I’m very goal oriented and this time of year I’m working hard on them. By January 15th they will be in writing and I’ll hit the road with all I’ve got trying to achieve them. I urge you to develop written goals and go after them too.
I separate mine into spiritual, career, and personal goals. I’m excited about my spiritual goals this year and look forward with great anticipation to the launch of our new Honey Lake Church and Worldwide Ministry. I also relish the thought of releasing my new book later this year which has a purpose similar in nature in spreading the word of God to mainly secular people who have been turned off by conventional church all over the world and who might not otherwise ever hear about God.
Our first church service will be preached on January 20th 2013 by NFL legend Bill Glass. I asked him in part to describe how he as a Christian was able to witness to some of his fellow players who let us say, were less than spiritually oriented and fall into the un-churched-turned off by religion crowd. The locker rooms were filled with profanity and many of the players were party animals hitting the wild women and booze circuit in every city. They also played football on Sundays which to a hard core Baylor University seminary student and Christian like Bill who routinely joined Billy Graham during the off season to speak at crusades was at first anathema.
Bill learned a lot about what I refer to as having a Jesus style ministry during those early years. He discovered that his job was not to judge the lost but to witness to them. He also realized that it’s a little difficult to witness to the lost if you don’t spend time being around them and instead separate yourself into tight religious circles of “goody two shoe” fellow believers. He earned the respect of even the wildest of players by not condemning them, and taking a path of allowing his “light to shine” through his actions on the field and off. Many of them turned to God because they admired him and wanted to have what he has in the way of peace, joy, and love that is available only through having Christ in their lives.
Bill just celebrated his 40th year in his prison ministry. I was at the Dallas celebration for this landmark milestone and discovered that over one million have publically made decisions for Christ during this time period. Tens of millions have heard the word of God through the ministry that God blessed him with.
The key word in that sentence is “blessed”, because Bill will tell you he has been mightily blessed through his ministry too. He has been faithful and God has blessed him mightily with a bountiful harvest. I pray that God will bless our ministry at Honey Lake with equal abundance.
I urge you this morning to spend some time over the holidays thinking about your role in helping to accomplish the “Great Commission”. In all four Gospels right before Jesus ascended back to heaven to His throne, He implored His disciples to go to every nation and preach the “Good news” of hope through His death, burial, and resurrection.
If you don’t want to start a ministry of your own, please support ours or another. (Lord knows we need it!) If Jesus came back today, half the world would end up in hell for eternity. If that is not meaningful to you, then check your own salvation for being genuine. Any person saved by the blood of Christ should have a keen desire to see others come to the same saving grace. Additionally God didn’t ask us to do it, He commanded it.
Witness to someone today, won’t you? I guarantee you will not regret it.
Mark 16:15
He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.