“Made for Mission” by Joakim Lundqvist

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Hey, Gateway Family! Can we make some noise for Jesus in this room?

Praise God.

It's so good to be back in the house.

Let me tell you, Gateway Family, every time my beautiful wife Maria and I are heading for Gateway Church, we're so excited in our hearts and our spirits.

And uh hope you're all ready for some word of God and some Swedish accent.

I was thinking about that the other day.

You guys have actually put up with my broken English and my Swedish accent for well over a year now.

You should pat yourselves on the back.

That's quite that's quite something, friends.

And I wish that at some point in your life you could experience somehow the joyslash trauma of speaking publicly in another language than your native one.

Because it it's complicated somehow.

Um, let me just uh invite you into my world.

Okay, this is like Joachim's uh struggles with the English language, episode 187, silent letters.

Uh about a year ago, I was sharing a message right here, and I was uh using Jesus' parable about the ungrateful servant who had his debt canceled and then refused to cancel the debt that somebody owed him.

And throughout that entire section, I pronounced debt as debt.

And then somebody later on very gently and and gracefully and kindly told me that it's actually pronounced debt.

And and uh I was I was happy to learn something new, but at the same time slightly confused because there is a bee in there.

There is a I can see as a bee.

And yet somehow you're not supposed to pronounce why is it there?

And I go like uh somebody go, well, it's subtle, it's just subtle.

Well, can I just point out that the word subtle also has a bee in it?

And you go like, well, obviously.

Oh, you mean obviously?

Is that what you mean?

Obviously, uh, you know, I don't know who came up with the idea of silent letters in the English language, who made that decision.

I just personally think that decision is slightly dumb.

That's a slight, slightly dumb b decision right there.

Let me tell you, I'm super excited about the series we're in right now called Made for More, where we together explore the true reason and purpose why we are here on this earth.

And last weekend you heard Pastor Daniel give a great message on that we're on the fact that we're made for uh community.

And today we're gonna talk about the fact that we are made for mission, that God counts on each and every one in this room as playing their own part in fulfilling the great commission of bringing Jesus to this world.

So let's pray before we get into the Word of God.

Holy Spirit, we thank you so much for your presence.

And now we pray that you will touch our eyes so they will open up.

We pray that you will open our ears so we can hear from your voice, and we pray you will open our hearts so we can understand and fathom everything you want to teach us on today in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, we're gonna start in uh Acts chapter 1 and verse 8.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

What a great place to start.

Acts 1 and verse 8.

These are the very last words of Jesus Christ before he ascends into heaven, and the words he chose as his very last ones were Acts 1 and 8.

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

Now, this is our basic calling to be witnesses, and a lot of times we kind of interpret these places that he mentions, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the end of the earth, as areas that we can relate to.

Our Jerusalem, for example, would be our immediate world.

That would be included your friends, your family, your neighbors, colleagues at work, or fellow students at your school.

And then we have our Judea and Samaria, which would be our greater community, our city, even our nation.

And then you have the global perspective, the end of the earth.

What I want to point out, first of all, is that Jesus did not say, first in Jerusalem, then after that in Judea, then later in Samaria, and eventually to the end of the earth.

He said, Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the end of the earth, all at the same time.

Friends, you can never, you we're not allowed to be so local in our approach that we forget the global perspective.

And we're not allowed to be so global in our approach that we forget the local perspective.

We're supposed to be involved in spreading the word of God, the gospel of Jesus to everyone all the time.

And honestly, we're the first generation that can speak to the whole world without even leaving our houses.

How amazing is that?

You have so many ways of fulfilling the Great Commission.

You can share Jesus personally, you can bring a friend to church and have them hear about Jesus here.

You can donate to the spreading of the gospel, and you can go straight out into the lobby after this service and you can Snapchat Jesus loves you, you can tweet Jesus loves you, you can make an Instagram story saying Jesus loves you, or if you're over 40, you can put Jesus loves you on your Facebook.

Let's not waste the incredible opportunities we have to preach the gospel of Jesus in our Jerusalem, in our Judea, in our Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth.

So, how can we step even stronger into this calling for mission?

How can we be even better at communicating the gospel?

I'm glad you asked.

I was just getting to that.

Part of it is understanding three things that, when combined, will just release this unstoppable force inside of you.

And those three things are the power of seeds, the power of sacrifice, and the power of sanctification.

Seeds, sacrifice, and sanctification.

Let's start with talking a little bit about the power of seeds.

Uh, in your Bibles, please turn with me to Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12.

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12.

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

Now we know that Jesus speaks um referring to the word of God as seeds multiple times in the gospels.

So we understand that when it speaks about seeds or planting seeds, it's actually speaking about sharing the gospel, planting the gospel inside a human heart.

Hebrews 4 and 12 tells us something about the potential of that word of God.

And it says, For the word of God is living, and we say living and powerful, let's say powerful, powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even through the divisions of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Now, the word translated powerful is the Greek word energes.

Energes.

And we can all tell that obviously that's where we have our English word energy or energetic is from that word.

And energes really means active and effective.

So the word of God is alive, it's active and it's effective.

It's not like any other word.

This word is alive, and every word that comes out of the mouth of the Lord will create.

Why?

Because it's alive, it's active, and it's effective, and it's full of energy.

Now, with that in mind, let's read Mark 16, verse 15.

Mark 16:15

Mark 16, verse 15.

Mark 16:15

If you don't like the Bible, you're not gonna like this message.

Mark 16, verse 15.

Mark 16:15

This is the great commission according to the gospel of Mark.

And he, that's Jesus, said to them, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

Preach the gospel to every creature.

Now, exactly here is where many Christians go wrong, because they assume that their mission, their part in the Great Commission, is all about converting as many people as possible to faith in Christ.

Now, obviously, we should pray for and hope to convert as many people to faith in Christ as possible, but that's not really what Jesus asked us to do, according to Mark 16.

He didn't say convert people, he said preach the gospel, make Jesus available, plant the seed of the Word of God, and trust that that seed is alive and powerful and effective and active to work inside a human's heart.

So, what's the difference?

God will not hold you responsible for how someone else responds to the gospel, but our responsibility is just to make the gospel available.

Praise God.

It's just to make Jesus available to preach the gospel and plant the gospel in the heart of people.

Now let's add another aspect to this.

1 Peter 2.12.

1 Peter 2.12.

This is one of the key messages now, key scriptures uh from this message.

1 Peter 2.12.

It says, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.

In the day of visitation.

First Peter here implies that every man or woman, every human being will have a day of visitation.

There will be a day at least once, many times, multiple times, where God's presence will come closer to that person than ever before.

And the knocking of Jesus on the door of their heart will be heard louder than ever before, and they will have the golden opportunity of their lives to open up their hearts and accept Jesus Christ.

Now we don't know when that day of visitation comes.

If you are speaking about Jesus, sharing Jesus with someone, that may well be her or his day of visitation.

And if so, hopefully they will say yes, and you get to lead that person to faith in Christ.

And that's beautiful.

But even if that turned out not to be their day of visitation, and they don't respond immediately, you have not failed.

You did exactly what you should do.

You made Jesus available, and what you just did was that you invested in their upcoming day of visitation.

Sorry.

Um what you really did was you installed a spiritual time bomb.

Time bomb.

Sorry.

A spiritual time bomb into their hearts.

And from that moment on, from the from the moment where you share Jesus, they will just be going around with a tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, and you can go.

Now it's out of your hands, but that living, powerful, effective, active word has been planted in their hearts, awaiting their day of visitation.

That's exactly what God requires from all of us to do.

Just go out there and preach the gospel.

Just go out there and share the love of God.

Just go out there and make Jesus available.

Plant as many of those seeds as possible.

Because one day the rain clouds are gonna come in and the rain of heaven will fall upon that heart.

And if there are seeds planted, the seeds are gonna explode with life and salvation.

Glorifying the name of Jesus Christ.

Come on, let's make some noise in the house of God.

So even, even friends, if you don't get the immediate response you hope for, always know in your heart the seed is planted, and in its due time, it will produce fruit.

Sometimes years later.

I remember many years ago, my beautiful wife Maria was was asked to come to uh uh like an anniversary gathering of her high school, high school class.

Like it was 15 years after their graduation from high school.

So they would reunite all the friends from that class.

And she was really excited to go.

And then she came back afterward and woke me up at like 2:30 a.m.

or something, super excited, and she told what had happened.

It turned out that when she arrived at the restaurant or the place where that anniversary was happening, one of the girls, well that woman women um came up to her and said, Oh Maria, uh, could I sit with you tonight as we're having dinner?

And Maria said, Yeah, sure, but she was a bit surprised because this wasn't used didn't used to be one of her closest friends.

I mean, he was a classmate, but they didn't really hang out that much.

But all of a sudden, this girl now comes up to her and is really eager to talk to her.

But still, Maria knew this girl well because after the high school graduation, she went on to be one of the most successful recording artists of Sweden.

She had like a number one hit song that every single one in my generation, we still know the lyrics of that song, regardless of whether we want to or not, because it was just played everywhere.

So Maria knew her well, and sometimes when we heard that song being played, Maria always said, Oh yeah, that's her.

I went to school with her.

And now she's actually actively wanting to sit next to Maria.

And then she said, Maria, do you remember when you shared Jesus with me when we were in high school?

And Maria actually did not remember exactly when that happened.

But that's be only because she shared Jesus with everything that moved, basically.

So but this this girl retold the story saying, No, no, it was a conversation outside a classroom.

It was just a few sentences, but you said Jesus loves me, and I could always call out the name of Jesus, and God will always accept me if I did.

And and then her life moved on.

She graduated, she had this amazing career, she got fame, she got money, she became a celebrity and everything.

And then 11 years passed.

And 11 years after the high school graduation, this woman sits all alone in her apartment, and she realizes that even though she has the fame, she has the money, she has the success, she's empty on the inside.

And she said, Maria, at that point, 11 years later, your words came back to me.

And I haven't thought about them for 11 years, but all of a sudden, it was like we had the conversation that same day.

And motivated by these words alone, by these seeds that have been laying dormant 11 years, waiting for what?

The day of visitation, she opened up her heart and she gave her life to Jesus Christ.

Never underestimate the power of seeds, never underestimate the power and the effectiveness and the active energy that is inside the seeds of the words of God.

Let's talk a little bit too about the power of sacrifice.

The power of sacrifice.

Jesus said, if anyone wants to follow me, let him take up his cross daily and follow me.

Sacrifice is not a one-time thing, it's a daily thing.

And our spiritual ancestors knew about this.

Eleven out of the 12 disciples of Jesus actually sacrificed their own lives in the pursuit of fulfilling the Great Commission.

And since those days, throughout the centuries, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Christians have sacrificed even their own lives for the glory of Jesus Christ and for the spreading of the gospel.

Now, most of us might not ever sacrifice our physical lives, but we're still called to live a life of sacrifice.

And what you need to sacrifice in order for you to step into your calling of being made for mission might be your reputation, might be the risk of people thinking you're crazy, or people thinking you're radical because you are, or that being canceled by some people.

Your sacrifice might be taking resources, money that you could have spent on yourself, and instead giving them to the spreading of the gospel.

Let me tell you what something something happens inside you when you sacrifice for the Lord, God will respond with his fire.

Because when you put something on the altar, heavenly fire is gonna come, and you will have that burning, unquenchable fire burning for on the inside of you.

Sometimes when Christians lack the fire of God, it might be because nothing is placed on the altar.

There is no sacrifice, and therefore there is no fire.

Sacrifice is about being willing to pay a price, and what we get back is the incredible joy and satisfaction of not living shallow, self-centered lives, but lives that actually make a difference into eternity.

I want to read a story with you from 2 Samuel 24.

2 Samuel 24.

Now, the context here is that there was a plague on Israel, and King David uh he wants to pray and sacrifice to God to bring healing and deliverance from this plague.

And right as he's about to sacrifice, this guy called Aranuah comes up to him and says, You know what, King, I would gladly provide you with the oxen to sacrifice.

You can have mine, so you don't have to pay for it.

And here's David's response: 2 Samuel 24, verse 24.

2 Samuel 24:24

Then the king said to Aranuwa, No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price.

Nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which costs me nothing.

So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifteen shekels of silver, and David built there an altar to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.

So the Lord heeded the prayers for the land, and the plague was withdrawn from Israel.

The Lord David refused to sacrifice something that didn't cost him anything.

He knew the principle of sacrifice.

When I give something up for the Lord, when I allow my faith to have a price that I will pay gladly, then God will respond with his glory, with his healing, and there will be life and light instead of death and darkness.

Something happens in the spirit realm where when Christians are willing to pay a price, when Christians are willing to live lives of sacrifice.

Because young people live under the constant pressure to fit in all the time.

And when I see young people being ready to pay the price of being different, then I know there's hope for the future.

So can I just can I tell you a story?

Please say yes.

Tom was 14, he gave his heart to Jesus at one of our conferences.

And in the same conference, Tom also learned that he was now supposed to share Jesus with his world and plant the seeds of the gospels in as many hearts as possible.

So Tom goes back to his school.

He's now the only.

Christian in his school.

Okay?

So he's in a vast minority position.

Now his first step toward completing the Great Commission in his school is to lead one of his friends to the Lord, which he does after a few weeks.

His friend was called Tim.

So now we have Tim and Tom.

Tim and Tom rescue Rangers.

And Tim and Tom comes up, they come up with this incredible idea on how to preach the gospel to hundreds of students every single day.

So here's their strategy they come up with.

This is the thing that an idea that can only come up in the mind of a teenager.

So every lunch break, they would sit together, smack in the middle of the school cafeteria, and Tim would pretend that he was not a Christian, and the two of them would have loud discussions about Jesus and the Bible and salvation and faith and miracles.

So typically, Tim would start by saying, So, Tom, I hear you're a Christian now.

What's up with that?

Then Tom will say, Well, you know, Tim.

Bible says that God loved the world so much, he gave his only begotten son.

Throughout the entire lunch break, they would sit there and talk and talk and talk.

And in Sweden, Sweden is so not like Texas.

Y'all talk all the time.

And we love that.

You're like world champions of social interaction over here.

In Sweden, everyone is quiet.

And as soon as somebody goes a little bit loud, everyone else quiets now.

So Tim and Tom's strategy worked perfectly.

They were having like this solo performance every single lunch break, and they had hundreds of students as passive listeners of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, when Tom told me this, they've been doing it for weeks.

And it says every single day we preach the gospel and we plant the seed of the gospel in hundreds and hundreds of young hearts.

All God needed was a 14-year-old guy who was willing to pay a price, willing to sacrifice so that the gospel could be communicated to hundreds of people on a daily basis.

Praise God.

Let me just also finally add something about the power of sanctification.

The power of sanctification.

Once we now have talked about the power of seeds and the power of sacrifice, sanctification, as in the process of God's holiness in our lives.

Would you turn with me to Acts chapter 4 and verse 20, please?

Acts 4 · chapter mention

Acts 4, verse 20.

Acts 4:20

The context here is that Peter and John have just ministered healing to a paralyzed man by the beautiful gate in Jerusalem.

This man has been radically healed.

It caused a whole lot of commotion.

Peter and John were arrested and they were brought before the high court and they were rebuked and they were told no longer to speak in the name of Jesus.

And in Acts 4, verse 20, we see their response to this.

Acts 4:20

They say, For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.

We have no option.

Please note those two words right at the end.

Seen and heard.

We have heard something, we have seen something, and we have to testify.

This is what the world needs from you and I as well.

Not just the gospel of words, but the gospel of life.

And the two of them has to be harmonious.

This world will always reject Christians who will confess with their mouth and deny with their lifestyle.

It was all about the facade.

They had the lingo, but not the lifestyle.

And they were rejected by the common men and women of their time.

But Jesus was attractive because you could see the gospel and you can hear the gospel.

And the two versions were exactly the same message.

Praise God.

And this is where we, you and I come in, and this is where we need the Holy Spirit, and this is where we need church, friends.

We constantly need to come into the presence of God and allow his spirit to move.

We constantly have to ask, Lord, if there is a wicked way in me, reveal it and heal it.

Not just for my sake, but so I can go out from this church into my world for the rest of the week and shine a pure light in my lifestyle and through my words.

Many many years ago, when our daughters were just small kids, Maria and I went on a holiday to Cyprus, that's an island in the Mediterranean Sea, and we went to a water park.

Remember that, honey?

It was the wildest, craziest water park we've ever visited.

It's a water park that should be illegal, really, because the slides were so fast.

Just to give you an idea, I I was on one slide, one water slide, and as it spaped me out into the pool below, I actually broke my ring finger on the water surface.

That's how fast I was going.

So now my ring finger starts to swell up, and I had to get a guy to cut my wedding band so that it will not create permanent damage on my swelling finger.

So for the first time now, I'm looking at my cut wedding band, and I can actually see the inside of the material.

And I could see what I've known all along that it's not just gold on the surface, it's gold all the way through.

Praise God.

And you know what?

That's the definition of solid gold, pure gold, genuine gold.

It's the same all the way through on the visible surface and on the invisible inside.

A solid Christian, a pure Christian, a genuine Christian, the same material all the way through.

And that has to be our heart's cry.

God make us the same all the way through, the same material in our words, same material in our lifestyle, same material in the public place, same material in the secret place.

Lord, make us more like you, and everybody said, Amen.

Can I just address those of you in this room speaking of the same material all the way through?

Because I know you're here, and if you're honest to your own heart, you say up, I don't have peace with God, I don't have the right relationship with God.

I'm not 100% sure that if I would die tonight, that I would be welcomed into heaven and fall into the loving arms of my father.

If that's you, it will be my honor to give to you today what somebody gave me many years ago that changed my life dramatically, the opportunity to say a prayer to God for salvation, for forgiveness, and for healing.

So can I have every eye closed and every head bowed just for a few seconds, respecting the integrity of one another in this room?

If you know in your heart, if you're honest that you're not right with God, maybe this is your day of visitation.

Maybe this is the day where Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart.

I pray from the bottom of my heart, if so, don't miss this opportunity because you do not know if it will come back.

Maybe you had a relationship with Jesus prior, but you lost it and you need to come back.

I welcome you to join in this prayer too.

The one thing I would like you to do right now, before I pray with you where you are, is simply to lift up your hand as a quiet sign saying, Yes, I need this.

I want you to include me in this prayer.

Oh, there's so many hands going up all over this church right now.

If your hand needs to be among those raised, don't hesitate.

Please don't hesitate.

If this is your day of visitation, if God comes close to you right now, you need to open up your heart and allow him to do whatever he needs to do in your life.

Thank you, Lord Jesus.

From the front to the back, there's so many hands lifted right now.

Okay, you can take your hand down.

God saw that hand and you know that you raised it.

I'm gonna pray a short prayer now, and you can just repeat this prayer after me.

But dare to believe that as you pray, God will hear you, and God's life will enter your spirit and erase your sins and make you a child of God.

Let's pray.

Every one of us together, let's pray.

Dear Jesus, thank you for loving me.

I open up my heart and I receive that love.

I want to make Jesus my Lord and leave my old life behind.

Thank you for your grace and your mercy.

Thank you for forgiving me all my sins and creating a brand new future.

From this day on, I will follow Jesus, I will love Jesus and I will serve Jesus for all the rest of my life.

This is my commitment and my prayer in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's welcome all of our new brothers and sisters.

Thank you, Lord.

Thank you, Lord.

Just while we're in the presence of God these very last few minutes of the service, I just want you to do one more thing.

Add an action point to this message.

Would you once again just close your eyes?

There's nothing magical about closing your eyes, but it helps you to focus not on me, but on yourself, on your heart, on your thoughts.

And as you sit with your eyes closed in the presence of God, I simply want you to think of one person, one person, one person that is somewhere in your world, somewhere in your life, family member, friend, neighbor, colleague, fellow student, maybe someone who's walking through a really tough time right now and really needs Jesus.

And as soon as you are thinking about this specific individual, I'm gonna dare to believe that you didn't come up with that person by chance.

We're in the presence of Almighty God, He's leading your thoughts, He's directing your thoughts right now.

So when you're thinking about someone, would you just lift up your hand as a sign of saying, Yes, I have someone in my mind right now.

I just want to allow a few seconds to make everyone come to the point where you're thinking actively about one certain individual.

I'm believing that God is placing right now the names and the faces of hundreds and hundreds of people in the hearts of believers in this room.

And what I want us to do is simply to pray a prayer for that person and also include a personal commitment that this week I will strive to place a seed of the word of God, a seed of God's love, right at the heart of this person.

So, Father, thank you for your presence in this room.

Thank you for directing our thoughts to that specific individual.

And Father, we dare to believe that was not by chance or accident, but by divine appointment.

Father, we now pray for this person.

We know you love her, you love him.

And as we pray, Lord, we also want to repeat the attitude and the words of Isaiah.

Here am I, send me.

Send me, Lord, this week to plant the seed of your love, to plant the seed of the gospel of Jesus into the heart of this precious individual.

We ask you to bless us as we go and to give us the words that we need, the keys to this heart, this upcoming week in Jesus' mighty name.

Amen.

If you believe God is ready to knock on some hearts in a serious way, let's give some give it up for Jesus and make some noise for his glory.

Amen.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.