A Stone's Throw

I’ve been wrestling with this idea lately in “waiting on the Lord.” I know all the verses and everything about “those that wait on the Lord will they renew their strength,” but… the great theologians Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers said it well–It is the hardest part!

But the beautiful thing about waiting on Him is that he will renew our strength and give us a hope.  Some Scriptures that I have been meditating on this week talk about this hope and the fact that God hasn’t forgotten or left me in my struggles.

¹⁸I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that^[i] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.²⁶In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. ²⁷And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.

³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[m] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 8:18-27; 37-39 NIV)

I’m preaching on these verses in a couple of weeks…good stuff.

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

(Jeremiah 29:11-13 NIV)

I am slowly working through the book “Radical” by David Platt and it is kicking me around.  This caught my eye.  Check out this video excerpt from a recent message.  Powerful.

FB_David Platt from Ronnie Floyd on Vimeo.

You need to check out these clips from sermons by Ed Stetzer.  He is a missiologist that works for Lifeway.  Came through on my RSS reader yesterday and I thought I would share.  Make sure you watch both segments…they are both great!  Painful though.  Good preaching often does that, doesn’t it…sometimes the truth of God hurts!

He starts off with an amazing rant about people with a lack of the idea that they need to be on mission for Jesus…

If we [church leaders] disciple people through knowledge without action we’re training people to be puffed up gnostics.. . .Listen, I’m worn out–I am sick of knowledgeable, religious people not living on mission and then criticizing those who are. . . . I just think that what we need to have happen is that this knowledge-based needs to lead to an action life and they need to get off their “Blessed Assurance” and do something for Jesus!

and ends the first segment with this gem…

“The greatest sin in most churches is that we [pastors] have made it o.k. to sit there week after week and do nothing and call yourself a follower of Jesus.”

He does a little Ross Perot imitation and says this afterward in the second segment…good stuff…

The reality is, I don’t care if you have 5 purposes, if you rename yourself ‘missional,’ if you move into a house, or you ‘emerge’ into something else! I care that you have a Biblically driven church that is challenging people to be changed by the Gospel and then in doing so, they follow Jesus on His mission in the world!  I care less about the label and more about the lifestyle. Maybe we need to fight a little less about that and focus more on the calling that we have.

The irreducible minimum…

Disciples see what Jesus in doing and they join Him in doing it.  Is your church leading your people to join Jesus in His mission?…[Pastors] Go home and say “what am I going to say differently about my message so they’ll join Jesus on His mission.”

This message sure does go along with the message that I am preaching tomorrow @FPCarthage in our Outflow series.  We are going to be talking about the idea that Christ wants us to reach out to those people in our community.