I've been thinking and praying a lot about our church and its future. As I have been thinking about our future, I find myself dwelling on what seems to be a huge, impossible task. It is overwhelming. Anyone else feel overwhelmed at the thought of trying to grow our church? As I continue to pray about it God has impressed upon me over and over that it is a matter of faith. So my first question for you today is, what is faith? Faith is the persuasion of the mind that something is true.
Matthew 9:29 says, "According to your faith, let it be done to you." I think this is the key for our church. He will grow our church according to or faith. It has nothing to do with how many we have here now. It has nothing to do with how much money we do or don't have. What it comes down to is how much do we want it; how much faith do we have that it will happen? Faith is like a muscle. What happens to a muscle that is never used?(it gets weak) So what do you do to strengthen a muscle? (you use it) So as individuals and as a church we need to be exercising our faith if we want to rebuild our church. God has His ways of strengthening our faith and that is what we are going to look at today.
First, God gives you a dream. Let's pull over and park here. Tell me about your dreams for our church. These are definitely God sized dreams. We can't achieve them on our own. They require that we have faith in Him to fulfill those dreams. As a church, the first thing we need to do is spend time in prayer asking God to reveal to us His dream for our church. We are here for a purpose. God will reveal that purpose to us if we care enough to seek Him. Ephesians 3:20 says: God is able to do far more than we could ever ask for or imagine. He does everything by His power that is working in us.
Next, we need to claim it. No matter how big the dream is He has for us; no matter how unobtainable it seems, if God gives us the dream, we will be able to see it fulfilled if we just have faith in Him! Mark 9:23 says, "Everything is possible for the person who has faith." Here is God's message for today, "Monroe, First Church of the Nazarene, you get to choose how much I bless your church. If you believe, I will do it! If you believe, I will bless!" James 1:5-8 says: If any of you need wisdom, ask God for it. He will give it to you. God gives freely to everyone. He doesn't find fault. But when you ask, you must believe. You must not doubt. People who doubt are like waves of the sea. The wind blows and tosses them around. A man like that should't expect to receive anything from the Lord. He can't make up his mind. He can never decide what to do.
Perhaps the hardest part of dreaming big with God is the waiting! What happens when we have to wait for God's promises? Often we either give up or like Abraham and Sarah we take matters into our own hands. As we look around the world today, I think we can all agree that taking matters into our own hands can have serious long term affects. Habakkuk 2:3 says: (the message) This vision(dream) is a witness to what's coming. It aches for the coming - it can hardly wait! And it doesn't lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It's on its way. It will come right on time.
We may run into difficult times as we go down this journey of building our church, but God's message is clear - Hang on! Don't give up! 1 Peter 1 6-7 : I know how great this makes you feel even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, its your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory. Rest assured, if we dream big with God, if we claim His dream for us as a church, Satan will fight us. As long as we continue the way we are, just existing, we are not a threat to Satan. When we start dreaming big with God, we become a threat and he will fight. But if we hold onto our faith we will not just survive, we will thrive!
I would like to share the words to a song I learned one year in vacation Bible school. God brought this song into my life during a very trying time and it was what helped me get through. I believe its words, its message is exactly what we need right now for our church.
It seems like there's so much to hope for, so many dreams I wish they all could come true. When I think about your ways Lord, it gives me so much faith in all that You do.
Faith to see beyond what I can see. Faith to know that You will do great things. I will trust you Lord, I'll always believe. As I hold onto my faith, Jesus You are holding onto me.
You see, this is exactly what I propose we need - this kind of faith. The kind of faith that stays focused on the dream God gives us. The kind of faith that sees past our lack of workers, our lack of money our lack of whatever obstacles Satan will undoubtedly throw our way and simply know that God will do great things in our church if we just stay focused on Him. Will you trust Him today? Will you believe? Will you hold onto the faith and allow Him to hold onto you?
Here is my challenge to you - This week I want you to be in prayer for our church. I want you specifically to pray that God will give you His dream for our church. Come prepared next week. I am going to have a poster board to hang up for us to write the dreams God reveals to us. That way we have something to look at, to pray over, to help keep us focused.
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