Are we doing this?

Greetings Lifers,

Those were the words I used to close our services last week as we confirmed together from God’s word what we stand for as a church. If you weren’t with us, I reintroduced our church’s mission, which is as follows:
Our mission is to surrender to God as He makes disciples through us, here and around the world.

We talked some about what surrender looks like and how part of our surrender lies in us making ourselves not just available to God, but intentional with God in seeing others start/grow up in their faith. I was so pleased to hear reports from our Front Yard Fall Festivals that took place at various Lifer homes on Monday night. Hundreds of families got to hear about our church from those participating, and I am praying that all who who now carry the little flashlights we handed out will find themselves in our midst this weekend. A simple thing, handing out flashlights and letting people know about Bay Life. But it all goes into us accomplishing our mission of making disciples here in our community.

I heard a story recently from our 5th grade Sunday class, a huge “Yay God” as we see Him work through our faithful service to Him. Read and see what Miss Vicki and her team got to see God do in their midst... 

October 16, 2011 was a great day. Our 5th grade class has been studying the Old Testament peoples and events to answer the question “Why did Jesus have to come”? They saw the fall of man through Adam, the calling forth of a people and race through Abraham, Joseph saving them from famine and Moses rescuing them from Egypt. We went through the 40 yrs. in the wilderness, the Ten Commandments, Elijah, and then 800 yrs. later Jesus comes. We worked on building up to the big day that salvation would come to mankind. The penalty of our sins would be dealt with by the Son of God. Sunday was the BIG DAY. Finally, He came, chose His disciples, taught them, and established the new covenant by going to the cross. 

We talked about His sacrifice, his agony, and the extraordinary events that happened that wonderful day. He rose from the dead and salvation was complete with his resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit

I grabbed a dollar bill, held it up high and said “Whoever comes up here and takes this dollar can have it. They all just looked at me. I repeated the phrase. After a bit, two boys came at me and jumped and one of them took the dollar. I looked at him and said, “put it in your pocket and make it yours.’ I said to the class, it was mine to give to whoever wanted it, but this boy reached out and took it. Now it’s his. The rest of you just looked at me. They said, “but it was too easy, we thought you would call us greedy or something.”

I said “a lot of people say that faith alone is too easy when accepting what Jesus did.”

“You have to take His payment as your own. Make it yours, make him your Lord. YOU have to take it. No one else can take salvation for you, it’s your choice.”

One of the boys in the front row looked at me and said, “Can we do it now?”

Now this is the part that I love. My mind raced, I glanced around the room. Every eye was looking at me. Should I leave this to small group time or just go with it? In about a nanosecond I said “Sure, lets all bow are heads. If this is the first time you REALLY understood about what Jesus did for you on the cross that day, and if you want to take His offer of salvation and make it yours, then you need to grab it. If you want Him as YOUR savior and you receive what He did for you, in your place, then raise your hand.”

The room was so thick with the presence of God. Hands, arms raised as high as they could go and it took our breath away. My mouth fell open, I looked at Ken, he was frozen, I glanced at Susan her mouth was open. I could barely breathe. 17 hands had lifted. 17. All I could do was whisper “thank you Jesus.”

Stories like these happen because faithful people like you make yourselves available to be used of God. May God keep us mindful of and applied to our mission as we serve Him as a church. See you Sunday – bring a friend.

Peace,

Mark