It was good to be there with my brothers and sisters. It was kind of like being at church only it lasted 12 hours or so. I had many "take-aways" I will share with you here. Some encouraging, some scary.
1. Sing Like Never Before - Things are speeding up in this world. Biblical prophesy regarding the end times is beginning to be fulfilled. Things are ramping up. The persecution of Christians, The distancing of U.S.-Israeli relations. Earthquakes, wars, rumors of wars. Many feel that Jesus will return sometime in the next 10-15 years. That means time is short.
We sang a worship song today - 10,000 Reasons. There is a line in the chorus that spoke to me - "Sing like never before.
2. Preach The Word! We need to step up our efforts to reach the lost, to spread the Gospel, to become more bold than ever before. I often fail at this but I am going to try harder. There are just too many people who need to hear the Gospel! I need to try harder!
3. Pray more, and more effectively - Sometimes my prayers seem to be a laundry list of to-do items for God. Not good.
4. Read more - Prayer and reading are two ways that God communicates with us, through His Holy Spirit. Why would we not want to do both of those things as much as possible?
5. Learn to defend the faith better - When people ask us questions, will we have the answers? We are commanded to! When someone asks you "How can a loving God allow so much pain and suffering in the world ?" or the always popular, "How come bad things happen to good people? I'll be writing something about all these in the future. In the meantime . . .
If time is getting short, why are we sitting around doing nothing? We profess to be Christians but do we act like one? Either we don't really believe the end is near or we are simply too lazy to do anything about it. Probably the latter. We are like the disciples in the garden when Jesus went off to pray by Himself. He asked them to stay awake and keep watch. They failed just like we're doing.
"18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” - Matthew 28:18-20
Well, I for one am going to increase my efforts. I am going to send messages, lovingly confront people, engage the world more actively for Christ. How many of these five things will you commit to join me in?
Will you pray more? Will you read your Bible more? Those two are pretty easy to do. Start there! I encourage you to try improving in all five areas this week. I double-dog dare ya! It could mean the difference between life and death . . . eternal life . . . of eternal death . . . for someone you know. That's one good reason we should do something. There are only 9,999 more reasons to go.
10,000 Reasons - Matt Redman
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