Last weeks sermon was called “Making of a Movement Part 1: Know and be Known”, this week we continue this idea, with “Making of a Movement Part 2: Pray, Give, Go”. I want to first give a few disclaimers before we jump into the sermon this week. I have agonized over this sermon for a few weeks, mainly because I will be talking about money. The first thing I need to say is that if you are here and you are not a Christian, forget the money talk. The parts that deal with giving to the church and missionaries aren’t for you. Church is free. So please don’t here just another pastor talking about money. I hope the sermon isn’t conducive to that thought anyway, but I just wanted to be clear. When I am talking about money in this sermon, it is for people who call themselves Christians and are part of this church, not anyone else.
With that out of the way, I think we can proceed. As you just heard, this week we will be talking about money, but not just money. We are again going to be talking more about starting a movement. There was so much text I could have chosen for today, I have to admit I was a little daunted when I began. I eventually settled on Acts 2:41-47. This is for a couple of reason. Before we get into the reasons for choosing this text, let’s read it. Turn with me to your programs. We read:
41So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. 42And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Before we go on, we should put this text in context. We are in the book of Acts, which was written by Luke, the same guy who gave us the Gospel of Luke. He was a doctor who converted to Christianity, travelled around with Paul, the writer of many New Testament books, and planter of church all around the Mediterranean. He is writing the book to give an historical account of Jesus life and the early church gathered from talking with first hand witnesses, and his own experiences, to give to his friend Theophilus. The book of Acts specifically describes the early church and church planting movement. It begins with the resurrected Jesus still on Earth. He gives final instructions to the new church, which has about 120 people at that time. He leaves to heaven, and the church is on its own.
The early church was told to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came upon them, and so they retreated into houses and worshiped and prayed together. During one of these prayer sections, the Holy Spirit did com, and some very interesting things happened. I must digress for a moment. The early Christians were in Jerusalem, as I said, but what we often don’t know is that there were many people in Jerusalem at this time. In fact, there was a festival called Shavuot going on which meant Jews from around the world would have tried to make it to the city. There were peoples from all nations and tongues. Jerusalem was crazy. I imagine it is akin to move in day at Umass. It is all quite during the summer, you can drive on the roads, everyone is more or less culturally homogeneous. The same people are at Rao’s everyday, same people at Bueno. It is beautiful. And then, one day, around the same time every year, the town is invaded. Parents and freshman roll in, don’t know where they are going, back up traffic, speak with weird accents, wear clothes that are distinctly not Amherst, don’t drink their coffee at Rao’s, like some sort of cultural heretic. It is crazy. There are a multitude of cultures and even languages with foreign exchange students not knowing the provincial slang and speaking in high English. It is awesome. If you have been here for a summer, you know what I am talking about. This is roughly equivalent to what is happening in Jerusalem at the time. People have come from all over for this harvest festival, and with them, different cultures and languages. And in the middle of all this mayhem and craziness, there are 120 disciples of Jesus just hanging out and praying, waiting for the Holy Spirit.
Remember, they didn’t even know what they were really waiting for. Nothing like this had ever happened before. So they waited and prayed, and something cosmic happened. Something like tongues of fire came from out of the sky and descended upon these 120. And they all began speaking different languages. They in fact began speaking the languages of all the visitors. Each man could hear the disciples’ message in his own tongue. After this Peter stands up to explain to all the people what has just happened, and ends up giving the first sermon of all time. And this is where we pick up the text. We read that many heard his sermon and were baptized. And in one day the church went from 120 to 3120 men, give or take. It is important to note that these conversions may have only counted the men. Women were not that important in the ancient world, and as such, much of the Mediterranean wouldn’t have counted them. I am not saying it is absolutely the case, but it is possible that, if only men were counted ( which may be probable because usually the women are specially mentioned in Scripture) the actual number of converts was closer to 6-10,000. Children also were a marginalized group and may not have been included. What I can say for certain, is even 3000 in one day is a good day for a pastor. Also we know that this moment right here is the birth of the church, and that is the main reason that we are looking at it today, instead of the many other passages of scripture we could have chosen.
As we try to start a movement, there is no more fitting place for us to start than where the first church movement did. Let’s begin by seeing what the Apostles and early church did as a light into what we must do. The first thing Luke tells us after he talks about the conversion of the people is that they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to breading of bread, and to prayer. I am not going to really talk about all of these devotions, as we at MERCYhouse call them, but if you go to a housechurch you will learn all about them. Like how I snuck a pitch for housechurch in the middle of a sermon, clever, huh? Anyway, one of the things we see the new believers dedicating themselves to is prayer. This is also the thing we see the disciples dedicating themselves to before this event called Pentecost. We read in Acts 1:12-14
12Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. 13And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. 14All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
Prayer is something that was held in high regard by the church since the beginning. I think we should stop here and discus prayer since it is in the title of my sermon. Before we do, I need to confess that I am not the best pray-er. When I really think about it logically it doesn’t really make sense to my hyper-rational western mind. How can God, the Ruler of the niverse, really want input from me? How can I change his mind? Etc., etc., etc. That is not to say I don’t pray, but I often think that prayer is only for me and doesn’t effect other things. The problem with this outlook on prayer is that it is not Biblical. Throughout the Bible devout men pray and God listens. We see it at Sodom and Gomorrah where Abraham pleads with God and God changes his mind. We see it with Moses who constantly intercedes for the Israelites. We see it with David and Solomon, who pray constantly and have their prayer answered. We see it with Jeremiah who begs God to remember his promise when the Israelites are in Exile by the Babylonians. He prays that God would restore Israel, and we see God listen and raise up Ezra and Nehemiah to restore the Temple at Jerusalem. We see it with Isaiah and all the prophets. We see it with Jesus too. Jesus is always in prayer, even teaching his followers how to do it, and in his model, he asks for his daily bread. The last night with his disciples he tells them to pray for anything they need. Paul tells us throughout his letters to pray in season and out of season, and asks for prayer in specific things.
My sometimes rational ideas of prayer are destroyed when I hold them up to Scripture. Many men smarter than myself have grappled with this problem of prayer. Do we actually change God’s mind? Is it just that the more we pray the closer we get to God and so know better what to ask for, so when it happens we see it as answered prayer, but it was actually in God’s plan all along? And there are many other solutions as well. I am not going to tell you I have an answer. I am going to quote C.S. Lewis though. In his essay on Prayer he says the following:
May seem like coincidence, but I know that when I pray the coincidences are much more frequent. (Paraphrased. The real quote will be in sermon)
We are told to pray constantly. And if you are a western academic like myself, you may struggle with the same metaphysical questions about prayer that I have just laid out, or others. I could give a very technical theological argument to try to convince us all that we should pray, but I think some examples of prayer in action are a little better. My first example is this passage in Acts. All the people did at first was pray, and when the time was ready for action, Peter knew what to do. If he had just gone back to his old life and not prayed could he have been as ready to step up and lead the church as he was?
In more modern times we have movements like the Haystack Revival. For those of you who don’t know what the Haystack Revival was, I will explain it. It began at Williams College in Williamstown Massachusetts in 1806. Five students at the college decided to begin a prayer meeting at the school and a storm blew in as they were praying. This caused them to find refuge under a haystack. As they talked and prayed they got the crazy idea to go to foreign countries as missionaries and spread the Gospel. The next year the first modern missions trip set sail for India. These five men are responsible for founding the first missions board to send people abroad, and are credited with the birth of modern missions. And it all started with prayer.
Similarly we can look at people like Phoebe Palmer, a woman who lived in the mid 1800’s. She began a small prayer group with 2 other women, that 6 years later would get here world wide recognition, sprouting prayer meetings around the country, and according to records, responsible for over 25,000 conversions.
I don’t here have time to speak about the first or second Great Awakening, men like Henry Ward Beecher who stands at Amherst College, Jonathan Edwards who preached in Northampton, or Martin Luther who said he prayed one hour a day, unless he was busy, in which case he prayed two. There were prayer meetings in New York City that began as a few dedicated men and turned into 50,000 across the city, most of who were not Christians when the entered, but were when they left. This was called the Fulton Street Revival. It was begun by a business man on September 23 at noon as a way to change his city for Jesus. He held it in the business district and advertised it all over the city. At the first meeting, 6 people showed up, 30 minutes late. Then there were 14, 23, and 40 over the next few weeks, respectively. It exploded all over the city. Within a few months there were thousands praying. This movement swept through the entire US, and estimates credit about 1 million conversions in the US out of a population of 35 million to this prayer meeting, with 10,000 conversions a week coming from New York City alone for a few months.
So as we look back at history with our modern enlightened view of prayer, we need to remember that every movement, every one, began with a few followers praying in a room. I don’t know how it works, but like C.S. Lewis, I know it works. If we are to truly start a movement, we need to begin on our knees. How can we think we need not pray for this movement, when that is where the Apostles started. How can we look at the history of the church and be so smug. We can’t. We need to pray, and pray daily for this movement. We need to pray for this church, for MERCYhouse, for Amherst, for our campuses, for our friends, for our family, for our Valley. If our foundations aren’t here, then everything else is for naught. I don’t know how it works, but I know it works. When I start arguing with myself about the efficacy of prayer, I have to come back to this. I have seen it work in my life. I have prayed for people and things, and they have come. I prayed to get sober, and I did, I prayed for friends and they were baptized in this church, I have prayed for things as miniscule as a parking spot, and they been granted it.
Don’t mishear me. I am not saying prayer is a magic button. That if you do it right, you will get what you want. There have been many things I have prayed for and been denied. When I prayed for parking, it was just a little confirmation that I needed that day that God was there. When I prayed for my friends, it was much more cosmic. What I am saying is that God wants us to start in prayer. That somehow, when we pray, things can happen. This area, the Pioneer Valley, is full of people who prayed and changed the world. 3 of our colleges were founded by Christians who prayed that they could make a difference. The second Great Awakening began right here. The Haystack Revival. We, today, are asking for nothing less that these people did. We are asking that our Valley, over 600,000 people would be changed through the Gospel. We need to begin such a task in prayer, both begging that God would change this Valley, seeking His will in how to do it, and confession of our fallenness and weakness.
And we need to pray together. These movements were not started by a single guy praying in a closet silently to himself. They were started by a group that prayed together. And so must we. That is not to say don’t pray by yourself, but don’t pray only by yourself. Very often when I tell people this I hear things like, :”It is awkward”, “I don’t like praying out loud”, or “My mind wanders to much.” I have this to say- get over yourself. The ancient Israelites always prayed 2 ways. Do you know what they were? Out loud standing up, and out loud laying prostrate on the ground. That is all. The Apostles who were in that upper room surely prayed out loud with each other. We know about Jesus last prayers before his execution because he was speaking with others. We need to pray with each other if this movement is going to go anywhere. I don’t want to beat us over the head here. I want to call us to something bigger. We are not getting over ourselves simply to pray out loud. We are doing it to start a movement. 6 men praying together so set on fire New York City through just prayer meetings alone, thousands converted every week! Thousands! 120 guys praying together in Jerusalem 2000 years ago converted 3000 in one day, and began something that would sweep through the world. Doesn’t that seem better than praying to ourselves in our beds with the lights out quietly? Doesn’t that beat us being embarrassed about what we should say. I want to here call us to something higher, better, holier. We are to pray and pray fervently and trust God will use it. He has so many times in the past, and he will again. Wouldn’t it be better to be part of that movement? To look back 50 years from now and see hundreds of thousands of people worshipping Sunday afternoon and know that God used the prayers that we prayer here and now!
And what came of all this prayer and worship that the new converts participated in? We read in Acts 2:43 that awe came upon every soul. I don’t know about the rest of us, but I certainly want to be a part of that. I have had awe come upon me a few times in my life, and it is what has kept me going when things get hard, it is what has made me want to plant a church, it is what has kept my faith alive. But notice, the movement doesn’t stop there. I think this is one of the problems with the Christian church today. We stop at awe. We pray, and worship, and go to Bible studies, and we have our conversion experience, and then we stop. That is not how we start a movement. That is not where the disciples stopped. We read in Acts 2:44-45
44And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.
Here is where I talk about giving, the second word in my sermon title. Now these are somewhat tricky verses, right. They say that the disciples were selling all they had and giving to all who had need. Does this mean that we should do the same? I don’t think we need to apply these verses literally to our lives. In fact, if you hear a preacher telling you to sell all you have and give it to him to distribute, I would say you are most likely in a cult and should get out as soon as possible. These verses aren’t teaching us to give away everything, necessarily, but they are illuminating. What they do say is that there is a proper response to this awe that we get to experience. There is a next step after prayer.
What these verses are painting is the makings of a movement. There is sacrifice involved. In American Christianity today, I speak in generalities, and there are always exceptions, we forget this. We have been to content to stop at awe, and not respond in kind. We, and I include myself in this, often are selfish and self seeking. We look at what God can do for us, and often forget our role in the equation. We often forget that God answers prayers with people. I want to give an example from my own life. When I joined staff, Sarah and I brought with us lots of debt. We both had well paying jobs before, and so we charged a lot of things on credit, because there was always another paycheck. And then Sarah got pregnant and she decided she wanted to stay at home with the kid, so we lost one paycheck. And then I was called to staff, and so quit my well paying job with a guaranteed check every two weeks for the uncertainty of ministry. Last summer due to various circumstances, we were barely able to live. It seemed like we would never get out of debt, and we were destined to be poor. Sarah and I ask our housechurch and a few others to start praying that God would pay off our debt so we could minister more effectively. Soon after someone we know came into money, heard about our problems, and gave us 8,000 dollars to pay off all our creditors. We didn’t ask this person to do it, and we were even shy about taking the money. But they had prayed and wanted to do it.
I am not saying all of you should give me 8,000 dollars, but this is the kind of community we have to have, that the early church had, if we are to start a movement. They gave as any had need. The church saw some starving, and selflessly gave to help them eat. They saw brothers without clothes, and took the burden of buying them pants. They were the church to each other. That story I just told you, isn’t unique to me either. I know of many collections at MERCYhouse given to people who were struggling anonymously. I can’t tell you all of them here, but many of you were privy to them. And it has effected the people around them drastically, as it effected those around the early church.
As I thought about how to preach about money and giving there were many roads I could have taken. I could talk about tithing (giving 10 percent) as a discipline that we just need to do. I could talk about many of the times Jesus spoke about money; I could go to places like Ezra or Micah where money is directly talked about in the Bible. But none of these seemed to satisfy. I could beat all of us over the head and talk about how it is the Christian duty to give, or I could not mention it at all, and hope that people know what to do. I could be heavy handed or limp wristed. Neither of these satisfies. So instead, this is what I am going to say. If you are a Christian, you need to give money somewhere, to a church, to missionaries, to Christian Charities. If you don’t know where to start, the Old Testament puts a rule at ten percent. So if we were in ancient Israel, we would give ten percent of our income away to God. Paul is Corinthians says that this may not be the rule for Christians, and says that we should give as we are able. But we need to remember why we are giving.
We are not giving just to give, or because God will be mad at us if we don’t. We are not giving money so that God will bless us either. If we are to believe many preachers on TV, if we sow our faith seed, God will multiply it, and we will be financially blessed. The truth is, this may happen to you, I don’t know, but it also may not. We don’t give to get. That is manipulation, and not what we see in the book of Acts. The truth is that giving is often going to cost us. There is a sacrifice involved. To be able to give to MERCYhouse, and now this church, we had to get rid of the internet and cable at my house. There was sacrifice involved. Maybe we have to eat out less often, or in my case, drink regular coffee instead of delicious Carmel Macchiatos from Starbucks. The people in Acts were selling their things for others to have something. There is sacrifice involved.
We are not giving out of fear, or out of some divine manipulation to get more. The reason we need to give and be generous is something so much more beautiful. There are three reasons we need to give, and I will go through them quickly. The first reason is because God first gave to us. He gave us the free gift of grace through his son Jesus. He gave to the point of dying. When we give to those in need, and to the church, we get to be the agents by which God is still giving grace. When my debt was paid off, it was grace. I didn’t deserve it. What I deserved was to suffer for my irresponsible spending. When I ask the person why they gave it, their response was that they liked giving grace. They were able to do for me what God did for them. That is the first reason why we need to give. Why wouldn’t we, when we look at it like this. We get to be Jesus to people. We get to impact their lives. We get to show them the Gospel, not in some hypothetical way, but really show them. We get to have the rubber meet the road.
As we do this, we will very often encounter the second reason to give, it is worship. We get to worship God through our giving. When we give to the church or other organizations, we are making sacrifices for God. We get to meet him in that place. This is an aspect of giving that we very often forget in our modern Christianity, but it is something the ancients of all religions knew. In the book of Ezra, king Darius, the ruler of Babylon gives Ezra not only permission to rebuild the Temple, but a gift to be offered as worship to God. In Hinduism and Buddhism today, the very way you worship is to bring actual gifts to the altars of the gods. In the African Church the offering is very often at the front of the church and people dance and sing as they put their money in. What they knew and know that we have forgotten is giving is a way of worship. It is a visible way to tell God, and the world, that he is valuable to us. That he matters. He is not an after thought. He does not get the scraps, but the first fruits.
The months where I didn’t know how I was going to give money, but did anyway, have been the months that I have been the closest to God. I have had to rely on him to make the rest of my life work out- and to this date it always has. Those months where I looked at my bills and at my paycheck and said it would never work, but gave money away anyway are the months that at the end I had an excess somehow. Those are the months I have clung to God more, cried our more, worshiped more. We give not out of fear or manipulation, but out of love and affection. We give to increase our relationship with God. We give, because He first gave.
There is one more reason to give, I think. The disciples gave because they saw the movement coming. They did not give just to give. They gave because they saw if the didn’t the church would die. They gave because they owned the vision and felt it incumbent upon them to do all they could in their power to see the vision realized. And that is why, the Christians here, should give too. We are talking about changing a Valley of 600,000 people, 43 cities and towns, and 1200 square miles. This is going to take pastors and evangelists and gas and buildings and heat and electricity and programs and Bibles and computers and food and clothes and homeless shelters and halfway houses and detoxes and battered women shelters and helping people with rent and sending people to seminary and conferences and many other things we don’t even know about yet. And all of this takes money. If we are committed to this vision we need to give. We need to give of our time, talent, and treasure. Now most of you are already giving, so I don’t want to beat it too much, but it is this attitude of giving that is going to help change people’s hearts.
A group of Christians, who quite literally put their money where their mouth is, is what this Valley needs. To often we pay lip service to charity, and are stingy, and the world knows it. To often we want the church to take care of social problems, but won’t help out with our own resources. The movements we have been talking about, they began with prayer, but most of those men and women gave as well. They paid pastors to go to the next town and start yet another church, they paid missionaries to go to India so they could not have debt sailing over, they rented space, and helped the poor, all with money given to the church. We need to give to see this movement start.
Don’t only hear we need to give though. I want you to hear more what we can do. In 182 in London England one man named William Booth began preaching to the poor and don trodden in London Streets. By 1867 he was employing 10 people. By 1874 there were 1000 volunteers and 42 staff. Between 1881 and 1885, 250,000 people were converted because of this movement. Today the organization he started, the Salvation Army, is all over the world. Because people gave they were able to each the poor, giving them a better life and eternal life. I am calling us all to give today because it really can change the world. It has happened. The possibilities of outreach and ministry are endless. But it is going to take more than me and my family. It is going to take an entire army of people, giving their time to help others, their talents to serve God, their treasure to pay for it all. This call to give is not so I can get rich or the church can have some new fence. It is a call to join a movement. I am only able to do what I do because people form all over the country give to me. My salary is 100% donated by people outside the church. We need to give so the next person can be funded too. So the next church planter can get to work. So the next church, and the one after that, and the one after that can start.
This call to give is a call so much higher than just being obedient or afraid. It is an invitation to align ourselves to God, to worship him, to be part of his army. There will be sacrifices we have to make, yes, but there will be treasures abounding we could never have anticipated. We may be stretched and stressed, but we will know an intimacy and love with God that we couldn’t have imagined before. The call to give is a call to join something that is so much bigger than we. It is call to be Christ to those who most need him. It is a call to set this Valley on Fire once again.
Before we end tonight, there is one more thing we need to do to partner with God in this making of a movement. Turn back one last time with me to your programs. We read at the end of Acts 2:
46And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
The final ingredient is Going. See, after they prayed, and fellowshipped, and broke bread together, after they gave as each had need and helped each other from with in, they didn’t stay there. They didn’t send Peter only to go preach again to the masses and see how many people he could bring back to their little church building. They went to the Temple. We may object because the temple was the place of worship. We may think that this just describes them going to a worship service together, but we would be missing many things. The Temple wasn't only the place of worship for someone living in Jerusalem. It was also the town square, flea market, and coffee shop. The Temple is where all business was conducted. It was surrounded by shops and restaurants. What this is describing are people who are on the move. They are going.
In Acts 1:8 the final instructions Jesus gives to his fledgling church is that once the Spirit comes upon they that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the Ends of the World. The Spirit came upon them, and now they are fulfilling this mission that Christ commanded they fulfill. They are being witnesses in Jerusalem here. They are not holed up gloating about how holy they are, or talking theology all day, or discussing the direction the church should take. They are out on the field, interacting with people, going to where they are, meeting them on their terms, and telling them about this Jesus who was crucified.
This must be us as well. Now that is not all they did. They came back at night and broke bread together, which here refers to communion and something that only members of the Church were allowed to take at this time. There is a balance. They are coming back to be with believers, but spending their days with those who are not Christians. I am not saying here that we should only hang out with non-Christians, we clearly need fellowship too. But when fellowships is not balanced with mission, we are not with Jesus anymore. These early Christians understood this, and so they went out and preached the good news.
I am also not saying we need to go to Rao’s with out Bible and start street preaching. Peter definitely did that earlier in Acts, but it was called for then. What we read here is simply that they are going to the Temple. I imagine they have friends there, and family. They are buying things and bartering and talking, and amidst all of this, they have to talk about their conversion and what has been happening. How could they avoid it. Some where poor and now have money, so they surely would be praising God and explaining to people where the money came from. Some were rich and were selling their things. Surely people would ask questions, and surely they would explain why the sudden change and why they are now selling all the things they used to hold so dear. They had a change and the people noticed, and the only thing this early church did was go out and be available and unashamed.
We too must go to the Temple unashamed. Very often we think evangelism a dirty word. It is something that must be awkward that we do to strangers. Much more effective is just to live and be available. Go about our daily business, but with intent. We don’t go to the market simply to buy things, but to buy things, and be salt and light. If we Go, God will bless it, just as he had so many times in the past.
John Wesley, a Pastor in the 1700’s in England, and the founder of the Methodists is renowned for this. He would ride his horse through the country and speak to anyone and everyone he could. This is during the rise of the Industrial Revolution in England, and there were many dirty and dangerous places. John was known for going to them. During one trip he went to one of the local coal towns. These places were known for violence. They were very hostile to outsiders and people begged him not to go. He entered the shanty town, worse than any ghetto in America today, and began preaching. As he was finishing up he recounts how these men, whose faces were blacked to the core from years of work underground in coal mines, began to have streams of white running down their faces. These men, who were known for running into the civilized parts of town looting them and retuning to their shanties, who were so fearsome even the police wouldn’t enter, who’s violent society was feared around the world, were crying at the Gospel. Their tears were wiping the years of dust and dirt off their faces. John understood that we need to go, even if it seems dangerous, even if it seems hopeless.
As we finish today, I again want to not beat us over the head and say we have to go. I want to call us to a vision of what it could be like if we went. The men in Acts who went to the Temple did not go in vain. We read that they received favor with the people and the Lord added to their number daily. It as not an exercise in futility. People’s lives were changed. When John Wesley entered the coal town, the men’s hearts that were so hard were softened to tears. When all the people I have talked about today went, people came to know Jesus. The Haystack Revival started churches all over the world where there never was one before, when the Fulton Street Revival went to the neighborhoods of New York City and the world, they left a wake of conversions behind. When the Salvation Army left England and came to America, it created a movement throughout the world.
And when we go out, we too can impact this Valley in the same way. It may seem daunting. It is. The task is too big for just us. That is why we are trying to start a movement, not just of us, but of many, many more. I am telling us to Go, not just so we feel good about ourselves and can say we spent X amount of hours being a good evangelist, I am saying Go, because God uses the faithful. The early churches numbers were added to daily. What these new converts say were devout men and woman who prayed constantly, gathered together, gave generously, and lived like they talked. They encountered the redeemed life, the Church in action, the Living God.
This week, I tell us to Pray, Give and Go, not because God will be mad if we don’t, but because he will rejoice if we do. We have the opportunity to be used by the Almighty to change lives. If we truly believe that God has redeemed us, given us all things, brought us to the kingdom of light, given us an inheritance and a new life, how, I ask, can we not offer it to everybody we see. How can we be ashamed or embarrassed to share this Gospel, how can we be stingy with out gifts and money, how can we not want to talk with Him daily. How can we not pray for this Valley, this Town, these Campuses. The call today is not to do these things out of fear or discipline, but to do them with Joy. Remember the calling we have, remember the God we have, remember the New Life we have.
Tonight is a call to join a movement that can change so many lives in the same way ours was changed. Tonight is an opportunity to be part of something so much bigger than ourselves. Tonight is the beginning of something that will change the world.
Let us pray
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