Week 1 ROC "Prepare the Way"

Welcome to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world.

We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before.

Now, let's get to it.

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Hey, I promised the bumper was awesome.

It's a really good bumper video.

Y'all, uh, well, if I haven't met you yet, my name is Jake.

I'm the pastor here at Manna Church.

I'm excited that you are here for the Reach Out Celebration.

Week number one, come on.

Yes.

So, this series, what we do, it is all about outreach, church planting, evangelism.

It's about missions.

For the past four years since we planted in 2022, we have used the reach out celebration to highlight missions and ministry partners and to help everybody here to catch a vision for what we as a church are doing to make it hard to go to hell here and all over the world.

We want you guys to get that.

And there are people in our local sphere, there are people in our nation, there are people across the globe who still need to know Jesus.

And so we've done, just so you guys know, we've done hundreds with an S, hundreds of outreaches just as a part of this church in the local community.

You're gonna hear more about that in this series.

In fact, I see we've got a couple of our folks in here that we've done outreaches with.

Um we we've helped dozens of other churches get launched as a part of ARC, the Association of Related Churches at a part of SLN, and as a part of the Mana Multiply Movement, we have launched dozens of churches from here in Stafford.

Um we've even launched two of our own.

In fact, they're joining us online, our Quantico location as well as our Omaha location.

Can we just do them a favor and just welcome them?

Yes.

We're glad you guys are there.

We've been to uh, you know, we've sent people on eight different missions trips to five different countries.

And and check this out this church has raised and sent over half a million dollars to missions, outreach, church planting, and all of those things in just that short four years.

Y'all, that's a big number.

I don't know if that's a big number in your world, that's a massive number in my world.

And here's the deal we're just getting started.

Like we're just getting started, and I'm so fired up about it.

So you might be new to Manna Church.

I know we got some guests here.

You may be new to church in general, and and you might have a question.

You might be saying, Why?

Why are these people so excited about this?

Why spend so much money?

Why why do that?

Why why why be so focused on this mission?

So if you think about the decisions that we make in life, uh where we live, where we go to school, who we marry, what where we work, all those things, every single one of them have a why behind it.

And the more compelling the why, the greater your commitment to the decision or action that you have, right?

The more compelling you're just gonna be more in.

I think about the decisions that I've made in life and you know, the things that I've endured, and when I wanted to quit, the why was what actually kept me centered, it kept me focused, it kept me committed.

The why.

And so this morning, I want to tell you about a guy.

He just knew what his why was.

It was such a good why.

Um he's mentioned at the beginning of all four of the Gospels.

Jesus, even at one point, tells us there's nobody been born of a woman that's greater than this guy.

That's a pretty big claim, isn't it?

And he came into the world under miraculous circumstances.

He's not Jesus, he's somebody else.

It's actually John the Baptist.

And so Luke talks about him.

We're gonna read a little bit from Luke.

And so an angel actually appears to John's dad, who's a priest, his name's Zachariah.

And so an angel appears to him and lets him know listen, um, you're gonna have a son, and your wife, who is beyond childbearing age, like she shouldn't be having babies.

We don't know how old she is.

She's beyond childbearing age, though, and he says, She's gonna have a baby.

And Zechariah, the dad's like, I don't know if that's true.

So he tells him, like, no, no, no, not only is she gonna have a baby, but he's gonna be great before the Lord.

And then he the angel goes on and it says, verse 16, he says, He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in spirit and the power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, and this is it, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.

This is huge.

John, John knew his why from the start.

He knew his why before he was even conceived.

That's pretty crazy.

Like, I I would have loved it if I would have gotten an angel, would have met with my mom and dad, and said, Hey, just so you know, you're gonna have a son, his name's gonna be Jake, and here's what he's supposed to do.

He's got a mission in life, and this is his mission.

Wouldn't that be nice?

I like that would have been great.

I I know some people that are in their 50s, their 60s, their 70s, and they're still trying to figure out what they want to do when they grow up.

For real.

Some of you in here might feel like that.

You might feel like, what am I doing here?

Why am I on the planet?

Why, God, why did you make me?

And and okay, I get it, you made me, you love people, but like, why did you make me like this?

Do I have a purpose?

Do I have a mission?

That's you.

I want you to know I got some clarity that God wants to bring.

You absolutely, absolutely have a purpose.

You have a general purpose and you have some specific purposes.

You are not an accident, and God intends to use every single event of your life to glorify him and fulfill his purpose, which actually is your purpose.

All right?

So so back to John.

Back to John.

This mission that he's given.

This mission he's given, it's a massive mission.

It's huge.

Uh I don't know about you, but if God gave me a nation-sized mission, you're gonna turn all the hearts of this nation, you're gonna prepare their hearts, I wouldn't know the first place to start.

That seems like a huge calling.

So I don't even know how one goes about preparing people for the Lord.

God actually gives John some specifics.

We don't know when he does this, but he tells them, you need to go out and you're gonna, you're gonna co-opt this thing that that Hebrew people are doing.

Um, they get immersed in pools.

So that there's a whole tradition they have.

They're called mikveh.

They're they're pools, they still use them actually in in um in Hebrew tradition now.

When someone gets converted to Judaism, they have to get immersed in a in a tub, basically.

It's got to be at least 200 gallons, they gotta go all the way under.

And so they would do that back in the day for ceremonial purposes, for spiritual reasons.

And so, what God does is he tells John, you're gonna go out and you're going to immerse or baptize.

That's literally what that word means, unless you didn't know that.

Um, you're gonna baptize people for the repentance from sins.

That's what you're gonna do.

You're gonna baptize them so when they go under, they don't just come back up ritually clean.

You're gonna baptize them, and when they come back up, they're gonna be turned away from their sins.

You're gonna help them focus on what the what's something that's more meaningful for them.

This is what it says.

Luke chapter 3, verse 2.

Luke 3:2

It says, During the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zachariah, in the wilderness, and he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism, uh, uh, an immersion of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

So John's like, listen, you guys have been dunking yourselves and doing this to get rid of dirt, but that's not what's gonna keep you out of the kingdom.

There's something else that's gonna keep you out of this kingdom, this king that's coming that you're supposed to meet.

And it's it's there's something that's more harmful, that's more dirty, that's more defiling, that's more disqualifying than dirt, and that's having your heart torn heart turned towards godless behaviors.

And so you're gonna go down, you're gonna come back up, and you're gonna have your heart turned towards something else.

And if you look at how John gathered all these people, again, nation-sized mission, big deal.

Um I'm just gonna be honest with you, it was a really bad plan.

It was a bad plan.

Um, so so when you're trying to gather large crowds of people, there's some things that you do.

I know this because I'm a church planter, and our church planters, they get trained in some of this stuff.

One of the things you gotta do is you gotta dress right.

People don't want to hang out with you if you dress all weird, you know?

If I'm wearing a weird outfit, you're not gonna want to talk to me.

You're gonna be like, that guy looks strange.

Um, we have inter-socials before we launch the church, and we would have good food at them.

In fact, when you come here, there's donuts and pastries out front, and we have coffee, and it's good coffee, and we have creamers because people get attracted to that.

They're like, oh, there's good food.

I think I'm gonna go.

I skipped breakfast this morning.

At least there'll be something at church.

So we get them, we're kind of preparing things for them, right?

Um, so so that's good.

Um, you want to make sure that you plant or you you you deliver your message in a place where there's it's a high population center.

That's important because just naturally, people don't like to drive really far.

We're simple creatures, it's just math.

Um, they don't want to go super far.

So if you want to plant something that's gonna grow big, if you want to get a message out to a lot of people, go to where a lot of people are, right?

And then when you're sharing, um, you like it's not just the words you share, but it's how you communicate what it is that you're supposed to be sharing.

So you want to say it in the right way.

So just delivering the message sometimes won't be enough.

You gotta have the right language, you gotta use the right tone.

If you can use visuals, it actually helps people.

If you have a song that just so happens to align with everything that you're gonna share, like, wow, that's awesome.

The song came after the message, just so you guys know.

But you're gonna hear a lot of stuff that ties in because the Holy Spirit's just awesome.

He does it that way.

Um, but then once you get people's attention, you gotta make sure you stay on point.

Like, don't get bogged down in like, you know, um hot button issues, like politics and stuff.

Like, don't do any of that stuff.

All right?

John did none of those things.

In fact, John did exactly the opposite.

If he were listed as like a church planter, we'd be like worst church planter ever.

I'm gonna tell you.

So start with his clothes.

Matthew 3 says, John wore camel's hair and a leather belt.

If I left the house wearing camel hair, I guarantee they'd be like, fit check, dad, it looks bad.

Really, really bad.

Change.

In fact, they do it already with regular clothes.

So they they dress me sometimes.

Not much of a fashion sense.

He wasn't much to dine with either.

It says that what he ate were bugs.

Like he ate locusts, and then to sweeten it up, he had some wild honey.

So you go to John's inter-social and you're gonna be like, oh, there's a bug buffet.

That's delicious.

I think I'm fasting that day.

Right?

Like, no, no, no, you can you can have the, I don't want the locust, you can have it.

Um man, and then speaking of going to his place, he picked the worst spot.

The absolute worst.

He went to the wilderness.

So, estimates, I look this up.

Estimates to get to where John was delivering this message, preparing the way.

The the shortest commute was about two hours, one direction.

The longest was five days.

They would travel five days one way to get to John delivering this life-giving message that's gonna change the world and prepare the way for the king of heaven and earth to come in and change everything.

He's like, Oh, I think I'll plant it out in the middle of nowhere.

Crazy.

Crazy.

So then they they travel all this way and they're like, oh, I'm gonna get this great message.

This guy's preparing the way.

He's gonna, he's gonna just encourage me.

Here's his sermon.

You ready?

This is Luke.

Here he goes.

He says to the crowds who came out five days they traveled to be here, to be immersed by him, and he says, You brood of vipers.

He's and just so you know, the reference he's using there is Satan is a serpent.

He's saying, You belong with him.

You brood of people who are in the family of Satan.

Wow.

Who warns you to flee the wrath to come?

Bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and don't begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father.

For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

Even now, the axe is laid to the root of the trees.

Every tree that doesn't bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

That's not a feel-good message.

Like, I would be like, if I took off work, my wife convinced me to go to church.

We traveled five days to get there.

I look at my wife and I'd go, Danielle, if I wanted this, I could have called your mom and dad and let them tell me how terrible I am.

Like, this is this is not encouraging.

Right?

Here's what you need to understand.

John wasn't trying to build an audience.

He was trying to prepare a people.

It wasn't ever intended to be a feel-good message.

That wasn't what he was about.

He wasn't trying to make people feel comfortable, he was trying to make them ready.

And those often are two different things.

And so I wonder about us like, what are we trying to accomplish here?

What's our why?

Because it's going to drive everything else that we do.

Are we trying to build a bigger church?

Is that the goal?

Is fancy production catchy messages, like nice merch, and we we got merch, that's cool.

Those are all cool things.

Good production.

Is that the objective?

Our goal isn't just to bigger the church.

Our goal is to prepare people to encounter Jesus.

That's our goal.

That's what we're focused on.

And it's yeah, it's what Luke summarizes that the prophet Isaiah said about John.

Luke says this.

Luke chapter 3, verse 4, he says, He's gonna be the voice of one crying in the wilderness, not in the city.

Luke 3:4

Prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight.

Every valley will be filled, every mountain and hill shall be made low, the crooked shall become straight, the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

This is this is obstacle clearing language.

He's saying that there are obstacles in the way for people that need to see a risen Savior.

And so we gotta remove all the obstacles.

We gotta get them out of the path.

See, John's mission, John's mission was Jesus is coming to get people ready.

That was his mission.

But see, Jesus didn't just come once, he's coming again.

How many of you know that?

Jesus is coming back again, right?

And our job is actually the same as John's job.

Jesus is coming.

Our job is to get people ready for him to be here.

And there are obstacles, just like there were obstacles back then.

There are still obstacles today for people to encounter a risen Savior.

And you guys know some of these obstacles.

Matthew actually, he talks about our mission.

I'm gonna read this real quick.

Matthew says, Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all I've commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

This is your job, church.

This was after John had died, actually.

John was already gone, and Jesus said, the church is going to be the one that continues to do this.

You got to keep preparing the way for people.

John had a specific assignment to prepare people for Jesus' first arrival, but man, the mission didn't end.

Jesus gave it to us.

And then in the church age, we see a couple decades later, we have this letter that Paul wrote to the church at Corinth.

This was after Jesus had already died, been resurrected, and ascended to heaven.

The church was still trying to figure it out.

And this letter is to us.

Here's what it says: 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

He says, Therefore, if anyone's in Christ, he's a new creation.

Praise God for that.

Praise God, he makes us new.

The old's passed away, behold, the new has come.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.

And get this, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

If you go through growth track, one of the things you're going to hear is the ministers are you.

You're all the ministers.

He gave us this ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the whole world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, check this out we are ambassadors for Christ.

God making his appeal through us.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

God is making his appeal to your locality.

He's making his appeal to the nation.

He's making his appeal to the other nations of the world through us.

That's who he's wanting to use.

Imagine an ambassador that just didn't go out and do their job.

You got a message from the administration, whomever it is, and the ambassador's like, yeah, somebody else go do it.

Like he's got, he puts them in place to do a specific function.

And so there's obstacles people have to fully receive Jesus.

What are they though?

What keeps people from God?

What are the mountains, the valleys that are too deep to cross, the crooked paths?

What are they?

A big obstacle for some people are the things that they've done.

Evil actions, cruel things.

What they believe is they believe that their past disqualifies them.

It's an obstacle.

So what we do is we prepare the way for them by helping them understand the grace of our Savior Jesus.

There's some people, their obstacle is what Christians have done to them.

They've seen the way that Jesus' followers treat them, and they're like, man, I've been a victim of hypocrisy, judgment, all these things.

So we we prepare the way for them by demonstrating the love and the character that comes from Jesus.

Some people they just actually never heard about him.

Craig talked about that a little bit in Asia.

They just, they don't even know who Jesus is.

They've never heard about him.

They don't even know he's coming.

We prepare the way for them.

We open our mouths, we share the good news, we send people, we plant churches, we fund missions.

Other people's big obstacle that they have is a sin that they don't want to let go.

They're literally clinging to the mountain that's in the middle of the road that Jesus is walking down, and they will not let it go.

We prepare the way for them by being honest, not harsh.

We tell them uncomfortable truths about what's keeping them from Jesus.

Some people, I think this is the most dangerous one, in my estimation.

They have an obstacle of arrogance, and you see John talks about that a little bit.

They think they don't need to do anything different in their life because they grew up in a Christian home, they're in the family of Abraham, proverbially.

He's like, hey, that's not gonna protect you.

Or maybe they just think that they're good enough.

Like, I'm a good enough person.

I don't need Jesus.

We help them, we prepare the way for them by letting them know the truth of the gospel, that every single one of us are separated from God by our sin, no matter how good we think we are.

Paul, who was allegedly the best of the best, he lists his pedigree, his resume, and he says, Man, what what things were righteousness to me?

I count them as filthy rags.

When I compare them to the glory of Jesus.

And so we know that we cannot force people to receive Jesus.

So that that's that's not our work.

But what we can do is we can do everything in our power to remove the obstacles that keep them from seeing him.

And that, man, that's a massive part of your purpose here on this earth.

So your why, I told you, it's wrapped up in this whole kingdom of God.

And I think a lot of us we have this innocent kind of ignorance about what that really means.

So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my background.

Okay, a lot of you know this already, but I'm gonna tell you anyways.

Um I I came by idealism and ignorance very honestly.

All right.

I grew up in small town in Kansas in the 80s and 90s, and if you remember anything about that time, you know that we were in this era of peace, relative peace.

There was a flare-up in the 90s, we crushed the enemy in like days.

It was, yeah.

Like we we were militarily, economically, um, technologically, some would even argue morally, the the superpower in the world.

That's what America was.

That that's how I grew up, and so I did what any red-blooded, patriotic Kansan would do, and I joined the service.

Right?

And and so it didn't feel dangerous to me because I thought like we're so far past.

I wasn't afraid of danger, but it just felt like, man, we're so far past anybody ever even fighting us that there's never really gonna be a conflict, probably in my lifetime.

Like we've outpaced them so far.

So I was like, okay, I'm gonna get engaged.

It's a great decision, by the way.

Um, gonna get engaged, figure out whether I should fly jets or be a marine.

Let's look at duty stations.

Where would we like to live?

Because it's It's gonna be enjoyable there.

All these good ideas and good thoughts.

A month into my senior year, 9-11 happened.

And everything changed.

The service looked different now.

The mission hadn't changed.

Same mission.

But there was different ground now that we were going to be fighting on.

If I could just make a connection for you here and help you understand this, I think that most of us in this room, most believers we know, we join the cause of Christ with the same kind of mentality that I joined the military.

It's not a bad motive, it's not a wrong heart necessarily, but it's largely an ignorant allegiance.

It's one that we think that Christianity is primarily about improving my life, having a better marriage, a healthier family, having freedom from destructive habits.

Like those are all good things, okay?

They're all great things, but they're not the fullness of what we are called to as a church.

We're so insulated here.

Christianity for for such a long time has been such a culturally safe thing to do in America.

It was almost as if you weren't a Christian, then it was a bad choice.

So you needed to be a Christian because it's what everybody did, right?

You make a decision to give your life to Jesus, you commit to his church, you commit to his mission, and you have no idea what the full scope of it is.

See, Jesus didn't just recruit us to enjoy the benefits of his kingdom, he commissioned us to participate in its advancement.

Here's the dangerous truth that nobody actually ever told you.

The safety that you experience on a daily basis, it's mostly an illusion.

You might not realize this.

You are living in an active war zone.

There are bullets flying, bombs going off, armies advancing, and you don't react to it because you can't perceive it.

I'm not talking about physical things, I'm talking about spiritual things, and it's really happening.

I don't have time to go into all of it because you can go back and listen to two weeks ago.

We talked about all of this stuff.

We talked about the spiritual forces that Daniel the prophet encountered.

He talked about the prince of Persia, the prince of Greece, the prince of Israel, these massively powerful supernatural beings that were that were orchestrating movements of nations and peoples.

They're trying to gather their worship, they're trying to drive their behaviors, they're enslaving people.

All that stuff is actually still happening.

That hasn't changed, y'all.

It hasn't changed.

There's still war going on, and just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there.

And part of the reason you don't see it is because other people are the ones that are fighting.

They're on the front lines and we're here in the safe base camps.

We're enjoying the comforts that other people have fought to provide us with.

And in a physical sense, 9-11, what it did, it just revealed what was actually happening in the rest of the world to us.

We were safe.

We were insulated.

And that's at least part of what I want the rocks to do for you, to help you understand there is a war going on, y'all.

I wonder this.

I wonder, what would you think about somebody who joined up after 9-11?

Our ranks swelled after 9-11.

They join up, they go through boot camp, they learn all the stuff, they they figure out how to fire a gun, they they're wearing a nice uniform, like their boots are polished, they're they're walking in formation.

But when time comes to go to war, they just don't show up.

It's not that they're not skilled, it's not that they don't believe in the cause, okay?

Not questioning any of those things.

It's just they don't see themselves as someone who actually is supposed to do that kind of thing.

Like that's just not that's just not my mission.

Like, I I signed up, I signed up because we have really cool uniforms.

That's a good reason to join the Marine Corps, by the way.

Great uniforms, better than the other services.

But they they joined and they didn't realize the fullness of what they signed up for.

I imagine if I had a Marine in my unit when I was deployed, and there were bad guys when we were deployed, all over the place.

And we had to go out on mission against them.

So I imagine I tell this Marine, like, hey, Devil Dog, let's go.

We got a mission.

We got a mission, we got bad guys, and they're they're harming like innocent people, and so we've got to go eliminate the threat.

So get your squad together.

We got a couple other squads, we're taking a whole platoon out.

It's gonna be a big fight.

And the Marine says, Oh, yeah, so um, I'm really worried about self-care today.

Like, I'm just trying to be better, me.

You know, I got I got stuff I gotta do first on my inside.

Excuse me?

You know what?

You know what I gotta um uh my squad, our dynamics just aren't the best.

So could we delay the mission a little bit?

Yeah, I'll go, I'll go tell the people that are dying that you gotta work on your your relationship some.

Hey, you know what?

Um, I just joined an intramural sports team and we got a game going on the same time you want to do that mission.

So just like not this time, maybe I'll do it a different time.

Gosh, sorry, good luck though.

Good luck on the mission.

If I was a commander watching that unfold, I don't know how I would react.

If you were a bystander watching that unfold, how would you react?

What would you say to that person?

Hey, do you know the unit you signed up for?

You're a Marine.

You guys kill people and break things.

That's what you do.

But you don't seem to get it.

Worse still, I imagine the unit coming back from the fight.

They're bloodied, they're beat up, they're exhausted.

They took some casualties.

The Marines who stayed back, they look at them, they're sympathetic, like, oh man, looks like it was a rough fight.

Is there anything I could do for you?

Yeah.

You could have come with me.

Like you could have been in the fight with me.

You could have not let me go out by myself without support, because we're supposed to be doing this together.

That's the mission we all signed up for.

Every single one of us.

That is the the fullness of what our calling is, not just to look nice, not just to fix ourselves, go to the gym, do self-care.

It's about being on mission to advance the kingdom of God in the earth.

Like, I just think about the implications for us here.

There are people sacrificing their lives, their careers, their comfort, their finances, and their security to take the gospel into difficult places.

There are missionaries that are serving in dangerous environments.

You heard about one of them today.

Church planters are risking financial stability.

They're people serving in low-income communities where no megachurch is ever going to want to plant.

Over the next three weeks, you're going to meet incredible people.

They're going to tell you amazing stories.

You're going to hear about the sacrifices they made, the places that they've gone, lives God has changed.

And I hope, I hope you celebrate them.

Cheer them on as they're coming back from the battlefield victorious.

Because, like David said, Jesus always wins.

Here's what I don't want, though.

What I don't want is for you to leave here thinking, I'm so glad that there are people out there doing that work.

Because here's the truth they're not doing the work instead of you.

They want to do the work alongside you.

They want to do it together.

This is the challenge I want us to hear this morning, church.

We cannot be a church that operates with that kind of mentality.

I tell you this, you were made on purpose for a purpose.

I think it's so easy for us to get sidetracked, get comfortable, get complacent, not just with our own lives, but with the lives of others in their eternal fate.

It hangs in the balance.

I think what we've done is we've confused preparation for the mission with participation in the mission.

Think about how many activities you do spiritually that fall into the preparation category versus fall into the participation category.

We go to worship services, maybe both, I don't know.

We study scripture, we go to small groups, we get counseling, we go to conferences, we develop spiritual disciplines, all good things, necessary things.

They're all good things, but they're not the entirety of our calling.

Spiritual maturity, it's not just measured by how much you've grown, it's measured by what you do with the growth that you've got.

Like, what good is a fully equipped Marine ready to go like sniper if he never goes to war?

If he never goes to battle, if he's never willing and able to do that.

I'll tell you, how many sermons do we need to hear before we're ready to tell somebody about Jesus?

How many Bible studies you got to go through before you're ready to serve somebody who's hurting?

How many, how much more maturity do you need to have before you're willing to give and live sacrificially?

How much more?

Is it five more?

Is it ten more weeks?

Is it next year?

Like when is it?

Here's what Paul said.

And he wrote this from prison, by the way.

I know, I know I'm preaching hard today, guys, but I just believe in this mission, okay?

Philippians chapter 1, it says, it's been granted to you, he's talking to the church there, that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, like do that, believe in him, but also suffer for his sake.

Philippians 1 · chapter mention

Don't just believe in him, suffer.

Engaged in the same conflict you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

Don't be a bystander, be engaged in the conflict.

Because there is a conflict.

It's happening all around.

All day, every day.

It's always going on.

Jesus, he called us to be a force of advancement for his kingdom and his plans in the earth.

And so I don't want you to misunderstand me because I know I'm using like really aggressive language, okay?

So so hear this: people are not the enemy.

Ephesians tells us we don't fight against flesh and blood, but against powers, against principalities, against spiritual forces of darkness over this present age.

That's the enemy, not people.

We don't have a us versus them mentality.

We do not hate the world.

In fact, I would argue this if you have the power to liberate people who are in bondage, they're enslaved by spiritual powers that they have zero ability to free themselves from.

And you do nothing for them, that's actually a hateful act in and of itself.

Like when I see things happening on the news and I watch all the bystanders just let it happen, it enrages me.

At the action, but also at the inaction of all the people there.

What are you doing?

In fact, there's a prominent atheist, his name's Pen Gillette.

Um, doesn't love Jesus, doesn't care to love Jesus.

You might recognize him from Penn and Teller.

He does like magic, they try to like recognize how people do tricks.

This is what he said about Christians.

And I think I agree with him.

He says, I've always said I don't respect people who don't proselytize.

Let's just share the gospel, evangelize.

I don't respect that at all.

If you believe that there's a heaven and a hell, and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life, and you think it's not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward, how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?

How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?

He's not wrong.

Listen, we love the world.

We love the people in the world.

God loves the world.

He so loved the world that he sent his own son to die for it.

And to deliver them from a kingdom of darkness into a kingdom of light.

And that's what he called us to do as well.

That's part of our purpose, y'all.

It's part of your purpose.

If you're 50, 60, 70, if you're 20, it doesn't matter.

And you're still trying to figure out why God puts your two feet on this ground.

This is one of the reasons.

It is a very specific reason.

He called us to have dominion, and there's a dominion of darkness that he wants us to fight against as ambassadors for him, carrying his authority and his words, liberating people.

Like Marines, they get super frustrated when they serve for years.

I know we got some Marines listening online.

We probably got some folks in here in different services, and they think, man, I really would love to actually use some of the things that I've been taught and trained in.

Church can be like that.

I think what happens is a lot of times people join up, they're excited about what this new life in Jesus might have in store for them.

Some of you might be getting excited now, thinking, wow, I haven't heard about this Jesus guy, this kingdom thing.

This it's exciting.

I want to go do it.

And then what happens is you get to church and you get involved in these rhythms and you never go out and do anything.

And you think, oh, is this it?

Is that all?

No, it's not.

There's more.

So much more.

So much more.

So here's what I want you to understand this morning.

Like John the Baptist, he had he had a mission.

It was one mission.

It was it was prepare the way for Jesus.

2,000 years later, where we're at now, Jesus has the same mission for his church.

Prepare the way for Jesus.

Like God, he made everything.

He spoke the world into existence.

It says he holds the universe together by the word of his power.

He could have chosen to do this anyway.

He could have written the gospel in the sky where we walk out and we see it.

He could have sent a specific angel to every single city and every single country on the planet and had them just be there delivering the message.

But instead, he decided to use his church.

He decided to use you.

You you.

You're his plan A for the world.

He sends us.

We're imperfect people.

We're people who are still growing.

We're people who still are struggling with lots of things.

Maybe we haven't gone to the gym enough, haven't sharpened our our rifle shooting quite so much yet.

But he grabs us and he says, let's go.

And what I love about that is you don't have to be a pastor.

You don't have to be a missionary.

You don't have to be a Bible scholar.

You don't even have to have all your problems figured out.

All you have to do is say yes.

That's it.

You say, Yes, I'm going to tell my neighbor about Jesus.

Yes, I'm going to go and serve somebody who can't do anything for me in return.

Yes, I'm going to sacrifice some of my comfort so somebody else can experience liberty.

I'm going to give so that a church can be planted in a community where nobody knows Jesus.

And the reason that you do it is because you recognize you weren't just saved from something, you were saved for something.

The work in the way of the cross, it doesn't end at the moment of salvation.

There's a whole path to follow after that.

You were saved for something so big.

It's bigger than you, it's bigger than your family, it's bigger than your career.

It's bigger than this church.

It is the kingdom of God that you were saved for.

And so for the next three weeks, what we're going to do is we're going to give you opportunities to participate in that mission.

You saw the list of all the activities.

There's some great stuff.

This rock is going to be different.

I don't want you to be observers.

I want you to be experiencers.

I want you to be a part of what it is we are doing.

Get involved.

You're going to hear stories of what God's doing around the world, and you're going to have opportunities to learn, to serve, to go, and to give.

And at the end of three weeks, just truth and advertising, what we're going to do is we're going to take a special offering, and it's going to help advance the kingdom.

Across our communities in the nation, all over the world.

But you need to understand this.

The offering is not the mission.

The mission is people.

The offering just helps fund the mission.

Our mission is always people.

People who are lost, hurting, they're trapped in darkness, they desperately need to know that there's a Savior who loves them and has a better plan for their lives.

And we have the privilege of introducing those people to their Savior.

You have that privilege.

It's an honor to be able to introduce people to Jesus.

And he extended that honor to you.

So this is my challenge.

Don't spend the next three weeks just like watching what God's doing through other people and just cheering them on from the cheap seats.

I want you to get involved.

Don't just listen to stories.

Be a part of the story.

Don't celebrate people who are going.

Commit to be a person who goes yourself.

Y'all, we're we're not just here to build a better church.

We're here to plunder hell and fill up heaven.

That's what we want to do.

That's what gets me out of bed every morning.

It gets me excited.

We're not just here to become better versions of ourselves.

We're not here to be safe inside the walls of a church while everybody else around us suffers.

We're a church that's gonna go.

I want us to prepare the way for him.

Are you ready to do that, church?

Can we do that?

Do me a favor, let's all stand.

Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast.

If you would like to connect with us, you can find us on the web at manastafford.church or download the Mana Church app to listen to our new episodes as they become available.

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We would also love to meet you in person.

If you are local, our services take place each Sunday at 10 a.m.

We pray you have an amazing week and we'll see you next time.