Discovering Missional Life Series

Discovering Missional Life

Series: The Call – Part 5

October 7, 2007 – Brad Bailey

(Portions of this message were taken or adapted from Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life message

“Made for a Mission.”)

As we begin this morning… let me ask another question to reflect on…

“What got you up this morning?”

I’m not talking about the kids or the coffee… but what if anything gave you a

reason for rising? What gives meaning to our everyday lives?

This morning as we continue our series entitled The Call… the nature of the call of

our Creator … that calls us out of our independence and isolation……

During these weeks we’ve noted the Call of God calls us into an ‘intimate

allegiance’ to the true king of life… calls us into divine community… and now we

come to the very purpose that defines such a community.

The first life which God ever called out was Abraham…. I will make you a

BLESSING to all nations of the earth.

> Core to their identity…

Jesus comes… and begins with a calling out… to ‘follow me and I will make you

‘FISHERS’ of men. Not a tag on… it’s imbedded in the call itself. Don’t miss the

reality here… this is the figure that prophets had spoken of for centuries… being

recognized as a rabbi whose authority was unlike any other … perhaps the

Messiah himself… and he is coming to fishermen… tax collectors… and

REDEFINING their lives…. Not their professions.. they still did some fishing… he

even went out with them… he was redefining their very existence.

The Call of God redefines life in relationship to blessing others. He

doesn’t remove us from the mundane… but rather infuses the

mundane with mission.

In John 17:18, Jesus said this –

"In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a

mission in the world."

> As Rick Warren so aptly put it – “You were made for a mission.”

We discover that more than man’s mission to the moon… more than any quest to

discover new worlds… you and I were made for a mission of eternal meaning.

In John 20:21, Jesus said,

"As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."

Now, what are we being sent to do? What is our mission?

Luke 19:9 (NIV)

Jesus said...”the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."

> It was mission that defined Christ’s life… drove him… a mission to seek and

save… to rescue and restore… and that is what he imparts to all who follow.

Paul

Acts 20:22

"the most important thing is that I complete my mission, the work the Lord

Jesus gave me to tell people the good news about God’s grace.”

So our lives are meant to be imbedded and infused with a mission…to

share the Good News.

Now, there’s a word for this, and just like all these other words we’ve looked at every

week, it is often misunderstood. It is the word "evangelism.”

Now, one thing Christians and non-Christians have in common is, neither of

them like that word because it makes you think of guys with really big hair who shout

real loud on TV and say [loud, Southern accent] "Send me your money!" But that’s not

what evangelism is at all, or an evangelist. Evangelism is just the Greek word for

“good news.” That’s all it means.

It means good news. And so the Bible says that once I know the Good News, that

God loves me, has a purpose and plan for my life and all the things we’ve talked

about, God wants me to pass it on, sharing the Good News with others.

Why does He say this? Because we go back to what we last week, God is building a

family. God is building a family of people who love and trust Him, that are going

to spend eternity with Him. That is the whole point of history.

The very issue Jesus had with religious leaders who had created that which served

themselves… and rather than bearing the work of liberation… it became one of

alienation.

Same challenge today…you probably feel the tension… If you consider yourself a

Christian today… you likely feel the tension between liberation and alienation.

How do we communicate the Good News?

If we’re sent by Jesus… we should share like Jesus shows us.

1. Personally – Simply sharing what God is doing in us… through

our weakness

We tend to carry the wrong perception and paradigm in our mind… we may think

we are suppose to be salesmen… or perhaps defense attorneys… but Jesus

simply told the lives he blessed to go share what he had done with others. Be a

‘witness’…

A witness is somebody who just tells what they have seen.