Missions Sunday
Start with the command everyone knows. Jesus gives it on a mountain to eleven men, and Matthew tells us some of them were still doubting when he said it.
Jesus says go. Read the line before it and the line after it — those two promises are why anyone dares.
Two thousand years before that mountain, God tells one childless man that all the peoples on earth will be blessed through him. The mission did not begin in Matthew 28.
How far does the promise in verse 3 reach? Count who is included.
Here I am, send me. Notice the sending comes second. Isaiah sees God first, and that is what makes him willing.
Isaiah volunteers after he sees God, not after he is shamed. Where does willingness actually come from?
Most of us will never move overseas. Paul says that is not the same as being uninvolved — someone has to send, and he calls their feet beautiful too.
Trace the chain backward in verse 14. Where does your part in it begin?
Every nation, tribe, people, and language standing before the throne. This is what our going and our giving are actually for.
Name three people you know who are far from God. Pray for them by name, and ask God for one conversation this month.
If our guest sends a text ahead, put it on Monday and move Matthew 28 to Tuesday.
What are the Marks and the 3 Circles?
The Marks of a Disciple
Each week names one of these — the practices we are cultivating in each other.
- Daily Devotion
- Time with God every day, in the Bible and in prayer.
- Prayer
- Not only a set appointment, but a life of prayer at any hour, for anything.
- Generosity
- Giving your effort and your resources to this church and to God’s kingdom.
- Service
- Giving your time and talent to the church and its mission in the community.
- Witness
- Seeking people far from God and telling them about Jesus and about your own finding of him.
- Worship
- Weekly praise together, and a life presented daily to God’s service.
- Spiritual Disciplines
- Fasting, solitude, study, sabbath — the old practices of the faith.
The 3 Circles
How we tell someone about Jesus — simple enough to draw on a napkin. Each week names the part of it that week’s reading sits in.
- God’s Design
- The world and your life as God made them to be.
- Sin
- The arrow out. We each go our own way instead.
- Brokenness
- Where that leaves us. Ecclesiastes spends most of twelve chapters here.
- Repent & Believe
- Turning from our own way and trusting what Jesus did.
- Gospel
- Jesus lived the life we could not and died the death we deserved.
- Recover & Pursue
- The way back toward the life God designed.