I SEE the Harvest

Luke 10:1-24 This scripture highlights the appointing of more disciples to get them involved in the ministry Jesus has established.n verse 17 the disciples report back with much enthusiasm and joy, saying "Even the demons are subject to us in Your name. Jesus then told them He was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Great victory. Here are some of the points of clarity that we will be using to mirror our outreach in accordance with the sending out Jesus did at that time.

1. They went in pairs. Accountability is seen here at it's best as these disciples went out in pairs causing them to support each other and rejoice with each other. Our Life Groups exist to develop disciples that will serve together and keep each other accountable. The community of the Life Group will enhance the desire to keep our outreach in the forefront and it will keep us serving even through the tough times.

2. They were very conscious of the time and effort. The disciples went from house to house and if they we're rejected then didn't let that distract them from their purpose of sharing the message of salvation. They didn't let the no responses slow them down and keep them from going to the next house.

3. If they were accepted in a home they developed that person's faith and spent quality time growing them into disciples.

4. These experiences opened their eyes to see the heart of Jesus' ministry purpose. In verse 23 Jesus says "Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see." In other words, their eyes were opened to the importance of their commitment to the kingdom work established by Jesus. They would never be the same because they could truly say, "I see!"

Can you see the harvest? Perhaps if we will get established in these simple elements of Jesus' teachings we would begin to see the harvest again.....as Jesus sees it. The New Testament church was established from this very simple plan and it caused them to see the harvest so much that disciples of that time were willing to give their lives for the gospel. What would be the effect of each of us joining hands with another believer and following Jesus word to go out? I believe we would do what Jesus said in verse 23, "blessed are the eyes which see the things you see." Our eyes would suddenly be opened to a new realm of understanding about sharing the gospel message. Are you doing enough in sharing the gospel to even see what the effect is or are you just talking about it. Jesus compelled the disciples to go and they went. There is a chance you won't see the harvest like Jesus sees it until you go like those early disciples went ...... in pairs. Maybe you have read this scripture before and it didn't hit you in this way, but today it is brand new to you. Let it take you where God wants you to be. Maybe it is something new to you.... and better. Read the story of Andrei Sakharov and see the effect of reading and rereading the truths of God. Maybe then you will SEE and be energized.

Elena Bonner, wife of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, says that as he wrote his memoirs she typed, edited, and nursed the work, doing everything she could to make sure it survived seizure by the government. Sakharov worked on his memoirs in Gorky, rewriting sections because they kept vanishing. Then one day he met Elena at the train station and with trembling lips told her, "They stole it." She says he looked like a man who had just learned of the death of a close friend. But after a few days, Sakharov returned to his work. According to his wife, each time he rewrote his memoirs there was something new--something better.

Jesus continually takes His word and applies it to our lives in new and fresh ways.  Those fresh and new ways can be applied to today as those they were just written today if our minds and hearts are open to His Truth.  Read it again and perhaps you will SEE.  Then the scripture in Hebrews 12:2 will make much more sense.   "Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith..."

The Pilgrimage continues...

David Warren

Cynic, Mimic, or Meme?

Cynic (def) - a person who believes that people are motivated purely by self-interest rather than acting for honorable or unselfish reasons.  

Mimic (def) - Imitate someones actions or words in order to entertain or ridicule.

Meme - an element of a culture of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non genetic means, especial imitation.Which are you?  Most people would say, "I don't want to be either one!"  The truth is these three characteristics are similar in nature but very different in action.  A person becomes a cynic usually over a period of time where they have one disappointment after another and those disappointments stem from trusted people letting them down.  Maybe they even feel like God has let them down.  So they become cynical and mistrust people's motives in what they do and how they do it.  Years ago a few very famous preachers went through some tough moral times as they were exposed for not being who they said they were and the effect at the time was very bad.  It took borderline cynics and pushed them over the edge.  Sadly enough, it affected many of the community of disciples in the church and we have been dealing with the impact of those situations ever sense.  I was serving in a church in Missouri and one of our ministers had a habit of saying he would do something and then get the peoples hopes up and get them motivated and then he would call it off.  I remember feeling the disappointment and then seeing the disappointment in our members eyes as their hopes were once again dashed.  In Romans 5:5 Paul wrote "And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us."  Hope in the Lord doesn't disappoint, but our hope in our fellow believers has begun to wane a bit, and the trust that a believer will do what they say is lessening more every time a person doesn't follow through with a commitment they make "to the Lord."  As believers in Jesus Christ, we are "people of hope."  Hope is not only our middle name, but our foundation for living.  That's why scripture says we have "living hope."  I Peter 1:3 says "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."  We have a hope of eternal glory in heaven and hope of an abundant life here on this earth.  There is no room for cynicism in a believer's life.  Cynicism only dampens the effect of the message of our salvation in our life and causes us great depression and doubt in living out our faith as we serve the Lord.  We are people who trust God and should trust each other, even when those we respect fail in front of us.  We reverse the mistakes of a few men of God by focusing our attention on God alone and letting the freshness of the Holy Spirit keep our minds and hearts revived and renewed on a daily basis.  

In the next few weeks I am leading our church to redefine their faith and redefine what our church should be like and push the "reset' button on discipleship.  Many mistakes have been made in the past by people who didn't pray and ask for God's perspective on what we should do to reach our world for Christ.  We have allowed massive, worldly, relativism to rule our thoughts and direction and have "lost our way" in the process.  It's time to come back to our roots that are planted deep in the soil of God's grace and mercy.  To take the Holy Spirit at His Word and daily be filled with His power and start to take back territory that should have never been given up.  It is no wonder millennials are searching for the real truth when it is right in front of them and ready to be lived and loved.  I don't believe in generational Christianity because I believe it is weak and easily manipulated.  Manipulated to cater to our wants and desires and not centered in on the core truth of God's Word.   In other words, whether you be a child, youth, college student, young, middle, or senior aged person, the Bible is still the same and cannot be changed.  So quit trying!!  You will lose that argument every time.  We have cultivated things like organic faith, ego faith, Las Vegas faith, and many others.  We need to get back to our core faith and God will take care of the other details from there.

Oh yeah, mimic.  A mimic is the result of all this other cynicism taking root in a person's life   The mimic will make fun of all this "Christian" stuff in their heart and sometimes vocalize their disdain for the sake of entertainment.  The good thing about a mimic is they show us just how much we are running in circles, but usually with no answers of how to change it.  Our modern day version of that is called a Meme  The Meme takes those things that a mimic has established as a truth and they pass it on to others, all the time, heightening the problem by not using the pure source of the truth.  There is another type of person who can reverse the negative things that are passed on by mimics.  This person is called a disciple, or a person who walks with God.  Let me illustrate below.

Cynic........Mimic..........Meme..........no hope

Cynic......true disciple......Meme......great hope.

Which path are you on?  Time to get in on the true path of victory living and get out of the way of those who are trying to make an impact for the Kingdom.  In other words, change or scoot over so real ministry can be done.  It's all a matter of perspective.

The Pilgrimage continues..

David Warren

The Fifth Element

Hebrew 6:1 Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God. 

The movie, The Fifth Element, is a syfy adventure tale that weaves you through the fight of good vs. evil.  In the story a local cab driver in a much more modern world (flying cabs) has a girl fall into his cab.  This girl is the missing link to a powerful weapon for good.  Evil is approaching the world and the more violent people act to stop evil, the bigger it gets.  The conventional weapons of fighting seem to only irritate evil and makes it approach the planet even faster.  Many years earlier some priests had preserved an element that would make all the other elements work together to fight evil, should it come.  Well, here it is and it is time to release this "fifth element" to fight the approaching evil.  The evil that is coming has enlisted some killers to destroy the needed fifth element and they think they have done it.  But there was just enough of the essence of the element left for scientists to rebuild it and it takes on the form of a woman.  Back to the cab driver.  The cab driver is a former special forces fighter and his expertise helps keep the element (girl) alive until she can gather the other elements together to unite them to stop evil with the power of good.  A priest named Cornelius has been waiting for years to see the fifth element work for good, but when it comes down to it he doesn't even know how the element is supposed to work. His knowledge of the elements function is elementary at best and that knowledge is inadequate for the huge task at hand.  The task being "saving the world!"

All of the characters involved get in on the adventure and all try to make the stones work wth the fifth element, but to no avail.  Finally, the priests apprentice accidentally blows on one of the elements and it opens, ready to respond to the other elements.  One by one they  activate all of the other elements and now they are primed and ready to go, but now the "fifth element" (girl) is not responding to the need to stop the evil from destroying the world and time is running out.  In reality all she needed was a reason to be activated and in the movie the reason was love.  Of course, this is just a movie.   But the parallels to scripture are quite interesting.  In Hebrews 6:1 the author challenges believers to get beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and move into spiritual "Big Macs" and beyond.  It is evidenced in this scripture that there is a need to not only know about Christ, but know the inner workings of Christ's teachings.  Why?  First of all, they are the essence of pure truth.  Secondly, the teachings about Christ help us know how to live our lives and how to access the power of God.  Think about.  How can we handle evil without the pure truth of the Word?  We can't!!  True Christian maturity has a learning curve, but the holder of the curve, the Holy Spirit, shows us exactly what we need to do to follow Christ and grow in the grace so freely given to us.  The sad part is when it comes to activating our faith to do something with God's help, we can't figure out what to do.  Just like the priest Cornelius, we can go our whole life knowing about Christ and His great power, but when it comes to using it and activating it, we cannot seem to figure it out.  The Wisdom of God from His Word will give us everything we need to activate that power and thus see God's hand move in a mighty way to not only defeat evil, but energize us for good works.   Ok.  You may say.  Who is our fifth element?  Of course, it is the Holy Spirit!  In Ephesians 5:18 Paul writes, "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.  Instead be filled with the Spirit."  The word debauchery means (def) excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures.  We need to be filled with the Spirit of God, not alcoholic spirits.  One leads to debauchery, the other leads to Christ.  I know I have gone far too long not tapping into this power from God that will defeat evil in my life and empower me to do great and mighty things for Jesus.  The power is real, but not found in elementary Christianity.  It is activated when we take a deeper walk with God through His Word and allow the scriptures to come alive in our spirit.  Peter realized this power and the effect of it in Acts 4:8 when he spoke to the elders of the church and challenged them to change their ways.  They were questioning by what power the disciples were seeing these great miracles happen.  Peter said it was the power of God and that the very one they rejected, Jesus, was the one who had empowered them to do these great things.  Perhaps we need to stand firm in the power of God and challenge the "norms" of church life to account for the lack of true commitment to God's Word and God's commission and start praying for God to move in an extraordinary way despite the apathy in our leaders.   Maybe the evil is closer than we think and we need to find our fifth element, the Holy Spirit, and allow Him to move in our midst and believe God for a great awakening.  Perhaps we should move away from elementary teachings about faith and salvation, and move into deeper waters where God can use our faith to move mountains.  Perhaps we need to pray for the element we are missing right now, the Holy Spirit, to shake  up our world and our churches and flow freely in revival and renewal in our land before it is too late.  We have found that bickering and fighting in churches only makes the evil stronger, but true love will meet evil at the door and reject it and God will once again be seen in the lives of His people.  I hope this scripture is an encouragement and not an indictment to you.   1 Corinthians 2:14  "The person with the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit."  Time to quit holding God back and set Him free through the Holy Spirit and pray He will come alive in our lives.  He is the element we are missing.

The Pilgrimage continues.....

David Warren

Rock or Roll

Matthew 7:24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.
26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching,
29 because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.

I grew up in a time when Rock and Roll Music became a way of life.  We would mimic the looks, the swagger, and the mystique of rock groups.  We thought in our minds that stuff would last forever.  But it didn't.  Rock Groups got old like everyone does and the desire to keep on the edge of life was soon replaced with tired, old, canned songs to keep the money coming in.  It all got old and passe.  Why?  That's what all temporal things do. They have their time and then they are gone, non existent.  Almost like they never were. They roll on by to obscurity like everything else.  Or, almost everything else.  There is one thing that stays fresh and current and lasting.  It defies all reason.  It is the Word of God and the wisdom that comes from it.  The Word of God has stood the test of time because it is not held by time.  The Word of God has been proven right again and again because it is alive.  The Word of God never disappoints as the foundational reasoning of truth for every situation because it is a ROCK and it doesn't ROLL.  It holds firm in shifting times and holds true when all truth has become relative.  The Word of God is our Rock and we must rely on it or roll away like all the other temporal things in this world.  

So... are you gonna Rock or are you gonna Roll.  I choose ROCK!  Why?  Because the basic truth, the foundational truth of the Word of God is the essence of who I am and I have no direction without it.  When I think I have come up with something that is really smart and foundational I realize it is only temporal and will not last.  But when I immerse myself in the Word of God and put it's purity into motion, it has an eternal effect on my life.  Rock and Roll originated in the 1950's and was played first by Cleveland-based DJ Alan Freed and start popularizing the term "Rock and Roll" at that point.  It found it's roots from Rhythm and Blues music and then morphed into what we call Rock Music today.  It is a style of music and that style has morphed into many different forms of music.   Rock music has changed over the years and the change has taken it very far away from it's roots.

The Word of God has remained constant throughout history, and even though liberal philosophies have tried to water it down, it still holds on strong as the foundation for all knowledge and true wisdom.  The Word of God will continue to hold true and it will flourish if we as believers put these words into practice and live what we read.  The Word of God is our ROCK and it will not roll away because it is under the authority of God, the creator of all things.  

So if the question is ever brought up ROCK or ROLL.  I choose the rock and know that He will show me the way that is everlasting and will hold even in the storms of life.  He is my ROCK and he will not roll away but will remain the constant for eternal truth and direction.  Let the Word of God come live in your life today and all who meet you will want to know how you got so smart.  You will be able to say, "I'm not smart.  I just follow the rock. He is my foundation."

The Pilgrimage continues...

David Warren