Reaping The Harvest!

You're listening to the Cross Kingdom Sermon of the Week. We help you enjoy

this message from Justin Carpenter and with that, please welcome our wonderful Justin carpentern.

I grabbed the I grabbed my headset and I leaned over and go I

said, Josh, you're up. He goes what he's speaking next week.

He's like, I can wing it. Well, that's what we all do

when we get up here. Anyways, right, A big shout out to

the I know I played drums, but worship was good this morning. Huh.

It wasn't because of me. Typically it's always better when I'm not playing.

Ah um my, my uh. Cole and my wife. As soon

as I say amen, I got a blaze out of here and get them

to the airport. So they're going to be in Europe for Cole's graduation gift

and ul Lisa has been hard at work for a year doing extra things to

try to save up for the trip. And I have to I'll tell you

what, man. I woke up Friday morning with a stomach ache, like

anxiousness, and I'm like, what is my problem? And uh, And

I was in the office and we were fixing to have a couple of meetings,

and I realized my son grew up and I just was like, just

started crying. I was all messed up. And uh oh, for those

of you that don't know, obviously, Josh and Sarah already a part of

our seeing leadership team, but Sarah came on board a couple of weeks ago

to get me an alignment and she's doing admit and personal assistant stuff and she's

been doing an amazing job. Huge blessing. The Motlong duo is amazing and

uh, I don't know where we'd be without them. So and the Kendricks,

you know, and Dianna and street Backs. I don't want to leave

anybody out because I don't want you to feel rejected and have to do ministry.

So, um, I didn't think I was that funny. I mean,

keep it coming, but I think it's a baby over there. Look,

I got some Summer Moon coffee cups for a gift. The Chrismnitz family

is in the house and there. Paul used to be our youth pastor and

they have they're in Austin, but they're moving to North Carolina, and so

we got to have lunch with them yesterday and catch up and we're gonna we're

definitely gonna miss you all. You won't be able to get here as quick,

and but we bless you all on your journey for sure. So I

had a really strange dream this week. I wrestled yesterday with what I was

going to teach on, and earlier this week I had a dream. Ken

Fish was in my dream. It's a very short dream, and I was

with him and I was talking with him. I looked over and I noticed

his hand and it was swollen. And when I and like in you know

how dreams are, like zoomed in on his hand, so I knew I

needed to pay attention to his hand and his third finger. This is some

people call this the urban driving finger in big cities, but others call this

evangelism for for your fivefold gifting. And it was there was this mark like

it was a literal mark all the way down his finger and for and his

hand was swollen. Interestingly, um Ken in Hebrew means yes, so yes

fish evangelism. And with the marking on the hand like swollen, it's like

you're infected for evangelism in a good way. And I really I just really

felt like the Lord was saying that we need to focus on evangelism. Obviously,

it's not like you like last week we didn't care if anybody went to

Hell, and then all of a sudden, God cares this week. It's

not like that. But God cares about balance and alignment. And one of

the things that I personally struggled with early on with the church plant was my

I know, my leaning is more in the perfect ic lane, but when

you're building a church, if you just build the prophetic, where's you're out

of balance? Does that make sense? And then and then the people aren't

equipped the way they're supposed to be, and then the body looks weird.

And so I really early on it was like I always felt this tension to

want to prophesy more in services and do more of that, and not that

I won't when the Lord leans on me to do so, but staying balanced,

because anybody anybody noticed the church has a tendency to do extremes, if

anybody looked at church history, and like, we go from calvinism or hyper

calvinism, if you're familiar with that term, where it's like an extreme view

of the sovereignty of God almost to the point where there's like no free will,

and then all of a sudden, the church is like, oh,

we need to get back in balance. And what do we do. We

don't go in balance, We swing all the way to the polar opposite side,

and which is a fancy term called Arminianism. Anyways, this issue with

evangelism. I thought to myself this morning when I was getting ready, woke

up, mind thinking of all sorts of stuff, A little nervous about Cole

and Lisa going to you know, abroad in Europe, and I'm not there

to help protect them. So I'm like, Lord, sending the big angels,

please. But as I was processing all this, you know says,

don't boast of tomorrow. You don't know what a day we'll bring forth.

We really don't, And I mean I don't know about y'all. Over the

last three years there was a time frame where we're like, holy cow,

should I even get out of bed today? Because just things were so crazy

and just so many things were happening. But I want to pose a question

to you, as as we get into this issue of the Great Commission,

think about people in your life right now that don't know the Lord. Think

about that right now. Think about people that do not know Jesus that you

know personally, and if you knew they were going to die today, what

would you say to them in hopes to plant a seed or nudge them closer

to the Lord. And then here's the second question. If you've not already

done that, why See, we can get so busy doing life and doing

really good things. Like one of my greatest tensions personally is getting out of

balance with intimacy versus ministry. If you have ministry first and intimacy second with

the Lord, it's misery. But if you have intimacy and ministry comes from

that, it's victory. And I thought about this because for me, because

you know, I'm called to equip the Body of Christ, so much of

my life is spent ministering to people that already saved. But I don't get

to get out of jail. I mean get out of evangelism free card,

not jail. I believe it or not. I've never been arrested. I

know that might be hard to believe. I have been kicked out of Bible

College once. It was brilliant, but it was, but it wasn't for

sin politics. Good for me, Thank you very much. I feel much

better. But what does it look like for us to really be mindful of

eternity every day we wake up? What does it look like for us to

realize in the bustle of it all, in this crazy traffic of Kerville,

it has got. It has gotten worse over the last fifteen years. It

really has. Twenty years ago, I could come out of my driveway there

and not even look and just pull onto the road. And now I literally

wait for minutes. It's so irritating. Sometimes like a minute I have to

wait to get out of my driveway. Yeah, I know it should feel

bad for me, But in the midst of all that, it's like,

it's so easy, y'all for us to get distracted by things that aren't is

important in life. And I don't know about you all, but time is

accelerating. Things are happening on an exponential scale. Things are speeding up,

and suddenly's are happening, both good and bad. And it's like, I

don't know, Like I don't want to get to the end of my life.

And the Lord says, hey, I moved on your heart. Here

here and here and here and here and here and here to talk to this

person and this person and this person. But you were too busy advancing what

you thought was your version of the kingdom and so praying and asking the Lord

to give us a burden for souls. You know, I've said this from

the beginning. I know us the leadership, we don't want to grow because

of disgruntled sheep. Are you with me? A lot of times? You

know, there's one hundred churches in Kerville. When the Lord said plan a

church, I'm like why, And I'm like, well, there's one hundred

churches here. Lord. That didn't get me out of it, by the

way, obviously, And but it's like so many times when something new comes

around, it's the new thing, so everybody goes and checks it out,

and and it's like, I want every single person where they're supposed to be.

If one of you all came to me today this afternoon and was like,

hey, we really feel called to so and so across the town,

I would bless you. I would not. They're the part of the body

of Christ. We're all in this together. But I want us to grow

because of the advancement of the Kingdom, not because of not because people get

ticked off. There's a massive distrust, institutional distrust in our country, and

it's absolutely gone into the church, the institution of the church, if you

will, and we're dealing with those repercussions because of unfaithful and unrighteous leaders in

every sphere of influence. So what does it look like for us to recalibrate

and really think an eternal perspectives, to wake up and go, Lord,

who is it that's not heard the good news? Because I have news for

you, believe it or not. In America today, there are people in

the United States that have not heard the gospel we have. You know,

we took it for granted for so many decades because we were absolutely a Christian

nation at one point. But go look at the statistics. I want to

encourage you, go check out Barna in fact, golik at the statistics for

people that actually don't share their faith. Our scripture says our lives of vapor

It appears for a little while and advantishes, and so it's it's like a

blink of an eye. I as Cole was graduating, for some reason,

I had this I started thinking about my own graduation in nineteen ninety five and

some of you might think that's old. Some of you might think I'm a

baby and baby thank you Wayne. But y'all, in the mid nineties you

had Stephen Curtis Chapman, you had Jeff Bore in the distance, you had

DC Talk, you had all these Yeah newsboys, Yeah yeah. And so

I'm sitting here going down memory lane the other night, trying myself to sleep

with my ear pud ear PUDs air pods, and I'm every time it's like

just that little funnel there. And but I was listening at all these songs

I listened to during graduation. I'm still like, Lord, why am I

getting upset? I mean emotional, not upset. Dang it, I'm not

eighteen. I do look in the mirror and wonder who it is, but

looking back at me. But as I was processing this, I was like,

Man, I'm forty six. In some ways, it feels like yesterday

I graduated high school. He is really, you really realize how fast your

life goes. I remember daydreaming about being well as a kid. I was

like, you know, in twenty in twenty twenty, I'll be this old.

And in twenty thinking in the twenties and twenty thirty and here we are

in twenty twenty three, and I'm like that old and and thank you,

thank you very much. But all of us can easily get so busy in

life, and we can get so busy doing really good things, but yet

neglect the greater thing. And as as we pursue the Lord and pursue intimacy,

and we want to we want to see an outpouring over this region where

just where the Lord just shows off. And as we as we are leaning

into all those things, we got to remember that. And the all the

way back and acts, he told the disciples go. He didn't say stay,

he didn't say sit down, He said go, And many of them

didn't go until the persecution and hit and they were forced out. And acts

through the dispersion or disbursement. But I want to challenge you this morning on

evangelism and what you believe evangelism is in Joel and in acts, which any

charismatic church has hurt acts to probably forty five thousand times last year alone,

because we love, we love to camp out and the last days he's going

to pour out his spirit. But the truth is we are in those days,

y'all. We're not Joel two Acts to Peter stands up says, this

is that which Joel prophesied. We are living in the fulfillment of those days.

They're not complete. If you read that, it actually says until the

great and awesome day of the Lord. So we're living in the days that

the prophets of old dreamed of, where God decided to put his spirit inside

of you. And there's a brand new race on the earth that they dreamed

of and looked forward to and got little glimpses of the prophets of old.

And you have that, you have the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. The

disciples went from fearful and doubting and literally betraying Jesus. Something shifted in them

when the baptism of the Holy Spirit came. Something changed. And that same

Holy Spirit is in each of you. It's not like you had the Holy

Spirit of Acts and then we have his twin brother that's just not quite as

powerful, and he was hidden in the back for us. It's the Holy

Spirit, y'all. He's not a junior. It is the Holy Spirit.

It's the same spirit, the very power that rose Jesus from the dead.

And there's this tension inside of us where we have to be. It says,

godliness with contentment is great gain. So we need to be content with

what we have, with where the Lord has us. But in the same

breath we have to we have to have this hunger for more of the Lord.

I remember when I when I got the baptism, in my quiet time,

I went from praying, Okay, Lord, if there's more of you.

I know there's no but I want it if there is, Lord,

And that was literally the extent of my amazing, spirit filled prayer. But

that prayer became a desperation very quickly. I was. It literally turned and

there's got to be more. There has to be more. And when when

we think about you know, acts and miracles and signs and wonders, and

we think of all these things, all of these things happened as they went,

as they were on their journey, as they were fulfilling their calling.

They went, and they went wherever the Lord led them. And I just

wonder when many times, if we are so scheduled in life, we're so

dialed into our schedule, if we don't miss divine calls. Yeah, yesterday,

for instance, I went into Walmart to get something, Oh, screen

covers for our phones because we needed to replace them. And I get all

the way in there and I get all the way to the self checkout and

Walmart you can't use your phone or your watch or and I forgot my wallet

and my jeep. I was like, oh my word. And I even

parked further out so I had to walk longer to get more calories burned.

And so I was all irritated and went all the way back out there.

I was like, I can't believe I forgot my wallet. And as I'm

coming back, I saw a couple. They go to our church, and

she had just had surgery, and I was able to stop and pray over

her, and I was like, oh, okay, those are the little

things that I'm talking about. It's like so many times, you know,

we're so spoiled in our country. We don't recognize that sometimes just maybe these

inconveniences or actually opportunities to minister to someone. So the next time you get

irritated because you know you're stuck in traffic and Curville for two and a half

minutes, are you're in front of the microwave, irritated because you're tired and

you're warming your coffee up or something you know, think about Okay, Lord,

capture the downtime. Lord, what do you want to say to me

right now? What do you want to do? What? What am I?

What have you been trying to say to me? But I haven't been

seeing it? And the beauty of ministering to people is we don't intellectually argue

people into the kingdom of heaven. You can debate all you want, you

can argue with people all you want, but that's not what saves them.

Right. And when we look at Jesus evangelism, it looks very different than

a lot of our styles today. It looks very different. You know.

One of the things about Acts was that God's pouring out a spirit and there's

prophecy, dreams and visions and some of the stuff that I'm going to talk

about, y'all are not It's not like new to you. But when was

the last time you asked someone that didn't know the Lord, Hey, do

you have any reoccurring dreams? Because Acts says that He's pouring out his spirit

on all flesh. Why, Because we're living in the days where whoever calls

on the name of the Lord will be saved. And it says that it

it's his heart that none perish but all come to repentance. Do you know

how many Muslims are coming to Jesus right now through dreams and visions and literal

visitations of the Lord? Like he's like, all right, if y'all aren't

going to do it, I'll do it. He I mean, we get

to go with them. But he's the one saving them. And there's this

theme over and over and over that you hear of testimonies when you dig into

that, and it's this theme right here. Have you seen his eyes?

But have you seen his eyes? Well? I want to ask you,

have you seen his eyes in your prayer time? Have you seen his eyes?

And somebody else that's walking by you, did you take the time when

you felt nudge to stop? Whatever it was? One plants another waters,

but God gives the increase. I can't tell you over the years how many

times I've seen people when I asked them, hey, do you do you

do you have a reoccurring dream that like it just keeps over and over and

over. And I remember one time specifically at Chili's when they had great service

fifteen years ago. Oh hopefully nobody works there. I love y'all the managers

in the back. Oh. I was visiting today years ago, you know.

And but I, the Lord said, asked her about her dreams.

And I literally I asked her. And she was a huge dreamer, and

she had a reoccurring dream. And when she shared a reoccurring dream, it

was a calling dream. God was literally revealing what he had created her for.

And I was able to interpret that dream and share the Gospel with her.

You know, so many times we think that we have to we have

to. I used to think in my older days, you know, from

my previous denomination, I felt so much pressure. It was like I felt

like I had to ramrod the Gospel down every single person's throat that I met,

and if I didn't lead them to Jesus right then and there, that

I miserably failed. But that's not the case. You may wake up tomorrow

and go to h G B in the Lord says, hey, tell them

this, and you give them a word of encouragement, and then that nudges

them a little bit closer to him. When's the last time you wept over

the loss? And it's like, when was the last time I was weeping

over the lost in my prayer time, because y'all, if we don't take

this and take it out there, we're fooling ourselves. The gospel is on

one hand, it's everything about you. On the other hand, it's nothing

about you. Jesus didn't say, say a prayer and ask me into your

heart and go live like hell. He said, if you if you want

to follow me, then first things or first embrace the cross, deny yourself

daily, and follow me. And if you'll lose your life for my sake,

then you'll actually find out why you're on this earth. And so to

the degree that we embrace that cross, we embrace those splinters and we and

we choose to deny ourselves and follow after him. It's that Satan measurement that

we actually find abundant life. So we've got to get into a place where

it's not Jesus sprinkles right where we do whatever we want and we're like,

oh Lord, bless this please, But it's like, what does it look

like. I was talking to somebody a couple days ago, and I was

like, you know what, we always we know this, We know that

everything is sacred, but yet we still struggle with separating sacred and secular.

We we still struggle with, well, if we're home with our family and

we're spending family time, you know, is that as spiritual and obviously absolutely

it is. Or we're at work, whatever you do for a living,

I don't care if you're painting dry wall, insulation, Bless your soul if

you get stuck to an insulation anything. But it says do everything under the

Lord. The Hebrew mindset, everything they did was unto him, It wasn't

separated, wasn't secular, what versus sacred. And so what happened is because

we created these categories for so many decades in the church, everybody thought to

really be spiritual, they need to leave what they're doing and somehow find a

position in church. And like, I can't find that. In the scripture,

Jesus said, follow me. What did the disciples do after they after

Jesus, you know, he died and they're like waiting to figure out if

he's really going to come back. I mean it literally says they went back

to fishing. He raised from the dead and they're fishing, so they went

back to what they were doing. And what happens. He's on the beach

and he cooks fish for him. What if every single person that you interact

with in your workforce or your workplace, what if you're the only one that

will ever tell them about Jesus. What if the real reason that the Lord

gave you that job number one was because there were twenty five people he wanted

to save, and he wanted to use you to save them. Maybe maybe

it wasn't about the raise, Maybe it wasn't about the title. Maybe it

was about souls. Because one day, probably way quicker than we realize,

Jesus is going to come back and stand on the Mount of Olives and then

all those opportunities for so many people. How would like? What if we

get to the day of the White Throne Judgment and we're at we get the

rewards the White Throne Judgment? You don't want to be there, But all

of a sudden, you've got a line of people looking at you and say,

why did you never tell me? I'm so sorry. I was fearful

you might reject me. I was fearful of what you might say behind my

back because I told you about Jesus. I was I was fearful to tell

you that the path that you're on leads to destruction because I feared what you

thought of me. Like this puts things in perspective. This is like reality

because the number one thing, the number one stumbling block for us sharing our

faith is fear. It's the fear of man. Proverb says, fear of

man's a snare. We need a B twelve shot of boldness in the body

of Christ and be willing to speak the truth and love. The whole reason

why we gather like, let me rephrase that, like, the whole reason

why all the different courses and all these things are offered is to help equip

the body for the work of ministry, so that you have all these tools

in your belt. And when and when somebody's lost in front of you,

guess what you're comfortable. You have history with hearing the voice of the Lord,

and all of a sudden you recognize that thought you just had about their

life actually wasn't just some random thought that came from your soul, but it

was actually the spirit of the Living God saying this is who they are.

Because it says that prophecy, it reveals the secrets of their heart. I

think we need to raise the bar of the of the definition of the gifts

and what they're called, what they're defined as. Rather than lower them to

make ourselves feel better, I think we need to raise the bar of what

really makes the the doma gifts and Ephesian four, the fifold gifting, what

really is that? And then understand that you can't get there apart from the

Lord. Now, you're not going to argue your friends into the kingdom.

I tried it. It's not fun. You just tick them off and get

into a big argument, and you walk away with spiritual pride there you're idiots.

You just walk away when you were probably the idiot for the way you

delivered it. I'm not saying anybody in here. I'm talking to them down

there, but seriously, if you don't feel comfortable in here ministering to each

other, getting a word of encouragement, getting a prophetic word for somebody in

here, I promise you you're gonna buckle out there. I'll just talked for

twenty minutes and there's something there on the outline. Can I challenge you' all?

It doesn't matter, I'm going to anyways. Okay, thank you.

If you're not doing this, I want to challenge you. Start asking the

Lord to bring the lost in your path. Thank you for listening. For

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