Weeds in Your life

     As many of you know, Illinois is suffering through an intense drought.  We have had very little rain in the past two months.  The Fox River is at the lowest it has been for 30 years.  Farmers, who may not even believe in God are asking churches to pray for rain.  If rain does not come they may lose their entire crop.  This could be devastating during this current economic climate.

     You would think that if there was very little rain that weeds would not grow.  But that is far from the truth, in fact the only that seems to grow in this environment is the weeds.  I had to mow my yard today because of the weeds.  The little rain showers we had the past couple of days did little to the dry parched grass, but the weeds soaked it up.

     As I thought about the weeds and how they are able to survive and thrive when nothing else can reminded of sin in a person's life.  Stay with me on this for a second.  The grass is like our Christian life.  It needs to be constantly watered and cared for to grow.  We need to study God's Word, fellowship with other believers and be involved in ministry on a constant basis or we will dry up and the our Christian life will be hidden.  No wonder the Bible says that we need to be like a tree planted by the waters, because without the water we will dry up.

     Weeds on the other hand are like sin in our life.  They do not need any thing to help them grow.  All you have to do is cease growing as a Christian and the sin will become more and more prevalent in your life.  I know this is true in my own life.  Sometimes I get so busy in doing work for the Lord, I forget to spend time with the Lord.  I need to daily nourish my spirit so that I can grow and thrive in a weed infested life.  I have a lot of weeds and the less time I spend with God the more the weeds begin to show.

     I don't like weeds in my yard, but I might not get rid of them now because they at least they serve as a reminder to me of the weeds in my own life.  How about you?  Are the weeds shining through because of a drought in your life?  Why not feed your soul.  Study God's Word and worship Him and be revived.  Remember that Jesus said he is the vine, we are the branches and if we don't stay connected to him we cannot do anything.  Get connected and stay fresh!!

      Let me share with you what I believe God has in store for this body of believers.  I believe that God wants this church to grow bigger, better and broader.  Let me flesh this idea out in real terms.  First, he wants us to grow bigger, and yes by growing bigger I mean increasing in number. With our present location we can have an auditorium that seats 400 in a service.  We cannot have much more than that simply because of the parking space that is required.  So we have a lot of growing to do.  If you do not want to see this church grow bigger then perhaps you need to find another location in which to worship.  Because it is God’s will that His church grow bigger. 

     Not only does God want this church to grow bigger, but He wants it to grow better.  By better I mean that we become more spiritually mature in our attitude and in our actions.  It means we have to grow up as Christians.  We can no longer be content with the status quo, but we have to push ourselves to be all that we can be in Christ.  This will mean a deeper commitment to God and a deeper commitment to His church.  I have to be more intentional in teaching you and equipping you.  But the pastor cannot do it alone.  The Core team has to step up and provide Godly leadership.  Bible study teachers have to step up to the plate as well and provide instruction and guidance in God’s Word.  Each one of us has to take serious the call of God upon our lives and grow in our relationship with Him. 

     Finally, God wants this church to grow broader.  By broader I mean that God wants to expand our sphere of influence.  I believe God is positioning us to be a regional church.  What do I mean by that?  Just look at the makeup of this church.  This body of believers is comprised of individuals from Oswego, Yorkville, Plano, Sandwich, Montgomery, Newark, Aurora, and even Sugar Grove.  We already reach further than just this geographical location.  God wants to see this church begin to make a difference in the communities where he has placed us.  We will do this by serving others in Christ love.  But we will also do this by planting other churches.  The plan is that as we grow to 400 in attendance, that we will then ask 100 people to go and plant a church in a neighboring community.  This will accomplish two things: first it will put a self-sustaining church closer to the people and second, it will allow room for this body to grow as well.  And then once we reach 400 we will then again ask another 100 to go out and plant another church in another city.  By so doing we will be able to expand the sphere of influence of this body of believers, but more importantly the message of God’s love will spread faster.

      How will we determine if we are accomplishing the vision?  Instead of analyzing everything vertically, such as how many people are in attendance, we need to look at things horizontally.  In other words, how are we moving people through the process?  How do we move people from Worship to Bible Study and then to Ministry / Missions?  We will know we are accomplishing our vision when each category grows.

     I believe this vision is what God has for this body of believers.  Is it totally fleshed out?  No!  But I am excited about the vision God has for this body of believers.  I pray that you are excited and can embrace this concept.  I am convinced that when we are living under the influence of the Holy Spirit we will have a vision of great things.  God has Great Expectations for His church.

Ministry With Purpose

When our family was serving as missionaries in Guatemala we did a lot of ministry among the poor.  Many of these ministries might be what is called social ministry as we provided medical, dental, and eye clinics to the poor that we worked with. 

     In one of the first clinics that we shared with the people we met a young girl by the name of Aura.  Aura was 13 and she was being raised by her older sister because her parents were deceased.  Aura came to the clinic not feeling well and the doctor discovered that she was a diabetic.  In fact so bad was she that her blood sugar was around 660.  The doctor said that if we did not get her to a hospital where she could receive immediate treatment she would die that day.  My wife took charge of the situation.  She unloaded our truck, and Aura and her sister and Gabbie made their way to the local hospital. 

     As Gabbie tells the story the doctors refused to treat Aura because in their opinion she would just eventually die anyway because she would not be able to afford the medicine.  However, Gabbie was persistent and told them you treat her and we will get her the medicine.  The doctors kept her in the hospital because of the persistence of my wife.

     The doctors on our medical team were moved by Aura’s situation and left some medicine for us and eventually we were able to develop a partnership with one of the doctors to provide her medicine that we would give to her.  We loved Aura and wanted to help her with her diabetes.  We knew without our help her chance of survival was minimal.  We did everything we could to help her.

     As we shared this story with our missionary colleagues, a wise woman told us “that her sickness was not her problem.  The problem was that she did not know Jesus.”  She told us that eventually Aura would die, but we must prepare her for that day.  So our prayers and mission to Aura changed.  We began praying “Lord allow us to keep her alive long enough so that she can receive Jesus as Lord and Savior of her life.”  And the Lord answered our prayers as eventually I was able to baptize Aura as my sister in the faith.  We reached out to her and cared for her needs, but ultimately we met her greatest need which was to have Christ as her Savior.

     Ministry fails if it does not present the gospel.  I know this concept is hard to get our arms around, because we want to help people in need.  But we must remember that it does no good to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked and care for the sick, if we do not share the good news of Jesus Christ to those we help.

     Many well meaning followers of Christ can be some involved in social ministry that they forget that the greatest need that people have is spiritual.  We have a responsibility to share with them the greatest gift we could ever give and that is life in Christ.  We use whatever means we can to share the gospel with those who need to hear.  Social ministry is one of the ways that God allows us to open doors to meet this most important need in a person's life.

     What do you think?  I would be interested to hear your comments.  Until then remember to love God, love people and serve others.