Giving God Our Best
As a pastor of a church that I love, I often have to ask myself some hard questions. Are we doing enough in our community? Ministering to those who are hurt, broken and confused in our own congregation? How are we treating our visitors? Is the coffee we serve good enough? Are the programs enough?
But the questions that haunt me more than any others are am I and my brothers and sisters in Christ growing deep, being equipped, loving each other and being a body of believers who is seeing the power of prayer as the Bible has shown us? Are we growing deep before we are growing out? Are we giving our best and nothing less?
The vision that God has given Momentum this year is “to give God our best and to go out!”
Colossians 3:23-24 reads, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” The word “heartily” means “to complete thoroughly, completely, to accomplish with zest or enthusiasm.”
I love that scripture. It challenges me. It puts my perspective where it should be. And there’s a promise from God to us from Himself — the promise of an inheritance that will be rewarding and rewarded. This promise is for the encouragement of us who are servants of Jesus Christ. Although we may receive little or nothing from our earthly and carnal world, we will be used and treated as children by the Lord, and by whom we will be possessed of an eternal inheritance after our work and labor is over.
So are we going to give God our best? I can’t answer for you, but my answer is a resounding yes!
Are we going to grow deep this coming year? How do you know if you’re going deep? I love the verses in 1 John 1:3-4: “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”
So often, we believe that growing deeper is ingesting more knowledge. Knowledge is important, but we can have knowledge of God and yet not know Him. I know a lot about Michael Jordan. I can tell you what size shoe he wears, what his stats are, and that he wears Fruit of the Loom t-shirts, but I have never met the man. To truly know God, we must have fellowship with Him.
Since the beginning of time, all God has ever wanted was to walk and talk with us. In the Garden of Eden, scripture makes it clear that God walked and conversed with Adam in the cool of the day. You see, growing deep includes a personal relationship with Him and fellowship with others. If you have those relationships, your joy will be complete.
The next question is, are we a church that prays? At Momentum, we have times of corporate prayer (praying and encouraging one another), and we always open our services in prayer. We even have a prayer meeting, but I notice that those meetings usually have the same 3 or 4 prayer warriors each week.
I have been in ministry long enough to see the power when God’s people come together to pray. God moves on our behalf. He heals the brokenhearted and sets the captives free. He heals, lifts up and makes whole. I love this quote from R. A. Torrey, “When the devil sees a man or woman who really believes in prayer, who knows how to pray, and who really does pray, and, above all, when he sees a whole church on its face before God in prayer, he trembles as much as he ever did, for he knows that his day in that church or community is at an end.”
We need to be a church of prayer!
Are we loving one another? I recently was convicted as I read the verses in 2 Timothy 3:2-5: “For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!”
Many times, we want to make this scripture apply to those who don’t know Jesus. WRONG! These verses written by Paul under the power of the Holy Spirit are written to the Church, and who is the Church? Me and you.
It’s impossible to love others when we love ourselves. Notice in the verse that it starts out by saying men will love themselves. The love for self is the sewage pipe through which the rest of what is in the verse flows — lovers of money, boasters, proud, and on and on.
In the last several years, I have seen this shift from loving others to loving self. I personally have to fight it every day. In churches today, we have fallen for the idea that if our programs are bigger, children’s and youth ministries are entertaining enough, if we shorten our services, play the most current worship music and set the mood lighting just right, that people will come. The church has become like a race boat with a high-octane outboard motor, when God has intended us to be like a sailboat, powered by His mighty rushing wind.
So how do we see the church grow? We need to love one another. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). This love is supernatural and can only be accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit and its fruit in us.
We also need to remember that God grows the church. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6-7).
We need to be obedient to our God and give God our best, go out, and He will do the rest!
So Momentum Christian Church, I encourage us — I compel us — to devote ourselves to one another (fellowship), devote ourselves to Jesus’ teachings and devote ourselves to prayer (Acts 4:34-37).
Running the race with you,
Pastor Dave and Missy