'll be talking about over the next couple weeks leading up to Easter. Let's stand and pray. Lord, we love you.
We thank you again for what you've done for us. Lord, help us as we go through these thoughts, as we go through what you've given us and how much you've given us, Lord, not to be so focused on ourself but focused on others. It's hard.
As we said in Sunday school, it goes against the grain of what we've been taught our entire life
Closing Prayer and Commitment
but it's what you taught to give to others more than you've been given. So I pray, God, that you would help us to reach out in our community and share the gospel with others. We love you. In your name we pray. Amen.
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