Determining Your Calling

With over 700 of our leaders I dealt with this question: How do you determine what God has called you to, specifically?

The Best Way To Share Christ :: Connect Someone to the Bible

This post originally appeared in September, 2011. These resources (See For Yourself; Getting Connected; Taste and See) should prove valuable when sharing your faith with others. See discussion below on the best way to use them. Feel free to print them out, and put them to good use!

I tried to emphasize this past weekend that it’s very simple to share your faith with others. Seriously–anyone can do it. Some of the most effective “evangelists” in Scripture had known Christ for about 10 minutes (John 1:40-41; 4:39-41; 9:25).

I think one of the best things to do is invite people to study the Bible, on their own, and then offer to get together with them to talk about what they are reading. Martin Luther once likened the Bible to a caged lion. When the lion is challenged, there really is no need to defend it. Just let it out of the cage!

In much the same way, when people read the Scriptures, the Spirit of God will work in their own hearts. There is nothing as powerful as the Bible itself.

Each file linked below has a set of thirty-one passages to be read for each day of the month. Along with each passage are questions that help bring clarity to the verses. Print these out and give them to a friend, ask them to reflect on them; to write out (as instructed in the documents) in a few sentences what they see as the main thought, and then, in a sentence or two, what it means to them; then arrange to get back together in a week or so to discusswhat they are learning. It’s good stuff!

Just the other day one of our pastoral team members had a friend who received Christ after only three weeks of reading through these passages.

- See For Yourself

- Getting Connected

- Taste and See

Your Work and the Mission of God

It was great to meet with a thriving group of businessmen here at the Summit this morning. They meet the 3rd Thursday of every month in Suite 111 of the Brier Creek North campus from 7-8am, and you are free to join. It’s encouraging to be around men passionate about seeing their secular vocations leveraged for the mission of God.

Here are a few resources I referenced this morning. One of the great achievements of the Protestant Reformation was the tearing down of the artificial wall between clergy and laity. The following can help you to that end, showing how God has designed and equipped you for business or other so-called ‘secular’ vocation for His purposes:

Determining Your Calling: (mp3), (Transcript PDF) (I gave this talk this past Tuesday at our Equip Leadership Forum)

Blog article: “What Makes Business Christian?“

Blog article: “The Next Wave of Missions“

These articles from past issues of Christianity Today (Note: I wouldn’t agree, necessarily, with every word of these articles, but there is some valuable stuff in there)

- Working on Eternity

- The Mission of Business

- Work Is Our Mission

- Scripture and The Wall Street Journal 

Exciting story of Conversion from Summit Team in South Asia

“I received this incredible story from our team in South Asia that I thought would encourage you. God is working through our Summit Church planters around the world. Believe God for great things on behalf of them…

“ ‘Linus’ was one of the first guys that I met here.  He came highly recommended as an auto driver, and we struck up a quick friendship.  We talked about our religious beliefs from day one—Linus, like most of the people in this city, was Hindu.  One day in the chai (tea) shop, I began asking Linus if he could remember any stories that he had been told from the Bible.  He vaguely fumbled through the creation story.  I had him tell the whole story and I prompted him for aspects he had forgotten, or helped him out when was wrong.  Then I retold the story to him and asked him what he thought.  He said he liked the story a lot.

Now, the whole time I was talking with Linus, I noticed there was another man next to him listening to my every word.  When I was finished with the story the other man, ‘Usha’, asked me if I was a missionary. After being caught off-guard, Usha and I talked for a few minutes and I learned that he was a believer, but he felt like he wasn’t following the Lord “very good.”  I encouraged him for a minute and then we both left the chai shop.  We will come back to Usha in a minute.

From that point on, each conversation I had with Linus got better and better.  He began to believe more and more of the good news from the Bible that I was sharing with Him. I asked him one night if he would read a Bible if I got one for him in his language. He promised that he would.  For three days he reminded me—multiple times!—about my promise to get him, as he called it, “Da Book.”  A few days later, when I was finally able to find one, I called Linus to arrange a time to drop it off.  While I was on the phone with him, a 17-year-old boy was in his car and overhearing the conversation, asked, “Why do you want a Bible? You aren’t going to convert, are you?” Linus responded, “No, I didn’t say anything about converting, but Jesus died so that we could be forgiven of our sins.  None of our gods has done anything like this.  Don’t you want to know more about Jesus?”  What I love about this is that Linus was witnessing even before he ever believed!

As soon as Linus got the book, he began reading. I soon discovered that his wife ‘Anita’ was reading “Da Book” too.  A few days later he approached me and said, “This book tells me about Jesus. But I want to know why Jesus had to die.” You can imagine my mixture of excitement and hesitancy to approach such a deep subject with my limited Hindi and his limited English. I took him back to the creation story and reminded him of man’s biggest problem—sin.  I then took him through the promise of one who would remedy our sin problem coming through the lineage of David (Family heritage is everything here).  Once he resolved that all men are sinful and rightfully deserved death and eternal separation from God, I asked him, “Who is the only man on earth that has never sinned?”  He said, “Jesus.”  I then asked him who Jesus was. He said, “God.”  After this I explained to him that God was so kind to send his Son Jesus, who is God, in the form of man, who would live a sinless life and would die for the sins of the whole world so we could be reunited with God.  I used the imagery of God restoring us back to our position in the Garden of Eden before the fall—and this is where he really got it.  It all clicked for him.  After we talked that night, he told me he believed that Jesus was the true God, and that the Hindu gods were not true gods. He said he did not believe he was a follower of Jesus, but that he wanted to be.

It was a few days later that Linus professed faith that Jesus is the only way for his sins to be covered and expressed genuine desire to follow Him. A few nights after he believed, Linus and Anita came to our home for dinner.  We were talking about Jesus and church when Usha, the Christian guy from the chai shop, came up in our conversation.  Linus said, “You are telling me that I should go to the same church that Usha goes to?  I know Usha.  Many times Usha and I have had conversations in the chai shop. Never once has he told me about Jesus.  I don’t think Usha knows what I know about Jesus.  If he does, how could he have never once brought Jesus up in our conversations?” Linus spoke this with a little bit of anger.  I couldn’t help but grin in excitement that he has tasted something so good about Jesus that he couldn’t imagine not sharing this news with others.  But my heart was also broken for Usha. I know many times I have had multiple conversations with people and never once brought up Jesus.  How many more “Linuses” would there be in my life if I was more bold to share about Jesus?  Here is a guy that has known Jesus for less than a week and can’t imagine NOT bringing up the Good News he now knows about Jesus.

 Since then, Linus has been sharing everything he learns about Jesus with his wife and his in-laws.  On Christmas day he called me. I had shared with him a few days earlier the story of the prodigal son from Luke 15.  We discussed the story and I challenged him to tell it to 10 people.  When he called me he was with his wife’s cousins and in-laws.  He said, “Sir, can you tell me where the story about the two sons is again in Da Book? I am with my wife’s family and I want to share it with them.”  I told him and he quickly got off the phone.  Love it!”

How God Could Use Your Business Skill in Africa: Summit Mission Opp

I’ve mentioned to you, Summit, that I’m growing more and more convinced that the next wave of missions will ride on the wings of business (sorry for the mixed metaphor). I wanted to let you know about an opportunity to participate in one of these business-oriented mission trips this spring through our church. Brad Brown, on our pastoral team, is leading a trip to Kenya with an organization he’s founded called Uhuru Child, and this would be an amazing chance to see how God is moving through the creation of businesses in Kenya. Uhuru Child’s mission is to “listen and intelligibly address the needs of children living in under-developed countries by linking arms with local communities and organizations.” You can learn more about Uhuru Child here.

This is a trip for anyone who wants to see how business and church planting can work together. Brad is looking for men and women from all walks of life, with all sorts of professions, and with all sorts of passions.  The team that goes will be up close and in the lives of Kenyans where Uhuru Child serves. This trip is going to be a unique opportunity for you to have a hand in meeting both spiritual and physical needs as the team hosts a day of prayer and medical care. Then the team will be placed with host families living in the impoverished Jikaze Resettlement Village, so that they can make an impact through creating deep relationships.

Interested in seeing what God is doing through business in Kenya? The trip is scheduled for March 23-31. For more information or to get your application to go, email Brad Brown at Brad@uchild.com.

J I Packer on the Greatest Gift a Pastor Can Give to His People

J.I. Packer reflects on how impacting the preaching of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was on his life during his time at Lloyd-Jones church. May God grant me this as well!

In some way there was in the Doctor’s preaching thunder and lightning that no tape or transcription ever did or could capture — power, I mean, to mediate a realization of God’s presence…. Nearly forty years on, it still seems to me that all I have ever known about preaching was given me in the winter of 1948-49, when I worshipped at Westminster Chapel with some regularity.  Through the thunder and lightning, I felt and saw as never before the glory of Christ and of his gospel as modern man’s only lifeline, and learned by experience why historic Protestantism looks on preaching as the supreme means of grace and of communion with God.  Preaching, thus viewed and valued, was the centre of the Doctor’s life: into it he poured himself unstintingly; for it he pleaded untiringly…. Pulpit dramatics and rhetorical rhapsodies the Doctor despised and never indulged in; his concern was always with the flow of thought, and the emotion he expressed as he talked was simply the outward sign of passionate thinking…. He embodied and expressed ‘the glory’ — the glory of the God, of Christ, of grace, of the gospel, of the Christian ministry, of humanness according to the new creation — more richly than any man I have ever known.  No man can give another a greater gift than a vision of such glory as this.  I am forever in his debt.”

Thanks to Reformation 21 blog for the lead.

 - From JIP’s Collected Shorter Writings 4, pp. 84 and 87

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