welcome to unit six in the course introduction to missions uh this is the second part part two of missions as discipl making in unit five in last unit we focused on the Apostle Paul as the primary Frontier missionary in the New Testament it's difficult to exaggerate the impact of the Apostle Paul in terms of the revelation of God um Paul wrote 2third of the New Testament uh 13 out of 27 books and I think by word count about 2third of the New Testament and so uh that's a huge impact uh we live our lives today
uh and and direct the church through the principles of the New Testament and in addition to that um you know that started with 14 years of Frontier Mission work four missionary Journeys over 14 years uh 99,100 50 miles on foot and by boat and Paul sets the the standard for Frontier missions and by Frontier missions I mean going where other people have not gone testifying of the Gospel making disciples Paul did that in places where he was the Pioneer nobody had been there before and when we think of missions as discipl making we have to
start where Paul started started uh we have to start with the exposure of a person to the gospel of grace and grace again refers to the fact that none of us deserve the blessings of God the blessings of God are given as a free gift and it's through faith that we receive those blessings like Ephesians 289 tells us it's by grace that you are saved through faith it's the gift of God not of Works they can't be earned because they were accomplished lished fully paid for fully by the Willing sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ
and it's through his accomplishments that we receive all the spiritual blessings not some spiritual blessings all of them let's look at Ephesians chapter 1 3-8 which says all praise to God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the Heavenly Realms because we are united with Christ even before he made the world God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without blame or fault in his eyes God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ
this is what he wanted to do it gave him great pleasure so we praise God for the Glorious Grace that he poured out on us who belong to his dear son he's so rich in kindness and Grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his son and forgave all of our sins he showered his kindness on us along with all wisdom and all understanding let's pray together and thank the Lord for this father thank you that you didn't just give us some spiritual blessings you gave us all spiritual blessings because of the accomplishments
and achievements of Jesus Christ alone thank you that all of it is a free gift of your grace Lord it is through your kindness and it was your great pleasure to adopt us into your family and call us your own because we belong to Christ father thank you for purchasing our freedom through the blood of the son and for foring our sins you've showered us with kindness and Grace and father we are grateful help us to live out of that gratitude Lord and serve you wholeheartedly and with joy in Jesus name amen what good news
what good news because of Christ because you and I have put our faith in Christ we receive these benefits through pure grace and deserve gift and when we believe these things it changes us to the core it changes Us in terms of identity how we view ourselves we're talking about missions as disciple making and a disciple is someone who's responded to the gospel of grace and the promises of God have has started to change them at a core level change their very identity an identity statement is simply an I am statement I am Fillin the
blank uh what I am statements do we see in Ephesians 13-8 when I look at that passage I see that I am you can say this if you believe in Christ and you've invited him to come into your life and you belong to Christ you can make these identity statements based on just these verses and the first thing is I am blessed with every spiritual blessing because I'm United with Christ the second thing is I am loved and chosen by God the third thing is I am adopted into God's family it gave God great pleasure
to adopt me into his family is what it says uh the next one is I've received the Glorious grace of God poured out on me is what this passage says and the last thing here is I am purchased and forgiven through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and so missions as discipl making is the concept that no matter where we are we are on Mission with Christ and it is a mission to First make known the good news of this Grace toward undeserving Sinners all of sin that fall short of the glory of God
Romans 3:23 none of us deserve this but the grace of God makes us recipients of all the promises of God 2 Corinthians 1:20 says all of the promise Promises of God are yes and amen to those who are in Christ Jesus and so those promises change our identity every promise of God we can turn into an I am statement and it changes our identity that's what the Bible means when it says we are now a new creation in Christ Jesus we're a new creature 2 Corinthians 5:116 says so we have stopped evaluating others from a
human point of view at one time we thought of Christ Christ merely as from a human point of view how differently we know him now verse 17 this means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person the old life is gone and the new life has begun Verse 18 and all of this is a gift from God who brought us back to himself through Christ and God has given us this task this is missions a task is a mission God God has given us this mission to reconcile people to him for God
was in Christ reconciling the world to himself no longer counting people sin against them and he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation so we are Christ ambis ambassadors we're on Mission and God is making an appeal to the world through us and we speak for Christ with we plead come back to God verse 21 for God made Christ who never sinned to be the offering for our sin so that we could be made right with God through Christ that word made right is the Greek word deaun and it is a legal term to be
declared not guilty so it is through the work of Christ and our faith in the work of Christ that we are literally before God declared not guilty is that good news it's the best news so Mission when we use the word Mission or missions we're talking about connecting with people in order that they can see Christ in us and then hear this good news about what Christ has done for them them and then as this passage in 2 Corinthians 5 says they can come back to God our sin separates us from God but as ambassadors
on Mission with Christ we're calling people back to God to be reconciled with God and they come back to God by calling out to the Lord Jesus in prayer John 1:12 says as many as receive Christ of the he gives the right to become children of God Romans 10:13 whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved it there is a calling out Jesus knocks at the door of our life we open the door and invite him in Revelation 3:20 and so coming back to God is a person acknowledging their need to be
brought back to God their need for forgiveness of their sins and then giving Christ the invitation to come into their lives when we invite Christ into our lives and put our faith in him we are reconciled to God we're put into the family of God known as the kingdom of God and in the kingdom of God when someone comes out of Darkness into light in the kingdom of God that's forever if we've been rescued and redeemed and reconciled to God Jesus says in John 644 no one can snatch us out of the father's hand no
one can take us out of the father 's hand and so once a person comes to Christ that's a beautiful response to the grace of God this gift that we could never earn made possible through the works of Christ and then and then if we look at the life of the Apostle Paul and how he uh instructed the churches through his letters those 13 letters we see that living life with Christ has three distinct parts and in uh the mission organization that I lead impact multiplied we refer to those three parts and we put the
teaching of the New Testament in these three categories and we call it a devotional life with Christ a relational life with Christ and a missional life with Christ so to do effective missions we have to understand what these things are but we've got to move beyond the principles to the practice and so we're going to move through these principles and we're going to finish this unit by talking about some practical ways some Pathways to apply these principles and the principle number one of life with Christ is this devotional life with the Lord um devotional life
is how a person spends con uh intentional time in the presence of God learning and aligning his or her heart with the truth of God's word and yielding to the leadership of the Holy Spirit if someone is consistently and intentionally coming into God's presence learning and aligning heart with the word of God and then yielding to the leadership of the Holy Spirit they're living a devotional life with God if they have a a pattern a pathway a process of doing that then they're living a devotional life with Christ Jesus in John 8:3 31 and 32
said um to the people that believed in him so he makes a distinction between those who believe and those who are a disciple with a devotional kind of life he says to those who believe in him you're truly my disciples because a disciple has a devotional life you're truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings that's aligning with the word of God the teachings of Jesus Christ and he said you will know the truth and the truth will set you free so that's the devotional life and you have to have a pathway you
have to have a process of developing that consistent devotional life in order to be a disciple of Jesus Christ to move from believer to disciple and a missionary is helping people connect with Christ for salvation and move into this process of becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ so the second principle is a relational life with Christ and in your relational life with Christ you're actually sharing from your devotional life with a group of spiritual friends for Mutual support and encouragement you're lifting one another up you're sharing with one another and you're lifting one another up
in prayer 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says comfort and edify build one another up Romans 12:15 says Rejoice with those who Rejoice weep with those who weep and so this relational connection with spiritual friends resol revolving around your devotional life with Christ sharing from that and praying for one another is is an essential aspect of being a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ we don't do this alone we have to live our life with Christ with spiritual friends he never calls us to do this alone in fact the Lord gives us 32 one another commands in the
New Testament they're all in the imperative mood in the biblical Greek language cor Greek and that means they are not suggestions they commands and so how we relate to one another in our relational life is incredibly important to Christ it's incredibly important to God because God God the Father Son and Holy Spirit is the ultimate Eternal relationship and so relationships are very important to the Lord our devotional life in effect flows like a a cascading stream into relational life and then that relational life flows like a cascading stream into our missional life and so we
also the third part is our missional life with Christ and a missional life with Christ is actively demonstrating the love of God with Readiness to share the gospel with Readiness to share the good news of Jesus with others another way to just um quickly Express missional life is serving with gospel Readiness and so um how how do we do these things how do we level up in our intentionality about being strategic in our own personal devotional life and as a as a missionary as someone on Mission whether it's across the street or around the world
how do we connect with others help them to connect with Christ for salvation and then intention Ally develop a devotional life with Christ a relational life with others and a missional life in the world well the way the way we accomplish this is we get very strategic we get very prayerful we get very intentional about developing a process that is simple enough to be transferable and biblical so that a person can do it and pass it on that's when we have exponential Kingdom impact it's when we make discipleship our Pathways of discipleship transferable easily transferable
to others and so I want to talk about how we do that in um our Global Mission Ministry uh I'm the executive director of the global Mission Ministry called impact multiplied and our pathways are expressed through something we call DMI which is disciplemakers Institute and um and we've just developed tools uh I have developed several tools to make discipleship very transferable and uh for instance I put them in a book called The Three Essentials and uh our technical director uh will put a link uh to that uh here in this unit and so if you
don't have a copy of the three Essentials book he'll put a link to that if if you'd like to get a copy but um people don't have to use this particular pathway but it's a very good pathway if I do say so myself because people are using it and passing it on not just here but globally uh we have uh directors in multiple countries that have planted that have uh planted multiple churches excuse me my phone thought I was talking to it and started talking back to me I know you've never had that happen uh
but if you're going to make a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ you have to have a pathway that aligns with Biblical teaching that is transferable to others and I believe we have a good one um and it's something that anyone can use in fact we have children they're multiple children it really surprised me because I didn't I didn't write the three Central's book with with the mindset that a 10 or 11 year old child was going to take it but we actually have a few children that are on there uh it has a journal
integrated into it and uh there are a few children that are 11 to 13 years old that are on their fourth or fifth Journal like this is how they've connected with God and God's making impact through them uh to reach other people for Christ and so this is a transferable process for everybody it's intergenerational but but what I did is I I started with a a plan to get people into God's word consistently that's simple transferable doable and I called that 345 Essentials 345 345 stands for 3 minutes and 45 seconds if you use an
audio Bible say on uh an app like U verion or um Bible Hub or something like that that has audio version of the Bible the average chapter in the Bible takes 3 minutes and 45 seconds to listen to now some chapters take two minutes some take five but when you average them all together it's 3 minutes and 45 seconds so to listen to or to read a chapter of the Bible takes an average of 3 minutes and 45 seconds and I believe we can carve 3 minutes and 45 seconds out of our day uh and
I say that tongue and cheek but it's doable it is simple it's transferable and knowing that God wants to speak truth to our heart that sets us free and give us promises that Empower us that's second Peter 1:4 it it just uh it is so logical and it should should be inspirational to us to spend some time in God's word every day and the 345 essential process is a good way to begin exposing yourself or another person to the truth and Promises of God's word that set you free and Empower you and so in the
three Essentials book there's a uh schedule for doing that and if you do five chapters a week there are 260 chapters in the New Testament 52 weeks in the year 52 * five is 260 so five chapters a week get you through the entire New Testament in a in a year in a year's time 52 weeks and so every year it's a very simple process to to go through the entire New Testament to pray and ask God to speak uh to your heart we actually have a process for that that's on all of our uh
Ministry websites uh I a teaching pastor at Christ the king Hope Church and so on on the ctk Hope Church website you you have that process Under The Heading uh devotional life on the ctk Hope Church um app also there's a free app and you have devotional life with the 345 Essentials process on there and a suggested way to pray prepare your heart and spend time in God's word and develop the devotional life with Christ that we're talking about the devotional life then needs to flow into relational life and our our relational life U pathway
that we emphasize and like I said the you don't people don't have to use our pathway but most people don't have a pathway they just have a principle and they know they should be a disciple of Jesus but they don't have a pathway for experiencing these three Essentials of devotional life and then relational life missional life but the way we have um develop this process of of relational life is what we call impact groups and in our impact groups and we'll talk a little more about these strategies in the next unit but our impact groups
are smaller groups of spiritual friends uh it can be as small as you me and Jesus it can be just a couple of people starting an impact group because you're sharing life together uh our impact group some of our larger impact groups have 20 people in them but the average group has anywhere from 8 to 10 folks and these are spiritual friends they gather uh not necessarily for Bible study but for bible discussion they say a prayer they share from their devotional life and how God has spoken to their hearts through his word or any
uh leadership adjust ments or assignments from the holy spirit that they've experienced personally that they feel like they need to do and they need prayer for and so after those things are shared and the people are built up and edified through the devotional lives of other spiritual friends then they pray for one another and one of the processes we have for that is called all-inclusive prayer that means everyone prays but not everyone has to pray out loud and so everyone has has an opportunity to share a prayer request not an obligation but an opportunity and
then after those prayer requests are shared then someone begins to pray you pray for the person on your right but you don't have to pray out loud you can pray silently and just say Amen out loud so the next person knows when to pray now what I've seen from doing this for over 20 years now over and over again groups form and people begin to pray they're not uh they may not be comfortable praying out loud and they pray silently and this is the first time that they've really engaged in praying for someone else because
often they're new Believers or just Believers that haven't been discipled but they they will start praying silently and say Amen out loud and then two or three uh group meetings later we get the incredible privilege of hearing that person say the first prayer out loud for the person on their right and from there uh they are discipled um organically by just being in a group and hearing other people pray and they learn how to pray for one another and then in addition to that so there there are three key elements of an impact group sharing
from our devotional life with one another so that we're built up by that that praying for one another and then uh we we lead the groups to have something called a common cause and the common cause is the mission that the Holy Spirit leads this group to do to serve to meet a need to heal a hurt to make our faith visible and valuable through actions of love to those who are outside the faith and and that's in keeping an alignment with the teaching of Jesus and Peter and Paul Jesus in Matthew 5:116 said let
your light so shine before people that they may see your good works and then they'll glorify the Father in heaven and so having a common cause mission where we're out meeting a need together is an opportunity for people to see your good works uh the Apostle Peter expressed it this way in 1 Peter 3:15 he said always be ready to give an answer to those who ask about the hope that is in you now the thing that is um the presupposition the understanding there is you've done something to cause someone who's outside of the faith
to ask you why you have this hope you've made your faith visible and valuable to people who are outside of the Kingdom who don't know the gospel El of God's grace and so it is your works that earn the ask of 1 Peter 3:15 always be ready to give an answer to those who ask that ask is earned through the good works Jesus mentioned in Matthew 5:116 and then the beautiful thing is there's an expression right after that in 1 Peter 3:18 of the Gospel of God's grace where it says Christ suffered for our sins
the just for the unjust in order to bring us safely home to God he was put to Death In the Flesh and Made Alive by the spirit the death burial and resurrection of Jesus to bring us safely home to God come back to God like 2 Corinthians 5 says and be reconciled to God it's that message that reconciles us to God and and the idea of scripture the methodology of scripture is not to just go out out and preach it at people who are not asking for it it's to go out and live our lives
and to do things like common cause missions together across the street or around the world that make faith and love for God visible to those who don't yet have it and cause them to ask about the hope that is in you this is mission strategy this is a pathway that's relational life it's an example of relational life pathway and missional life pathway and this is how we've seen thousands upon thousands of people receive Christ as their Savior and then move into this process and pathway of a devotional life with Christ that flows into a relational
life with others revolving around that devotional life and then moving outside of that group led by the spirit of God empowered by the spirit of God to do simple acts of service that meet needs heal hurts volunteer in the community and people ask why I'll give you uh I'll give you a couple of examples um we have a senior adult impact group at our church ctk Hope Church and someone in that senior adult group as they're sharing their devotional life together praying for one another someone in the group said I know about a young single
mother who's living um in poverty and she's really having difficulty making ends meet and I know that her appliances uh have stopped working uh I believe it was a refrigerat Ator and she needed a refrigerator and so our senior adult group said together we are going to we're going to take up a collection right now and we're going to purchase a refrigerator and have it delivered to her home and we're going to go there and we're going to pray with this young mother and make sure she has what she needs do you think that young
mother uh when that happened out of the blue and somebody got her refrigerator and uh and showed up there a couple of them showed up there to check on her and to say a prayer with her do you think she said why are you being so good to me they earned the ask it had a great impact on that young mother and that young mother came to church and heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ that's an example another example uh we had an intergenerational impact group that heard about a a man with disability who needed
a ramp built at his house and so they built the ramp they they went and bought the materials and then went and built the ramp for the man the man asked them why he they earned the ask and one of the leaders of the impact group shared the message of Jesus the Gospel of Jesus with this man and he said can I give my life to Jesus right now and they led him in a prayer to receive Jesus and he said what do I do now and they said the next step is baptism it was
summertime and so they called me and we live on a on a little farm and we have a couple of horses and I have horse troughs I had a a long metal horse trough I put it on the truck and I drove over to the man's house and he came down that newly built ramp into the yard but let me tell you what he did he called his family and friends and he told them what he was going to do and there was a yard full of people when I got there and I asked him
to share why he was doing what he was doing and he shared what our impact group leader had told him with his family and his brother-in-law said well I need Jesus in my life too his brother-in-law his son nephew is standing there about 25 years old he was older man and so he had a son 25 years old and the son said um well can I have Christ in my life too and I ended up baptizing ing four or five people it was uh a couple of summers ago from this impact group just going and
building a ramp and earning that ask and so this is missions whether it's across the street this person was in in Burlington where our church was or a few months ago I was in Uganda and we F we went and discovered needs in the different Villages and we helped meet those needs in the Villages and I baptized about 150 people in a a creek that ran down the hill there was a a pool there and we ended up baptizing around 150 people because they earned the ask and they were able to share Christ this is
missions as discipl making bringing people to Christ and teaching them how to live life with Jesus God gives assignments assignments are people if you're yielding yourself to the Holy Spirit he'll say call this person pray with this person meet this meet a need in that person's life I need you to go and be living proof of a loving God to a watching World in that person and he will do that for each of you when that happens 1 Peter 3:15 says people will ask you about the hope that you have in you and we need
to equip you to be able to share how people have hope in Christ we need to do that and we need to equip you and what a disciple is so that eventually you can become a disciplemaker but until then I know how to make a discipl maker the staff here doesn't have a problem sharing Jesus with people so how do we leverage that you have friends relatives Associates and neighbors we don't even know and so God wants to reach those people with his light and love through your life and so while you're on assignment from
the Holy Spirit um to to meet a need heal a hurt encourage a friend love people you can invite somebody to church partner with me or whoever is up here will share Jesus with them and you know how many people come to church when they're invited by a friend seven out of 12 that's objective data so more than half so if you guys invite 10 people if you invite 12 let's stay with the data if you invite 12 people this group right here Grows by 700% in a year can you invite 10 people to church
in a year what's going to happen is they're going to come under under the hearing of the Gospel cuz we're not going to have a service where we don't share the gospel invite people to receive Jesus so the group Grows by 700% a year if if our people start inviting people and we share the gospel and the Bible says the gospel is the power of God to Salvation for all who believe and they start believing that mall is way too small it's way too small for what God will do if we take the opportunity I
walk in there I don't see a big space when I walk in the mall and it's not because I want to grow a big mega church and be the pastor of it did you hear me say I'm not going to be your pastor long term I don't want to give you any F I don't want anything to have false expectations God's called me to lead impact multiplied and be a global missions director has the staff known that from the beginning right I haven't said anything else I don't have any ambition to grow a big church
I'm just saying I walk in that mall and I know the if if my people will yield to the Holy Spirit and do the assignments and show the love and be the light and then the course of it invite people to come and you share the gospel all the all the staff is sharing the gospel God wants all his people to be equipped we should be about equipping you but until you're settled in that equipping and deployed and and doing that we don't have to wait for that you can just go do that assignment bring
them here and they'll come into the kingdom of God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ [Applause] man I've got a whole lot more and I'm not going to share it right now because we're doing a series on missional life and I'm teeing stuff up the holy spirit's teeing some stuff up I can see the wheels turning in Cliff's mind right now there's a little bit of smoke coming out of his ears and you guys better be here next week yeah so let's pray can you imagine God using your life um can you imagine laying
some things down that God wants you to lay down can you imagine putting a yes like a big yes on the table before the Lord and being ready to do what he asked you to do yeah
