My pastor had a wonderful message yesterday about the power of the voice. It can be an agent for good, such as encouraging people and building them up. But it can also suppress people and abuse them. He talked about the baptism of Jesus and how at the end the heavens opened up and a voice boomed from up above: This is my son, whom I love. I am happy with Him. He said in 2010 we will encounter many voices that will demean us and bring us down, telling us what a disappointment we are, what shame we bring. When we hear those voices, try to block them out and think of the voice of God at His Son's baptism. He said we are His sons and daughters and that He loves us. And nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Points to Ponder: The Great Commission is my commission.
Verse to Remember: "Send us around the world with the news of your saving power and your eternal plan for all mankind." Psalm 67:2
Question to Consider: What steps can I take to prepare to go on a short-term missions experience in the next year?
My response:
This was a very challenging chapter. Throughout the book, we read certain things that make us think, "ok, we're on the right path doing what Christians should be doing." But in this chapter, I'm thinking, wow, I'm no where near fulfilling my calling from God. But the more I read about it, the more I think of each of us having different callings.
I was struck by the emphasis of different mission work and the advantages we have today from a technological standpoint. The book says our world has never been "smaller". What he means is that transportation of people and especially data has never been faster. And with the advent of the internet, we have a unique opportunity to minister across the globe. I've had some direct experience with that over the past year.
The first was with text messages that I send out weekday mornings to encourage people on their walk with the Lord. It started out as messages of encouragement during our fasting period of Lent. When it ended, some of the Youth asked if I could keep sending them out. I was happy to do it. We started with just 17 people receiving them. Then people would tell other people and pretty soon we had over 40 people on the list. Through word of mouth, by the end of the year, we have close to a 100 people receiving these messages directly from me. But I have heard many of them say that they also forward them on to friends.
Another opportunity opened up when I decided to sign up for the social networking site Facebook. I did it mainly to reconnect with old friends and family I hadn't seen or communicated with in years. My friends list started growing fast. I then decided to use these messages as my status updates daily. So now they weren't only going out to the hundred or so people on my phone text list, but they were also going out to the close to four hundred friends I had on Facebook. I thank God for opening these new avenues to do His mission work using new technology.
Then in the end of spring, an idea came forward to expand on the text messages. I found myself spending so much time trying to cut down the text messages to manageable length to send them out. But there was so much I had to edit that I had so many thoughts left out. Then the idea of a blog came up. With the help of my wife, we set this blog up to expand on the daily messages. And then towards the end of the year, the idea of doing this virtual study, where people from Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Tennessee, Samoa, California, Texas and Hawaii have all participated. Praise God for opening up these new ways to reach people all over the world and do mission work for them. As of today, the blog has been visited over 15,000 in about eight months.
The challenge for all of us is to find different ways to do God's work for and to fulfill the great commission: Go tell. Be blessed.
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