Leading And Loving Like Jesus

We gather here, as we always do at the mission, in the name of Jesus Christ seeking to know his heart, seeking to know and discern his mind, seeking to hear from the Holy Spirit as he speaks to us through each other.

And today we’re continuing to talk about the general reality of our need for healing, but also of our need for clarity. Clarity in understanding our calling, clarity in our understanding of our place in service at the mission for such a time as this, clarity in who we are as the people of God.

We have all been chosen, by God, by the Holy Spirit through the agency of the mission, to serve. And each person in this room has been called to lead.

And because the mission is now, as it is always been, an incredibly dynamic, changing, growing, listening, discerning, worshipping community of believers; Because of this each of us who is immersed in direct service and ministry to the poor, and each of us who serve in the absolutely critical backbone roles, background roles at the mission, we need refreshing of our souls, we need reminding of some basic but important things, and we need to simply be together.

Yonge Street Mission is a spiritual community. No matter how it has changed over the years, and it has changed greatly over the years, we remain a mission, we remain on mission to bless the city, to bless our community, to bless our families, to bless each individual that we are privileged to serve.

And I want to offer a few thoughts today, hopefully thoughts of encouragement that might sustain us and even perhaps inspire us to continue growing as we serve, to continue to increase in our own thriving even as we seek to increase the thriving of our community.

Serve Out of Your Identity in Christ: Believe That You Are Who God Says You Are

1 Peter:2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

I have vivid memories of being a youth, not unlike many of the youth that we serve at Evergreen, of being a youth who had no idea why I was alive, why I was taking up any space on this planet, what my life meant or what my purpose was.

I had a philosophical bent so I did a fair bit of reading of atheist intellectuals. That reading did not help at all. Or maybe that reading helped me immensely.

It affirmed and convinced me of life‘s futility in a world without God, and in particular of the futility of my own life. That led to three or four unsuccessful attempts to take my own life.

Then I saw the gospel at work in the lives of some new people that I met. I saw the radically different way they approached the struggle of existing.

To make a very long story short, I became a follower of the One who they followed, the one who makes all things new, the one who gave his life for me and for all of humanity when absolutely nothing in us merited the offering of his life.

And so that jolted me from deep and profound commitment to some version of nihilism, to a Christian worldview, where everything had purpose because everything mattered to God.

And then I discovered the Church. I discovered that there were many other people who also heard the call of Jesus to follow Him, who like me were sorting out what it means to be part of a royal priesthood as Peter describes the church in his 1st letter.

I discovered that along with that royal priesthood I was God‘s special possession, called out of darkness and into his wonderful light.

And then I discovered this shocking and beautiful passage: Ephesians 2:4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.