9/29/13 Design For Life

MISSIONS - GOD’S HEART

    A question to start: where is your heart?  What really gets your attention?
Your family?  Children?  Grandchildren?   ?????
    Think about where your heart is.  God’s heart is reaching unbelievers.
    A passage to look at for some foundation today:
Matthew 15:18-20 NKJV
18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. 20 These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.
    Jesus taught that the heart is the critical center of life and decision.  What goes into the heart comes out.  This is an answer to the question asked so often of how someone can “do something like that”.
    It is with this principle in mind that we can understand the difference between an apology and a confession.
    In the wake of numerous public confessions by fallen politicians, sports figures, and business executives, in her book The Art of the Public Grovel, Susan Wise Bauer offers a helpful distinction: “An apology is an expression of regret: I am sorry. A confession is an admission of fault: I am sorry because I did wrong. I sinned.”
    Apology addresses an audience. Confession implies an inner change … that will be manifested in outward action.
Paul Wilkes, The Art of Confession (Workman Publishing, 2012), pp. 4-5
    There is a big difference between “I’m sorry I got caught” and “I’m sorry I did it”.  It is what is in the heart.
    So, we must stay alert to God and what His Word says.
    Paul “Bear” Bryant is considered to be one of the greatest college football coaches of all time. Bryant’s record in 38 years includes 323 wins. He took 29 teams to bowl games and led 15 of his teams to conference championships. In the 1960s and 1970s, no school won more games than Alabama (193-32-5).
    John Croyle, All-American defensive end on the ‘73 national championship team, played for the Bear, and was deeply impacted by him. John told about one of Coach Bryant’s pregame speeches.
    In this game, there are going to be four or five plays that will determine the outcome of this contest. Four or five plays that will swing the momentum toward us, or away from us. I don’t know which plays these will be. You don’t know which plays these will be. All you can do is go out there and give all that you have on each and every play. If you are doing that on one of those crucial plays, and you catch your opponent giving less, that play will swing things in our direction. And if we rise to the occasion like that, on those four or five plays, we are gonna leave here today a winner.
Dave Bolin, Gadsden, Alabama
    Where our focus is makes the difference.  We don’t know when an opportunity for the Lord will come in life.  We must be ready because we can influence the eternal destiny of a person if we keep our focus on the Lord and be alert to opportunities.
    The heart of God is eternal souls. This is why missions is on the heart of God.  God’s design for the lives of believers is to be used by Him to accomplish His plan to bring people to Him.  Again remember, missions starts here where we are.
    In reading the Prophet, Jesus said:
Luke 4:18-19, 21 NKJV
18 “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; 19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.”
21 And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
The purpose of Jesus’ ministry on earth was to preach the Gospel to those in need, the hurting who desperately need God’s help in their lives.  Doing anything apart from God’s ways, even achieving success in the world’s eyes, only leads to failure and bitter disappointment.  Jesus came to heal the injured and oppressed.  He came to bring real freedom to all who will hear and respond.  Jesus revealed His divinity, God in the flesh to bring all people to Him.
II Peter 3:9 NKJV
9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
    Emphasis: God’s desire is that all should come to repentance.  It is not the will of God that one soul would be punished eternally. God wants all to have the opportunity to hear and repent.  Each person is responsible to receive God’s gift of forgiveness.  Missions is God’s heart - bringing people to Jesus.
Many Bible verses show that reaching the lost is the heart of God.
Mark 16:15 NKJV
15 And He said to them, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
1 Timothy 2:3-4 NKJV
3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Ezekiel 33:11 NKJV
11 Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’
Jonah 3:10 NKJV
10 Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
    Get this clearly: God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He does not delight in judging.  His righteous nature demands it.  God is not happy with the prospect of judging spiritually rebellious people.  He desires everyone to repent and receive salvation to have eternal life.  Believers today must live God’s hope for people to repent and turn from their wicked ways.
    God does not desire to bring destruction on people.  In the story of Jonah, because the people humbled themselves, repented and looked to God for mercy, God did not destroy them in judgment.  God will show compassion when people make the choice to do things God’s way.
Acts 16:31 NKJV
31 So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
    The salvation of a soul is a miracle.  God functions in the supernatural, the miraculous.  He has all power and nothing is too hard.  So, we must believe that and live in that as well.  We must expect that the solution for anyone starts with salvation.  Then they are in a position to hear from God and see what He will do in their lives.  We must live in and expect the supernatural.
    This is a challenge I have been sensing more and more lately in my life.  I know I believe in the supernatural intervention of God in lives.  The question is: Do I live it?  Do I expect it? With the tough battle we face, living in God’s supernatural power is the only way we will see victory.
    I want you to ask yourself a question - you can answer privately.
Do you really believe that anyone who really calls on the name of the Lord will be saved?
Do you really believe you can say to someone “the day you call on the name of the Lord, you will be saved”?
Do you live in the supernatural?
    The heart of God is to reach the lost.
    Jesus is alive today, the testimony of Danny Velasco. From the book “The Breakthrough Prayer” by Jim Cymbala, Senior Pastor, Brooklyn Tabernacle.
    In a street in the Bronx at three A.M., a  44 year old man lies in the gutter waiting for a hospital to open.  He is waiting not to get well, but to die.  Danny Velasco is living in pitiful and hopeless condition.  He is a homeless heroin addict ready to die.
    Danny’s life started as a normal, well-adjusted kid with a brother and two step sisters, who knew he had a talent for something.  His talent was for styling hair.
    At was 17, he was hired by Berdorf Goodman’s, an exclusive store, the youngest hairdresser and make-up artist in the store’s history.  Soon he styled the hair of a model who was photographed by SEVENTEEN magazine. From then on, he was determined to have his artistry seen on the most beautiful women, captured on film by the most gifted photographers.  That way his talent could be exposed  to the whole world.
    When he was 21, he was traveling the country conducting seminars when he had a panic-attack.  He saw  a doctor who prescribed valium. He discovered that valium went down best with large doses of vodka.  Soon he was drunk nightly but somehow able to function during the day.
    By his late twenties, his career stagnated. Feeling restless, he moved to Paris. Although he arrived with no prospective employers, doors opened and opportunities  exploded almost overnight.  His work appeared on the covers of dozens of fashion magazines.  He had a gorgeous apartment and was earning tons of money.  He reached the pinnacle of his profession.
    Four years later, he returned to New York in tremendous demand.  Having earned his ticket to stardom, he made $3,000 a day working on beautiful models.  He rented a 5,000 square foot loft.  What no one knew was that he brought back something else from Paris – an addition to heroin.
    In New York, he was a successful hairdresser and make-up artist by day, but a drug fiend by night.
According to his own words,
    “Most nights I would dress ‘down’, roaming the streets, and it wasn’t long before arrests and missing work became a problem. I was two people:  enjoying euphoric highs and suffering devastating lows, traveling with celebrities on private jets and staying in plush hotels. But the artificial bubble ended every time I returned home.”
    One day, a beautiful red headed model on a photo shoot began to talk to him about God.  She asked him to do some work on the side, cutting hair for her and some friends, and she also invited Danny to her church. Her name is Wanda, a choir member of the Brooklyn Tabernacle.
    Later Danny went to the Wanda’s apartment and styled her and her room mate’s hair.  Wanda asked if they could pray for him.  She said to him, “Danny, the day you call on the name of the Lord, you will be set free.”
    Danny Velasco confessed,  “Whatever she meant,  I knew it would never happen to me.  I had already been in and out of nine detox programs and nothing worked. No way any of this ‘miracle stuff’ could change me. Once a dope fiend, always a dope fiend, I reasoned. If that’s the way you lived, then that’s the way you died. My life was hopeless and I knew it. I saw Wanda regularly in the workplace and she kept telling me about Jesus. She was sweet but a real fanatic.”
    On a photo shoot in the Carribean, things got totally out of control. Danny overdosed on a boat and the Coast Guard had to come to evacuate him.  Because of this incident, Danny’s career nose-dived straight into the ground.  He went from making thousands of dollars a day to nothing.
    One day, Danny could not take it no longer. He took his driver’s license, passport, credit cards and other ID’s and cut them into pieces.  Then he walked out of his apartment and began to live in the street.
    “At that point I had no friends and did not even have a quarter to my name. Each morning I would awake sick, having one question: where would I get my drugs that day and what would I have to do to get the money to buy them? That’s how I lived for the next three years.”
    One day Danny called his agent and she told him that someone named Wanda was trying to reach him. He called Wanda.  She asked if he could come over to cut hair for her and a few friends. Danny agreed but he asked for advance payment. Wanda wanted to help and said he would have to meet her at her church. Dirty he was, Danny showed up and Wanda handed him the money inside a Bible. He bought drugs and sold the Bible within an hour.
    “When I arrived at Wanda’s place the next day, she had five other fanatical Christians waiting to have their hair done. I realize now that it was a Holy Ghost ambush. Before I left, they circled around me, praying so hard it made me think, They really believe in this stuff!  And there’s five of them on me now. I did not believe in whatever nonsense they were into, so I left as soon as I could and returned to the street.”
    After that, Danny’s phobias got worse and he began suffering from anxiety.  Then the voices started.  Before long they were screaming at him incessantly.  He became like an animal, muttering or yelling out a stream of profanities as people passed by. By then Danny Velasco looked like a skeleton covered with sores.  He had hepatitis A, B and C and could not even stand up straight.
    That particular hospital closed down during the night. Danny only hoped the staff would let him in to die a decent death, because he did not want to die in the street.
    “Finally the door opened, and I was admitted and someone gave me an injection that knocked me out. When I woke, I found myself in bed covered in my own vomit. Suddenly the voices in my head started screaming, creating total chaos within.  I was so disoriented, I wanted to die. But I could not jump out of the window because they were barred.
    “Then in the midst of all my pain, someone whispered words I had heard before, ‘The day you call on the Lord, he will set you free’.  Other voices tried to drown it out, but they couldn’t!  The words came through clearly:  ‘The day you call on the Lord, he will set you free’.  In absolute desperation I screamed from my bed, ‘Jesus help me! O God, help me with everything!  You’re my only hope, so please help, Jesus! I did not understand anything about prayer, so I even used ‘personal references’ as I cried out: ‘Jesus, Wanda said that when I called on your name, you would deliver me. So help me now, O God.’”
    At that moment Almighty God swept over me and around me. I knew He was real because the voices in my head suddenly stopped their hellish screaming and the ball of fear that had been weighing on me lifted.  I knew everything changed even though nothing outwardly had. I was still lying in my vomit in a hospital bed. But I was a million miles  from where I had been before I said that prayer. The day I called on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, he did set me free.”
    Danny went from the hospital to a three-month rehab program. He gained thirty-five pounds and he began to heal.  Then he went to a Christian program and he devoured the Word of God like a man filled with spiritual hunger.
    In the years after his conversion, Danny’s spiritual growth was strong and steady. He gained a compassion for people who are hurting.  Truly Danny’s testimony is living proof that Jesus is alive today and will continue to work miracles and will continue to set people free.
Discussion
God’s heart is missions - winning the lost.
God’s power is alive and well today.
What do these statements say to you?  What effect do they have on you?
Do you believe that salvation and the supernatural intervention of God is the only solution to the problems of the world?
How do we apply these truths to daily life and let them impact us?