This year I have been challenging our church (Fountain of Life - Phoenix, AZ) to Be Intentional in all we do, especially when it comes to staying on mission. You cannot be a follower of Christ and divorce yourself from His commission to make disciples of the nations. As I frequently say to the people at FLI, "The Great Commission is not Optional." Yet while most followers of Christ understand this, they get overwhelmed somehow thinking that it is solely their responsibility or their church's responsibility to carry it out. (Insert deep breath here and relax). It's not. Watch what Paul said to a 1st century group of Christ-followers at Corinth.
1 Cor 3:5
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe — as the Lord has assigned to each his task. (NIV)
That word "assigned" is used over 400 times in the New Testament and carries a significant weight in this context. While it has a wide variety of applications, here it refers to something that has been given and entrusted to you to administrate or steward or take care of. Paul is saying "look, Apollos and I are simply carrying out an assigned task from God to serve you and in that assignment we became channels, we became tools to bring you to faith in Christ."
Each of us carries this same assignment from God to be intentional about serving people and letting God use us to draw people to Him. We need to intentionally ask God to show us how to carry out our unique assignment and when we are all carrying out our assigned tasks and leveraging them for Kingdom Impact, the great commission will be fulfilled.
The question to ask yourself is: How can you leverage your assigned task for Kingdom Impact?
Awesome
ReplyDelete@Jon. the account of Moses doesn't record the day to day conversations between leadership and the people and people to peole. But if some where to be able to hear them, it might sound like this.
ReplyDeleteMoses: we are to go to the red sea
People: you got to be kidding, be pinned against the water, and chariots coming after us. Aaron what do you say we should do. your his relative talk some sense into him.
Moses: I going up to the mountain I'll be right back, you know what to ddo
People: great now we can goof off.
Moses: Ok all you have to do is cross over to the promised land. we made it look this is it.
People: wait a minute we followed you through alot we didn't complain, of grumble, so where is all the milk and honey you been talking about. we all thought we would be rich living the styling life, all we see is giants. send in spies, WE do not believe your words.
in the unspoken crowd a new generation was birthed on sand and rock. ready to occupy the positions, and authorities, promised in captivity to their parents.
Are we ready for the dichotomies of following Christ. fulfillment of the great commission