Mark continued with our series “We the Church” by giving a challenging word about what it means to be a Church that is devoted to reaching others. Growing up in a Church where he was held there and taught that community is real, speaks volumes to the testimony of his faith. God has kitted us together as a ‘family’. The Church may be full of people, but unless we are there with the right motives, operating in total authority, to accomplish our mission, it is just a building. Gathering on a Sunday to get ‘topped up’ spiritually is not what God wants Church to be.
Acts 2 reminds us that we need to devote ourselves to becoming part of the body of the Church that reaches the lost, the hurt and the outcast. We need to be gathering as a mission to Reach far, Raise up and Release wide. We need to have a heart to do it all, even just for the one. We need to step in the breach and stop counting the cost, for the price we pay is worth it.
The Church will always be a messy building project, and never a finished product, until Jesus returns. There will always be cracks in our walls that will need fixing and foundations that need to be established as we get messy, but we must not miss the mandate of the mission of our calling.
In John 4 we read the story of Jesus meeting the Samaria woman at the well. The interesting fact is that Jesus did not have to go that way. He chose an undesirable route through a war-torn country, on a mission to save one woman. For this remarkable account, we can take away these important points:
- Your Journey is Never about a Place – but is Always about People
Jesus chose to go through Samaria. We need to be going where God leads us, even if the route or place is not desirable to us, for that is where our calling is waiting for us. What if the undesirable route that God has you on is to save someone? We need to stop waiting for things to be perfect, before we step into what God is calling us to go. Trust that God has you perfectly placed to where He wants you to be. It is only when the Gospel has been planted deep into our hearts that we can change the World. - Your Beginning might be Someone else’s End
We need to seize and maximise the moments and not allow ourselves to miss them. Our children are with us for only a season and are our most important mission. The place Jesus went to at the well was called Sychar, which means ‘end’, which was the end for the Samarian woman, who was at her end. We have the grace that can flow and be poured into the end of other people’s lives. Despite their cultural barriers, Jesus chose to encounter her through a prophecy of revealing her past to transform her future. God is calling us to water wells to stand in the gap for others. We need to be responding quicker to opportunities so we will not be left with missed regrets. Like Jesus who engaged a broken woman in the hottest time of the day, we need to allow ourselves to get uncomfortable and inconvenienced to reach people. - Put to Death your Preferences and Prejudices
Recapping from our sermon on this topic, and looking at verse 9, we need to relinquish our preexisting terms, preferences and prejudices if we are ever going to reach all people for Christ. We need to see people without labels, without colour, without class, without nationality – to see the Jesus image in each of them. Living water can never flow through prejudices and preferences. The Church cannot move forward on our mission to reach others until we allow God to deal with these issues that filter our lives and how we respond to others. - Open your Eyes
In verses 27 to 38, we are reminded to see the revival that is happening with the ‘they’ that made their way to Jesus. Stop zoning out on what God is doing around you. Be ready and alert to what God wants to do to feed your spirit, and stop focusing on your carnal thoughts of food and physical hunger. The fields are ripe for the harvest of people who have lost their joy and are disillusioned with life. Open your eyes to look at the fields that are ready to harvest. People are waiting to hear about Jesus from YOU! God uses ALL of us to be His messengers of hope. It is not about you, but about the others that God wants to reach through you. There are no good excuses that should stop you from sharing about Jesus.
When you reach out to people outside of the walls of your life, you will get to experience the joy in someone’s eyes when they become alive in Christ. We, the Church need to be meeting the women at the well. We need to be uncomfortable, inconvenienced and challenged to meet people as we harvest the fields around us.
God uses unfinished, broken people in the imperfect Church to reach the lost. We need to remember that there is an eternal reality where people’s lives are at stake. Reaching people is not about just inviting them to Church. It is not about becoming evangelists, but about being willing to reach others to tell them about Jesus and share His love through your words and actions.