Missionary Handbook - Luke - Part 9

Written by Ed Allen
 Sunday, 08 August 2010 09:00

Sermons - The Gospel of Luke - That You May Know

Sermon Notes

mp3

What picture would you use to describe your relationship with God?

If you pick up any book or DVD about management today, you’ll find some discussion about creating right expectations for those who work under you. Clearly, our performance and our satisfaction are dramatically affected by our expectations. This is true in everything we do. Our performance and our satisfaction are dramatically affected by our expectations.

And often our expectations are dramatically affected by the mental picture we have. In other words, the images we have in our minds of what we are doing, often heavily influence our expectation level. For example, take a marriage. If your idea of marriage has been formed around the image of a fairy tale, then you are going to be pretty disappointed in your marriage. On the other hand, some of you think of everything in business terms. That’s the image that governs the way you look at life. So if you imagine your marriage like a business partnership, then there’s a good chance that you are in a pretty emotionally disconnected marriage. The picture you have of what you’re doing, influences your expectation level, which in turn dramatically affects your performance and satisfaction.

So what is the right way to think about our relationship with God? What is the right picture? How should we think about it? Remember, if the image we have affects our expectation level, and our expectation level affects our satisfaction and our performance then this is not a small question. So what is the right picture to describe our connection with God?

Let me suggest 3 pictures that I think we use that are somewhat helpful, but also somewhat limiting and then let me give a fuller, more helpful image.

  1. Information - gathering – especially popular for those of us who were good students. We love our information. And we do need to gather information; we need to learn more about God and about ourselves. DOP – first part will be about learning about God’s character. But this can also be a limiting picture, because we are doing much more in our relationship with God than learning things about Him.
  2. Personal improvement – become a better person, better mother, better worker, character development, But this is limiting because our connection with God is not primarily about us, can also be very limiting if we think of our personal improvement as God making my life better meaning more comfortable, more to my liking
  3. Journey – especially true for those of us who have been drawn to work on ourselves internally, better still. But this can be limiting because it can lead us to being very self-centered
  4. Let me give a better, more complete picture, the best description of how we relate to God is the picture of apprenticeship – discipleship with Jesus is different; being trained for a job; we are on mission;
    1. The disciples learned from Jesus, hung out with Jesus, but it was all a time of training. And today we’re going to look at an account of how Jesus took their training to the next level. He commissioned them all as missionaries. In today’s passage we find out general terms what the job is and how we should do it

Missionary Handbook - Luke 10:1-20

After a time of training and relationship building and information gathering, Jesus sent the disciples out to do what they had been learning. He commissioned them all as missionaries. His purpose was not to create a holy huddle. His purpose was to build a band of special forces. It is still the same today.

Qualification:

  • By appointment – you have to be appointed by Jesus.
  • People were his method. He choose a group of followers before he organized an evangelistic campaign, before he even preached a formal sermon.
  • Why focus on so few? Not trying to gather a crowd; trying to start a movement.

Tasks:

  • Take a buddy
  • Pray for co-laborers
  • Go – out beyond yourself; be mindful of the mission
    • Vulnerably – this is dangerous work
    • Simply – total lack of attachment to earthly things
    • Single-mindedly

Rules of engagement:

  • Look for receptivity
  • When you are received:
    • Be willing to be served
    • Heal the sick
    • Proclaim the Kingdom
  • When you are not received:
    • Pronounce God’s judgment

INTERVIEW CLIF AND MENA...

Possible outcomes:

  • People receive us and are healed
  • People reject us and reject God
  • Christ is key
    • “It is because Jesus is central to God’s ruling activity that discipleship in following him is such a priority. To preach the Kingdom is to preach the benefits that God has made available because Jesus the Messiah has come.”
    • This is why we have made one our covenant agreements “Telling others about Christ”.

"Comfort" Video

What is Kat’s picture of her connection with God? What’s her picture of herself I wonder? I doubt that she understands that she has completely missed it!

If you’ve made a connection with God, then He has called you to something! He always does! What is it?

Helpful question: If you could do anything for God what would it be?

I knew a man once who dared to ask that and ended up being prayer coordinator for Saudi Arabia.

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