Multiply Series

PRAY

Lord God and Father,

open our eyes so we can see Your truth.

Open our ears so w can hear Your voice.

Open our mind so we can understand Your Word.

And open our heart so we may receive all that You want me to receive. AMEN

I received a Christmas card from our Open Bible leaders this year, and on the bottom of the card it said, “Believing with you for the impossible in 2013.”

As we closed in on 2013 I asked myself a number of times, what are those impossible things that we need to be doing? What impossible things does Greg Carr need to do?

What impossible things does PFC need to do?

As for me, there are a number of things I would love to see happen. I would love to lose 30 pounds. I would love to see a large amount of our debt gone. I would love to draw even closer to God this year. I would love to stomp on the devil more this year than I did last year!

As I look back and as I look forward, those things may not seem impossible but if I do not attempt to see them done, then they are impossible. But I am going to see these things done!

What about PFC. What impossible things can we see done in 2013?

Looking back, we have spent a lot of money and put in a lot of effort in the past 4 years so that we can see the impossible being done.

What I mean is, we have been doing a lot of updating and fixing up things around here and we are not done yet.

We have to be a forward thinking church and not only forward thinking but we need to be thinking big as well.

The reason we need to be forward thinking and thinking big is because the purpose of the church is to make an impact upon this world. Our purpose is to make an impact upon the Bismarck/Mandan area and elsewhere.

I believe that PFC is impact minded. I also believe that we can be even more so because there is always room for improvement. But before we go on, we need to understand what kind of impact do we want to make?

The answer to this question might be might be obvious, but I bet if we went around the room we might come up with 10 different answers.

To impact something means to have an effect or to make an impression that would cause a change upon something. That change could be something that is positive or it could be something that is negative.

I think we would all agree that we would want to have a positive effect on things around here.

So in other words, is the PFC making an effect upon the Bismarck/Mandan area?

I hope to answer this question during the next few weeks as well as share some plans that will help us accomplish this.

My prayer is that each of you will join me in making an impact in this area.

The goal of any local church should be to make positive impressions upon others.

I am talking about impressions and impacts that make a difference in people’s lives.

I am talking about eternal impacts, impressions that mean heaven or hell for individuals.

What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word impact?

The first thing I think of is an meteor hitting the earth. It is something that changes the landscape. Something that changes things and it usually involves force.

The world’s best preserved meteorite impact site in Arizona near Winslow.

Several thousand meteors hit the earth each day. Most of them are the size of a grain of rice or smaller and they never make an impact. A few may be the size of a baseball or occasionally the size of a basketball, they burn up in the atmosphere as well.

Sometimes the meteors that hit the earth can be the size of a car or even a house.

In 1908 an asteroid estimated at 50 meters across explodes above Tunguska, Siberia, blowing down trees across 2,000 square kilometers and killing a thousand reindeer, but apparently no people. Because the meteor exploded in the atmosphere, there was no crater..

But make no mistake, it changed the landscape.

The thing about meteors is that they make a forceful impact. It is something that is noticed.

Now please don’t misunderstand me…

I am not saying that the Christian community needs to become violent in its approaches to spread the good news, but we do need to make a forceful impact.

Listen to what Jesus said in Matthew, “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” Matthew 11:12.