Skip to main content

Making Disciples for the Glory of Christ by Pastor Charlie Handren

Since our early days, it has been our practice to devote the Sunday after Easter to local or global missions because it was the risen Christ who said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). So, while we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, we can best honor what he accomplished by going into the world and making disciples for the glory of his name. Indeed, obeying Jesus from the heart and by his power is one of the greatest joys of the Christian heart!

Earlier this year, the elders decided to insert three- to four-week blocks into the Revelation sermon series so that we can speak into various things throughout the year. Therefore, this Sunday we begin a three-part series on local missions that will begin with a message by Pastor Kevin on the Good Samaritan and what might be called “mercy ministry.” Next week I will bring a message on evangelism in which I will teach you a method of sharing the gospel, encourage you to continue praying for your “one,” and then challenge you to practice explaining the gospel to believers and unbelievers. Finally, on May 3, we will hear a message from Jacob Hatfield who is planting a church in Monticello later this year, and who will help us refresh our vision of church planting in the northwest metro and beyond.

As we progress through this series on local mission, I want to encourage you to watch the four-part video series I’ve posted on our YouTube channel entitled, “Making Disciples in the Midst of the Crisis”. Here you will learn what it means to make a disciple, and how you can make progress in our calling to make disciples, even in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.

My prayer for the next three weeks at Glory of Christ is that Jesus will equip us with a renewed vision of our calling, with a refreshed sense of all that he’s provided for us to carry out our calling, and with a strengthened resolve to walk in his ways on the basis of his absolute authority. And I invite you to join me in praying that the Lord will allow us to baptize and disciples new believers in the weeks and months after we begin meeting in person again!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord, by George Muller

To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord By George Muller “It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God—not prayer, but the Word of God. And here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God so that it only passes through my mind just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what I read, pondering over it, and applying it to my heart. To meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed. And that thus,...

Reflective Glory: How the Moon Displays the Mercy of God

Our sun is a fitting metaphor for the glory of God. In the context of our solar system, it is massive, bright, beautiful, powerful, self-sufficient, heat-producing, life-giving, and dangerous. It is, by far, the dominant feature of our solar system and without it the system would fling apart and all living things therein would die.  On the other hand, our moon is a fitting metaphor for human beings, especially for those who believe in Jesus Christ. First, compared to the sun, the moon is tiny and dim. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon, its mass is 27 million times greater than the mass of the moon, and from our perspective its light shines 450,000 times brighter than that of the moon. The sun is so much greater than the moon that it’s difficult to quantify and express the difference. Likewise, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is so much great than each and all of us that it’s impossible to quantify or express the difference. Indeed, the Lord is very great and greatly...

When Children Say "I'm Bored" By Julie Lowe

This Article is written by Julie Lowe and was originally posted on the CCEF blog.  I highlighted the areas of particular interest. I had already prepared a blogpost on dealing with boredom from a Christian worldview and then came across this. There is much overlap between the two, perhaps this one is more concise while my work attempts to explain the connection between the ability to think and the ability to be happy. You can visit the original blogpost in the link provided below.  https://www.ccef.org/resources/blog/children-say-im-bored   We have a common crisis in our home; it is the calamity of boredom. Our children might even consider it a catastrophe. “I’m bored” is repeated so often it would not be an overstatement to say that these words echo continuously throughout our home especially during any break from school. These are children with limited media time but still children with a Wii and Xbox system, a pool outside our door, multiple games, toy...