Vision recap: Vision is a clear, challenging picture of the future as it can and must be.
Imagine part 2
Read Matthew 9:35-38
Pray earnestly
Jesus was fully human and fully divine. He is preaching, teaching, healing and sees all that need and says that there is a need for help. The harvest is plenty but the laborers are few so take seriously the ministry of prayer.
God desires to send us back into culture. God’s people talk like people who know God. God’s people are the salt of the earth and God does not desire flavorless people.
We are sent. We are sent back into the culture as a redemptive force. To redeem means to help overcome something detrimental, to change for the better.
“Imagine…a church of people who have found meaning in life as they connect and reconnect with Christ and His plan for their lives, being sent back into the culture of New Castle County as a redemptive force.”
When you walk into a room, you should change more than the number of people in the room. Believing your presence alone is the end – the end of us being changing by God to be sent by God – is not reflective of the change God truly desires to make in us, to send us. Being a Christian is not easy. Most people agree with this statement and most people, including Christians, think it’s not easy because “God has rules.” The thing that makes it difficult is when he asks you to speak to someone or a situation in which you are not familiar or in the midst of someone or something that is harmful. The difference is PRAY and go, pray and give, pray and ask the question, pray and protest, pray and engage, pray and vote, pray and run!
Imagine a place where relationships matter. Relationships matter for us. Imagine more than “like family.” We know relationships can be messy, but we are to still go out and be a redemptive force in our relationships because Jesus still saved us despite our messiness.
Jesus said we need to pray earnestly to the Lord of the Harvest. He called his disciples and told them that they have power and authority over all iniquity, sickness, etc…
Relationships are the vehicle for the redemptive message of the gospel. God shows us, we see it, we pray, God changes us, God sends us. We are to be His walking, talking, living, breathing representatives.
The body of Christ is part of a consistent and intentional process to make disciples that make disciples. We will find people that are dead in their trespasses and sins, people that are messy, because God intends to fix the mess. We should always be praying earnestly that the Lord of the Harvest sends laborers. We come together to be healed.
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