In our hectic and everyday lives, self examination is probably one of the things we ought to do everyday but is often neglected. One thing that keeps echoing over and over in my mind is "Are we doing it right?" What I mean by that is this:
Is the church loving God the way we should? Are we desiring to make His kingdom famous everywhere we go? Are we loving people compassionately just as Christ would have? Am I moving students in towards the Kingdom of God? Are our churches reaching the lost, equipping the saved, and sending them out?
More times than not, the answer to these questions is a hearty "No." I want to do things right. I want to love God with everything I have and love others with everything that is left in me. I want to see students move towards the Kingdom of God, and I want them to desire more than anything in life to make Jesus Christ famous in their life and in this world, and I desire to see our churches reaching the lost, equipping the saved, and sending them out to reach the world for the kingdom.
The problem however lies here; HOW? To often, we know what we want to accomplish, but we just don't know how to accomplish it. We know we want students to be disciples of Christ, but we do not know how to disciple them. We don't know the next steps.
If you are a Minister in a local church, make sure you know the "how" just as much as you know the "why." Without it, we fail. Without it, people slip through the cracks. Let's think about this for a second. If the Army recruiter comes on the local high school campus and signs up a 18 year old for service, and right then and there he hands that kid a gun and says "Good luck son, your flight to the war leaves in 2 hours," we'd probably think he was smoking something. But in reality, we do this with our people in our churches. "Here's Jesus....Good Luck." We often neglect the "in between." Let's begin to focus on reaching those people for the gospel, and let's focus even more on the maturation process in their relationship with God. Let's focus on the "how."
2 comments:
God has recently etched on my heart Romans 1:16-17 and I have been unable to get it from my consciousness. The challenge God has placed on me is to be like Paul, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation .... for therin is the righteousness of God revealed from faith (to initially believe; glk) to faith (to finish the race; glk)"
Glenn............
When i was reading your post today, i couldn't help but notice the verse at the top of your page..."So that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:17
--'thoroughly' to me, doesn't mean just tell us the facts and let us run with them. It means, like you said...teaching people HOW to become mature and really understand the HOW?!
Your blogs are really great and inspirational. they really make me think and i can really see God working in your heart...thnk you!
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