The Church of Ephesus

Welcome and thanks for joining us at First Conyers.

Wherever you're watching or listening from, we're so glad you're here.

We pray this message encourages your heart and strengthens your walk with Christ.

If you would like to know more about the mission and activities at First Conyers, please visit our website at firstconiers.com.

Good morning, First Baptist.

How are you doing?

Wonderful, wonderful.

David, I thank you for the introduction.

And I particularly appreciate the order of the good news, bad news part of the introduction.

I'm glad I was on the back end of that, not the front end.

Hopefully it's good news, and I'm grateful to be with you this morning, a faithful partner in ministry.

And uh I've seen uh a lot of you serving with us and hopefully um engaging in that story of God getting the gospel to under each parts of the world, and um we're gonna talk just a minute about that this morning.

I'm also excited about well, a lot of things.

September is one of my favorite months.

We're 23 days away from fall.

Anybody excited about the fall?

There we go, right?

Uh college football, what starts next week?

Right?

Anybody excited about that?

There we go.

I'm not gonna watch any of it.

Uh because I'm gonna be in a dove field.

Anyone hunt?

The hunting season's coming up, right?

So we do the traditional thing.

We've been doing it since I was a kid.

A lot of people ask me, why would you go and shoot doves?

You know, isn't that like the Holy Spirit, you know?

And I say, no, it's not the Holy Spirit.

Um, it's a tradition we have, and it tastes good, you know, and simple.

It tastes good.

Uh, if you've ever had a dove popper on a jalapeno with cream cheese wrapped in bacon, I'm not gonna say it doesn't get better than that, but as a missionary, I can tell you the food can get a lot worse.

But we like it, we enjoy it, but I'm excited about the fall and excited about what God is doing.

And speaking of which, um, where's where's Sean Wood?

Swood, where are you?

Where's Sean?

Back there.

In the back.

Okay, Sean's in the back.

I want to uh let you know a little bit about what Sean has been working on.

Sean's a faithful part of our team at Kaleidoscopic Call, and she's not only invited the youth to come out, serve, and some of the churches that we've been a part of, but several um months ago, Sean had a vision in her heart, and I I applauded it, and I said, Yeah, we got to do this.

We have international pastor networks in kaleidoscopic call, but Sean had it in her heart, and I really appreciated this.

Sean said, Well, what about the wives and the people and the wives and the ladies that serve alongside of the pastors?

And I said, You know what?

I said, we need to do something.

We need to do something.

Check this out.

Sean started what was called the Honey and Olive Network.

There's a picture up here.

Look at this right here.

There were 20 women, I counted from 10 different countries that have come over and were a part of this network.

They are wives, they are daughters of missionaries and pastors serving in ministry.

Sean, you did a great job.

Can we thank her for what she's doing in Kaleidoscopic Call?

What an incredible opportunity to minister to the wives of pastors and ministry leaders because they serve right alongside with the pastors and bear the burden.

Now, what you're seeing here is a little bit more of what we do, and I want to tell you what your partnership means to us at Kaleidoscopic Call.

Um, I know that this church and some people in it have been faithful in going to Liberia and training pastors and uh pouring out there.

Kaleidoscopic Call also works in the north part of Liberia.

Uh we work in the Muslim north, and five years ago, we planted a church in the Muslim north of Liberia.

And for the last two years, we've been training, we've been discipling, we've been resourcing, we've been equipping.

And I want to show you two, uh it was three weeks ago now, that church in the north part of Liberia has crossed the border into Sierra Leone.

And what you're seeing right here is the first church planted among three Muslim villages in Sierra Leone.

Three weeks ago, 38 Muslims gave their life to Jesus Christ.

They are being baptized, they're being discipled, and we are committed to going and training and putting pastors there, and that is the work that your church is a part of and getting to support.

So I want to say thank you for all that you do to help support what we do.

And I want to invite you to be a part of it as well.

Now, on another note, uh, I want to take a minute this morning and pray in a special way for a specific group of people.

Some of you know that Kaleidoscopic Call does a lot of work in the country of Nepal.

And as you know, you've probably seen the last couple of days what has happened in Nepal with the flooding and the landslides.

Um, we are meeting with our team in Nepal tonight to decide what kind of response uh we should have.

We've had a lot of people calling and asking what we can do.

And uh at the moment, from our folks on the ground, the area has been shut down.

There's not a lot we can do right now, but we are praying tonight about what kind of strategy we can have, whether it's giving, whether it's praying, um, we want to invite people to be a part of that.

But I want us to take a minute and just pray for the country of Nepal.

30 million people, less than 1.4% Christian.

So we want to pray for them today, for the families that are affected, and for the churches to be a part of showing God's glory and mercy and compassion in these times, and also pray for our message this morning and ask God to bless us.

So would you pray for me as we lift up Nepal and the people in it, and also the work that God has called us to do.

Father, we thank you this morning, a resounding thank you, that we sit here today safely and soundly because of your protection over us.

And because of that protection that you provided us, we gather together this morning to worship you.

We worship you, Lord, on the days of sun, we worship you on the days of rain.

And Father, today we cry out and we pray for the nation, for the people, for the families that were affected by this flood in Nepal.

Father, we are asking that in the minute, in the moments of desire of disasters that you would pour out your spirit, that you would bless the churches, that you would bless the pastors, Lord, that you would do something in the midst of disaster that would allow those who are suffering to see that there's a God who loves, there's a God of mercy, and there's a God that can comfort and show compassion.

Father, would you bless them?

Would you watch over them?

And Father, would you be with us today as we look into your word?

And Lord, we ask that you would bless us, not only, Lord, with encouragement, but Lord, with sharpening in the areas where we're dull.

And Father, you would call us to Christ, no other, but to Himself.

Lord, that we may be a part of the great work that you've called us to do.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I know that J-Mo has been walking you all through.

Thank you.

I had one over there and I left it.

And now I get a cold one.

Was over there and um he was he's been talking to you about the church in Ephesus, which is a fascinating church.

And it reminds me a lot of churches that we see in the current days.

What's fascinating about the church in Ephesus is that this church was planted in early 50s A.D.

It was a vibrant church.

It would have been like the saddleback or the Willow Creek of its day.

We know that in a matter of three to four years, according to Acts chapter 19, the Bible says all the people, Jews and Greeks, in the province of Asia, which we now know to be Asia Minor, heard the gospel.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

Imagine that.

That in three to four years, all the inhabitants that lived in that area had heard the gospel.

Here we are today, still struggling centuries later to get the gospel to unreached people groups, but that church was vibrant, it was alive.

A lot of big hitters that we see in the scripture were part of that church.

Priscilla and Aquila were part of that, discipling other people.

Paul told Timothy, I want you to stay in Ephesus, to pastor this church, guard the sound doctrine.

It was there that we get this great exposition of faith that our salvation, unlike every other religion in the world, is by grace through faith, not by works, hallelujah.

That anyone should boast, but by the grace of God.

And that message began to spread.

Paul talked about apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists.

They were well equipped, they were well established, and they stood firm in their doctrine.

But what puzzles me so much about this church is that within a matter of 40 years, we see them mentioned in this book that was written by John called Revelation.

If you have your Bible, turn to Revelation chapter 2.

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

And I want to look at this for just a minute.

Because Revelation 2 begins to shed light on what a vibrant church, only 40 years old, that was impacting the community that was standing firm in doctrine, that maybe there was something else going on, that maybe even they were not conscious and aware of.

Revelation chapter 2.

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

And I love this.

Any Gen Z in the room today?

Anybody from the Gen Z generation?

Okay, alright.

Um, if you're Gen Z, I know that this letter was written in your favor because he starts off with affirmation.

All right.

I'm a Gen X, just give it to me.

Just tell me what the point is.

There's a lot of affirmation here, so Gen Z, pay attention.

He says to the church in Ephesus, write the words of him who hold the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven gold lampstands.

This is what he says to the church of Ephesus.

I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false.

I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary.

Again, 40 years going into this.

The whole area around them had heard the gospel, they were standing firm in the faith, they had pastors, teachers, elders.

And then come these words.

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

And remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first.

If not, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

How can such a vibrant church that was well managed, that was well governed, that was doing the right things and impacting getting the gospel out there?

And all of a sudden, in the midst of that, have Jesus say, but you lost your first love.

You know, I um was speaking at a church last week, and I had a student uh come with me.

She's the president of our Baptist Collegiate ministry in Clarkston, Georgia.

She was giving her testimony.

And after she spoke, we walked outside the sanctuary.

The sanctuary was built to hold 350, maybe 400 people.

And there might have been 10 people at church that day.

And she began walking down the hallway, and there were pictures all along the hallway of the church's history.

This church had been planted in the early 1900s.

It was a church plant of another church that was doing well.

And in those pictures, you walk through the timeline of history of this church, and there was fellowship, there was life, there were servants, there was such and such mission trip, and there was the dedication of a new building.

And she turned around and she asked me what is quite possibly one of the most heartbreaking questions that can be asked in a church's ministry or history.

She turned and she looked at me and she asked, What happened?

What happened?

You know, and like so many churches that we're seeing, up in my neighborhood, Clarkston Stone Mountain, going into Atlanta.

We see buildings, we see places that churches were impactful, that now only a handful of people are left to remain.

And not only that, I've passed by five churches in the last two years, like this one here, that has now been bought by Muslim groups and is now being worshipped in as a mosque.

And I dare say that nobody on the building committee that raised funds, that set out a plan for a building we need to build ever thought one day Muslims are gonna worship right here.

And what's interesting to me as we see this happen in our city and in our communities, we have to remember that, you know, when Jesus wrote this letter, well, when when Paul, when when John wrote the letter, when Jesus was speaking to the church in Ephesus, it's estimated that at that time the church in Ephesus may have been well over 500 people, and all throughout the province, a thousand people strong.

And Jesus wasn't saying these words to them because the money had run out or that no one was coming anymore.

But, you know, sometimes the issues that determine whether a church will live in the future, continue out God's mission, is not in its moments of a few members, but in its highest of heights.

And sometimes the decisions and what begins to happen when we are so engaged in doing the work of God that we forsake the presence of God.

And that's what happened in the Church of Ephesus.

And I'm not saying that that's what's happening here, but I'm saying as I'm as a missionary, as I'm going around and I'm watching what's happening, the nations are coming here.

There are nations that are in need of the gospel, and I'm aware that so much in the past of world missions has depended on the strength of the Western Church.

I can't help but ask myself, God, what's happening?

Even in my own life, I'm coming off of a season of fasting and praying, and anytime I do that, I become more self-aware with where I am with God.

And as I've been putting this message together, I can't help but reflect on it on my own life.

And here's what I want to say God's call today on my life, on your life, on the church's life.

It's never to do mission work.

The call that Jesus sends out all across the world today to believers is not to do more or give more.

But the call is to come to Christ.

It's to come to Him, to find Him, to abide in Him, to learn as He leads us to love Him and where He is, the work that we are to be a part of will be and it will never run out.

But it is a joy and it is a blessing to be a part of that work.

And in the light of the Ephesians, it was interesting because it seems like they reach a point where it's possible to work for the one that we no longer walk closely with.

And as I've been reflecting on this and what that means in my own life, and asking a lot of these questions, looking at the Ephesian church, I've realized that there are two types of doctrine that Ephesus was called to defend and live out.

One was called the stated doctrine, and that's what we say we believe.

What we say we believe is our stated doctrine.

However, what we live out is what we call our functional doctrine.

And that can be true or not true.

But in my own life, in the lives of churches, in the lives of other places I've been, I've seen sometimes that there's this tendency to walk in a false functional doctrine while proclaiming a correct stated doctrine.

And what I've come up with in the question of what's happened, because I don't I don't want to reach a point in my life where I'm missionally ineffective.

But as I've been asking these questions, Lord, help me understand what are the false functional doctrines that contribute to mission drift as we want to continue doing the work of God.

And so I'm gonna talk to you today, real quick, about four functional doctrines that we live out that are not necessarily true.

In other words, we would never say we believe these things, but in our function, it exhibits that maybe sometimes we do, that lead to the destruction of our missional lifestyles, which we don't want to be, and where we don't want to get to.

Number one, first false functional belief that sometimes we live out, that we would never say is that God's highest priority is my comfort, not my transformation.

Again, we would never say this is what we believe.

But when we look at our life, when we look at where we would rather be, sometimes we choose comfort over obedience.

And again, I'm trying to ask answer the question today of what is happening when we have massive churches that were doing very well, such as the church in Ephesus, but then all of a sudden, at some point, Jesus came along and Said you're doing all these things, but you've lost your first love.

And unless you repent, Jesus didn't say nobody's gonna come anymore, or other people are gonna move in the community.

No, notice what it said.

Jesus said, if you don't repent, I will come.

And I will remove your lampstand.

Because yes, I love you.

And yes, I want you to worship me.

But I'm in a mission of redeeming a lost world.

And sad to say, there have been so many churches that have become missionally ineffective where Jesus came down and said, if you're not gonna do it, I'm gonna raise up one that will.

But I don't want to get there.

I want to be a part of it.

What comfort says sometimes is, don't send me.

This is an indicator that I've become in a false functional belief system.

And it says, don't send me.

Real quick, I want to talk about this for a minute.

When you go back to the settlement time, when Joshua was on the conquest and taking over the promised land that God had given them, Numbers 33, God began to give warning before the people got there, and he said, the Lord spoke to Moses in the plains of Moab by Jordan, by the Jordan at Jericho.

He said, Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you pass over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their figure stones, and destroy all their metal images, and demolish all their high places, and you shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I've given the land to you to possess it.

He goes on, Deuteronomy chapter 7.

Deuteronomy 7 · chapter mention

And when the Lord your God gives them over to you, you shall make no covenant with them, show no mercy, you shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, and take their daughters for your sons, for they would turn your hearts away and your sons away from following to serve other gods.

And we transition into Joshua.

God led the Israelites into the promised land.

This was the land of milk and honey.

And you know, as a farmer, as a gardener, I love saying this: that it says that as soon as they crossed the Jordan, they no longer ate bread and manna, but they ate the fruit of the land.

Man, what a life.

But here's what Israel forgot: that possession does not mean completion.

Possession doesn't always mean completion.

And I teach a class at the Clarkston Bible Institute.

I teach church planting there, and a lot of our church planters come out.

They're from all over the world, and we talk to them, we teach them.

Well, I ask them a lot of times, what's your vision?

And I'll never forget one response, and it seems to be a lot of the responses that I get, but one guy said, My vision is to get a building.

That was his vision.

I said, and he said, Well, I want my church to have a building.

That's my vision.

And I said, Well, what are you going to do in the building?

And he said, Oh, he said, Well, once I get in the building, then I'm going to maybe train disciples, I'm going to do missions, I'm going to train pastors.

He said, brother, that's your vision.

But for some people, when we have something to show outwardly of who we are, we think we have arrived.

But if you notice in Judges chapter 1 and 2, the tribe of Manasseh did not drive them out.

Judges 1 · chapter mention

Ephraim did not drive them out.

Zebulun did not drive them out.

Asher did not drive them out.

Naphtali did not drive them out.

And then in the second chapter of Judges, we see this generation come up that neither knew the Lord.

And they began to worship other gods.

There is a revival going on in the generation coming up, but Brother says, let's just be honest.

The Bible's not taught in schools anymore.

It's not a part of this next generation, it's not a part of their worldview.

And how does that happen?

I wonder sometimes if it happens because in churches, in my own life, I choose to live with what doesn't threaten my comfort.

And what God wants us to understand is that possession doesn't mean completion, that transformation is the goal of Christ in our life, not just the giving of blessing.

Often we choose to live with what doesn't threaten my comfort, and then we see there rose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

And oftentimes, rather than using what God gives us for his glory, we would rather preserve an inheritance than advance a mission of what God has called us to do and to be.

And I'm all about what this new term and church planning and a lot of this work, it's called revitalization.

Anybody ever heard of revitalization?

Right?

There's a big movement called revitalization.

It's where a group of people and a strategy comes in and implements itself into an existing church and it helps maybe revitalize and this and that.

Well, I think that's well and that's good.

But above and beyond what I would like to think of, revitalization is something I would love to see, which is called revivalization.

Where we get back to what God has called us to be.

We come back to our first love and we allow Him to live and work through us.

So the first false functional belief sometimes we live in that makes us missionally ineffective is that we believe without saying it that God is more about our comfort, not our transformation.

Second of all, we would never say this, but sometimes we live this out.

God desires to protect what I have beyond the proclamation of who I know.

This chooses preservation over proclamation, and preservation always says, God, don't change us.

We don't want to change.

We like who we are.

I like who I are, I like my culture, I like my routine.

I don't want to change.

And all of a sudden, God begins to bring new people into our communities.

And we know that in order to do something, we're gonna have to change a little bit of who we are, or what we do.

And sometimes we have this preservation attitude that says, don't change us.

Now, I don't know how many of you are mountain people or beach people, right?

I am not a beach person.

Anyone a beach person?

Right?

You love the beach?

Now go me wrong, I love the beach, but here's what I don't like about the beach.

I can set my foot in the sand.

I just came back from the beach a couple of days ago.

I can put my foot in the sand.

And I was walking on the beach at night, come back, I wash my feet off.

It was just my feet, wash my feet off.

I come back.

By the time I got into bed, somehow the sand on my feet had made it up to my knee.

And then I felt it all night long.

And I was like, I wash my feet.

What in the world?

It's like a living parasite, you know?

I just love the mountains.

And we went to the beach earlier this year, and I love it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fascinated by the ocean, but I get a little bored sometimes.

And I have a nephew that loves to play with action figures.

Okay.

And so to find something to do, he and I, I mean, we guys, look at this.

We put together some epic battle scenes, and over the last quarter to two days, he and I made a whole story, right?

Out of these things, and I was like, this is fun.

And then in the midst of all that, I started thinking about this.

I started saying, you know what's funny about this whole action figure thing is that some people value them more when they've never been taken out of the package.

Have you noticed that?

Monetarily, the moment you open something, it loses value.

And I thought to myself, how many times in our life and in our ministry, in our church buildings, in what we have, are we more concerned about preserving it than actually using it for what God gave it to us for?

And I began to notice, man, anybody that doesn't take this out of the package and begin to use it, it's never going to experience the joy of why we have it.

And for some reason, it gains value.

And a lot of times it's cultural.

We don't want to change our culture.

And speaking of culture, I got to tell you, doing the work that we do, yeah, it puts me in awkward places sometimes.

I have some Pakistani friends.

We've started Pakistani churches.

And I went just a week ago to a Pakistani housewarming party.

These are refugees that have come here from Pakistan, believers.

They've done well, they bought their first house.

They said, Pastor Bill, we want you to come and give a blessing.

Now, if you know Pakistanis, they're not going to do anything without having a formal celebration.

I said, Okay, what time does the party start?

Well, they said 6 o'clock.

I knew not to come until 7.

I got there at 7.

This poor girl, she had been there with a friend of a one of the child, one of the children that was there.

She brought a friend of one of the children, she said, I got here at 5.45.

I said, stick around.

It gets better.

And now this isn't on a five-acre plot of land.

This is right next door to two other neighbors, less than a third of an acre away.

And outside is this massive uh speaker, a sound system.

I mean the music starts pumping, the music starts, the preaching starts, it's in a language no other neighbor understands.

And at that, somewhere in the midst of that, I noticed a text that I had to respond to.

So I walk out to the street to my to my truck, and as I'm walking out, one of the neighbors comes out of the house.

She was white like me, and she looked at me, and her face asked a thousand questions without saying anything.

It was almost like, you're my kind, and I need you to make sense of this.

What is happening?

What are they doing?

Why are you with them, right?

And sometimes to identify with people puts us in a position and puts us in places where other people around us that don't have that same goal go, what are you doing?

Why are you acting like that?

Why are you not preserving what you have?

What's interesting is, you know, Paul wrote 1 Corinthians while he was in Ephesus.

And as they were preaching the gospel, you know, the Ephesian believers weren't necessarily protecting their culture from those who needed the gospel.

On the contrary, the gospel was transforming the culture around them.

And if we could just believe that, Paul said these things.

He said, I become all things to all people that by all means I might have some.

I do it for the sake of the gospel.

And in that moment, after that lady turned and walked back into her house, I went on back and yeah, it made me look awkward.

It made me look like I had abandoned a culture that I was a part of.

But what I can tell you is later that night I'm sitting around a table of Muslims from Pakistan.

We're sharing the gospel, we're engaging with them about God's love.

And isn't that what it's all about?

Sometimes our desire is to protect what we have rather than give what we receive.

The danger lies sometimes when the assets of yesterday's victories become more sacred than the call of today's missions.

And we have to remember that the church is not called to preserve a culture.

Folks, we're called to proclaim a Christ.

That is our call.

Thirdly, I would say this false functional belief that often we live in is when the spiritual enemies, spiritually broken enemies become people to defeat rather than people to redeem.

What this says, I choose opposition over compassion.

Opposition says, I don't want to love them.

Don't make me love them.

You know, the family that would never walk through our church doors is not our spiritual enemy.

In fact, Paul said to the Ephesian church, don't forget your struggle is not against flesh and blood.

But it's against the rulers, the authorities in the dark world that hold it over people.

And the moment we begin to see people as enemies to defeat, rather than people to redeem, we've stepped out of line with a true functional doctrine that we are called to live out and that the church is called to live out in.

There was a play that was written in the 1800s called Richelieu.

I don't know if you've ever heard of this.

But Richelieu, based on a true story, was a cardinal back in the 1600s under Louis VIII.

And Richelieu discovered an assassination plot against him and King Louis of France and an overthrow of the government.

He discovered that.

The play tells the story of how Richelieu knew that being someone in the church, the church forbidding him to pick up physical weapons and fight.

But his young assistant said to him, Do you not know that there are other weapons?

To which Richelieu wrote this famous line that we probably all heard and wondered where it came from.

He said, In the hands of great men, the pen is mightier than the sword.

And what Paul would say to us, what the Bible says to us is that the weapons we fight with today spiritually are not physical weapons.

Now I'm not saying there's not a time.

We have to defend ourselves.

We have to fight political wars, we have to fight physical wars.

I'm not saying that there's not a time for that.

What I'm saying is we just have to fight spiritually first.

And the moment we put those who are spiritually broken as our enemies to be defeated and torn down and not see them as people to redeem, we've gotten out of step with what God has called us to be about.

When the church begins to fight the people Jesus died to save, we've forgotten who our real enemy is.

And I'll never forget, after speaking on Islam for two days, there was a lady that came forward to the altar and she looked up at me and she said, I don't know what to do.

I said, What do you mean?

She said, I can't love them.

I don't love them.

And I said, that's a great place to start.

Because when we come to Christ and we get on our knees and we recognize our where we fall short, but we say, I know it's your will, Lord, to love the people around me.

To not see them as my enemy, to defeat, but to surrender myself to your cause.

God begins to do a work in transforming our heart and to actually loving the people that are around us and wanting them to have the gospel.

Fourthly and lastly, when we get out of step, it's because oftentimes our faithfulness is measured by what I accomplish rather than how closely I choose to abide.

This was the Ephesian church.

I choose activity over intimacy.

Activity says, I can do the work of God without the power and the presence of God.

Some of you may remember Jim Cimbala from the Brooklyn Tabernacle.

He wrote a book several years ago called Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire.

And he said these words.

He said, if you want to know how popular the pastor is, come on a Sunday morning.

But if you want to know how popular Jesus is, come to the prayer meeting on Wednesday night.

And I know all of you are going to come this Wednesday night, right?

You know, the Church of Ephesus, they had an incredible resume.

But they lacked the love of the company, the love of the cause.

And while we're out busy defending our doctrine, persevering for what we believe, it's we're not careful sometimes.

We will defend the doctrine without delighting in a Christ.

And that's what I want to say today, first and foremost, that as a kaleidoscopic call, even as a missionary, this is not a message that's foreign to my own heart.

That we're not about asking people to come and just help us get the gospel somewhere.

No, we want to invite others and answer the call ourselves to come and surrender to the love and mercy and relationship of Jesus Christ.

So that through us, in step with him, he can produce fruit.

Fruit does not abide.

Jesus said, if you abide in me, I abide in you, and you will bear much fruit.

But apart from me, you can't do nothing.

Paul told Timothy, the aim of our charge, of all the doctrine I've called you to defend, of all the truth I've told you to hold so firmly to.

Don't forget, Timothy, our aim is love.

It's love.

I don't know where you are today.

Like I say, coming off a time of prayer and fasting, I've been confronted myself with a lot of this.

Lest I go to Nepal, lest I go to Liberia, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Sudan, wherever we go and whatever we do, and be passionate about what we do.

In doing it, lose our first love.

What Paul, what Jesus said to us today.

Three things.

Remember, repent and return.

He told this to the Ephesian church.

Remember, therefore, where you have fallen.

Repent.

And do the works you did at first.

If not, I will come and I will remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent, folks.

We don't want that.

We don't want that.

But we have to get our functional doctrine surrendered to our stated doctrine.

Remember who captured your heart?

It was Jesus.

It was because we all sit here because someone took the chance and took the time to share the gospel with us.

And that captured our heart.

Remember who captured your heart.

Repent of what replaced him in your heart.

Whether it's comfort, whether it's culture, whether it's blessing, whether it's material.

It's not to say we can't have those things.

We just have to remember why he gave us those things.

So that his mission can go forth and transform our life.

And then Jesus says, return to what love compelled your heart to do.

Do you remember when the church and when churches were vibrant in their communities, sharing the gospel, people coming to Christ, people being baptized every Sunday?

We want to see that again.

But what God calls us to do is not just do the work, but to return to the one that made it possible and to walk with Him.

Am I trying to preserve a church I inherited or a mission I inherited?

Or am I willing to become the missionary of the church Christ needs to reach the people he brings around us?

And how do we do that today?

Folks, it's not about going out and doing the work or giving more.

It's about coming here and surrendering and coming back to Christ.

Amen.

That is our hope.

It's an invitation not to just surrender to some grudging work, but to have the opportunity to be a part of seeing Christ do great things in our community.

And so that, as we sang this morning, the people can say again, Amen.

Right?

We want to see that.

I want us to pray this morning for the revival of the church, the revival of our own heart.

And I want to ask you today if you would leave here and examine where you are.

See if our functional doctrine matches our stated doctrine, that we may all share in the joy of what we're seeing Christ do in these days.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for your patient endurance with us.

Father, we stand today on a battlefield not only for our Christianity in these places, but for our own heart.

Oftentimes, Lord, there's a spiritual war that is happening all around us and in us that we're not even aware of.

But because of truth, because of doctrine, you give us something to examine our heart and our lifestyle by.

Sometimes, Lord, I've been more concerned with remaining without blemish of my culture or what I have rather than using it to share the gospel and show the love of Christ as you would.

Father, people around me, they become my enemies.

And I go to bed at night or I think about how I might bring them down or move away from them rather than seeing them as people you died to redeem.

And then, Lord, sometimes in my own heart, I get to a place.

Rather than how much time I spending and abiding with you.

And for that, Lord, we ask you this morning to pour out your spirit on us that we may return to you and bear much fruit and be effective.

And Father, we ask that you would continue to pour out your spirit here on the communities around us, the nations around us.

Lord, we accept your invitation to come and be a part.

And we ask for this blessing and the lead, the Lordship of your Holy Spirit.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

God bless you this morning.