Respond to Sunday, September 15th, 2019

“Deploy Every Member” – 2 Corinthians 5:15-21 | Pastor Rickey Primrose

Truth: In deploying every member, we will gauge success by our sending capacity, not our seating capacity. There is a myth in the church that being called as an evangelist or missionary is for only a few, spiritually elite Christians. We believe that the Great Commission is not a calling for some; it is a mandate for all. God did not create a mission for His church, He created church for His mission, and He expects every part of the body to be engaged in that mission.

Response: How would it impact our church and our community if God started sending more people from among us to the mission field and to plant churches? Where and how are you called to be on mission today? Ask God to show you how you can be deployed on mission where you are right now. 

Truth: Every member of Christ’s church is deployed to live on mission because the Gospel changes how we feel about God, how we see people, and how we understand our purpose.  Every Christian should live on mission to see His glory spread because the love He has shown us compels us to do nothing else. We now see people as those who God loves who will suffer eternally in a real place called hell if they don’t know Christ. Every Christian now has a new purpose: to live as an ambassador of Christ. 

Response: How has the gospel changed how you feel about God? How has the gospel changed how you see people? How has the gospel changed how you see your purpose? Confess and repent of any area of your life you are still living for yourself. Take advantage this week of the opportunities God has given you to be an ambassador of His kingdom. 

Truth: Deploying every member will require us to maintain kingdom metrics and develop kingdom warriors. The number of people attending our church cannot be the ultimate measure of success. We must measure success based upon what we do with the people and resources God gives us. If we’re going to be a church that deploys, we must be a church that develops every member to know sound doctrine, understand the mission of God, and know how to share their faith.

Response: Are you a spectator or player when you come to church? What needs to happen to deepen your missional drive for reaching the lost in our community and around the world? Ask God to give you a deeper desire to see the lost come to Him. 

Family Response

Truth:  The struggle to find purpose is not isolated to our American culture.  People all across the world want to know they matter, they want to feel significant, they want to live with purpose.  When God gives us a new identity in Christ Jesus, God gives us a life of significance and purpose—and not just some of us, but all of us.

Response:  Think about the imagery of an ambassador.  An ambassador is the official, authorized representative of his/her nation’s highest governing power.  As such, an ambassador is purposefully sent out to a foreign nation to speak, act, and represent his/her nation before another.  Only a very select few citizens of our country are chosen and authorized to serve as ambassadors. This is not how it works with God’s Kingdom.  God gives all of His citizens the responsibility and honor of being ambassadors of His Gospel Kingdom. All of God’s sons and daughters in Christ Jesus have this significant purpose.

Response:  David Platt’s words also evoke dramatic imagery, “God didn’t save you to sanitize you and put you on the shelf; He saved you to send you into service.”  Sit down to dinner with your kids—food hot and ready, table set—but with dishes that are visibly filthy. Have everyone get his/her useless plate and take it to the sink.  Let all the active hands help soap and scrub and rinse until every trace of filth is gone. Dry off the newly sanitized dishes, put them away in the cabinet, and return to the table.  Are sanitized plates in the cabinet any more useful than filthy plates on the table? Why not? You and your kids are probably hungry and have had about enough of this object lesson. Get the plates that have been made clean and let them serve their purpose.

Pray for the Church

1. Leaders in worship: Pastor Rickey Primrose, Brandon Ramey & the Worship Music Ministry.
2. God will meet with us through His word and by His Spirit, lead us to worship Christ and grow in Christ-likeness.
3. God will help us to be a church of zeal and hope, passionate about ministry and confident in His promises.
4. God will make us more passionate about and obedient to His mission of leading people to trust and follow Christ.

Prepare for the Message

“Unwavering Faith” Joshua 14:6-15 | Pastor Rickey Primrose

We return to our “Joshua:  Seizing the Promises of God” series this week with a sermon titled “Unwavering Faith” from Joshua 14:6-15. This text recounts Caleb’s inheritance of Hebron that Moses swore to give him many years before. Caleb was one of the original twelve spies who stood with Joshua forty years earlier with confidence and faith in God’s provision of the land. In addition to reading these verses from Joshua this week, go back and read Numbers 13-14 to see this promise from Moses. What did God promise to Caleb? In the Joshua text, what is said of Caleb multiple times? How does Caleb’s life speak to us about wholly trusting and following the Lord? How do we see unwavering faith in this passage? How does this passage lead you to praise God, repent of sin, and trust in his promises? 

Music for Sunday

New Doxology

Hallelujah For The Cross

We Will Remember