Gaining A Global Focus

Global Focus: Seeing the World Through God’s Eyes

1. I want to begin by asking a question: How many of you here are Christians? What I mean by that is not that you have joined the church, not that you have been baptized, not that you try to live a good life; but you have repented of your sins, by faith acknowledged Jesus Christ as God’s Son, accepted His death on the cross as payment for your sins, and totally committed your life to Him as your Lord and Savior.

2. Now my second question is this: How many of you are missionaries? Now be very careful, because if you responded to the first question, but not to the second question, then you ought to be embarrassed. Because a Christian and a missionary are really the same thing.

3. What is a missionary? Webster’s dictionary defines a missionary as "a person sent on a mission, especially on a religious mission." Well by that definition every Christian is a missionary. Because every Christian is here on a mission. That mission has been defined for us in II Corinthians 5.

"Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (vv. 18-21)

It has been well said that every person on earth is either a missionary or a mission field.

Have you ever thought about the last words Jesus ever said before he ascended into heaven? Did you know that the last words Jesus ever uttered while he was on this earth were these: "to the end of the earth." (Acts 1:8) When Jesus left this earth He had missions on his mind. Jesus came as a missionary from heaven that he might make us missionaries for heaven.

5. As you can see from our banner we are wanting to make a big deal about our Global Impact Conference. This is going to be a wonderful time for our church and I believe it will greatly assist us in moving into the level of missions involvement that Jesus wants us to achieve.

There are many reasons for having a conference like this, but let me quickly give you three:

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We need to learn about the needs of the world, what God is doing in the world through His people, and how we can personally get involved.

I believe that many of us are woefully ignorant of our responsibility to missions and the great heritage that we have as Southern Baptists in taking the gospel around the world.

I heard about a pastor who asked his Women’s Missionary Union Director to visit a new family that had just moved into town. After the visit was over she came back and said, "Pastor, you won’t believe this!" She said, "When I began to talk to this lady I asked her who Annie Armstrong was, and who Lottie Moon was, and she told me she had never heard of them." The pastor said, "Well, what did you tell them?" She said, "I told her she needed to to study her Bible more."

Well you won’t learn anything about Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong studying your Bible. But you will learn that our God is a God with a missionary heart who has sent us into this world as missionary servants with a missionary message that we might fulfill the mission of The Great Commission.

That leads to the second reason for a conference which is inspiration. It is our prayer that through this conference you will get a missionary heart, that you will give to missionary work, and that you will go to a missionary field, whether it be home or abroad.

We believe that God’s people need to be excited about missions. After all, Jesus was excited about missions and he commanded us to have a concern for missions.

The last command he ever gave on this earth was The Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Mt. 28:19-20)

A theological named Dr. W. T. Conner, said, "Our mission is to bear witness to Christ from Jerusalem to the uttermost part of the earth. Any form of Christianity that does not have throbbing through it a mighty missionary and evangelistic impulse, is a degenerate form."