Archive for the ‘Missions’ Category
The Beatitudes – Part 3
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
This is part three in an eight part series looking at the Beatitudes. If you haven’t read the first two post in the series you can find them here.
Matthew 5:5 "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."
What?!?!
There is no way Jesus can mean what it appears He is telling us in this portion of scripture. Am I the only one who is caught off guard by the audaciousness of this claim? As I have thought about this beatitude over the last several months, I have been increasingly provoked at the implication of these ten little words. If we really understand them they will have a profound impact on how we live our lives.
If you do a Google search for this Beatitude, you will find lots of great discussion on the quality of meekness. The Greek word that is translated as meek is PRAUS (04329) and it literally means to be gentle in spirit and humble.
This should come as no surprise to us. All throughout scripture God tells us about the importance of humility. He actually tells us that to the humble He will release supernatural grace to empower and equip us to accomplish His purposes. ( Proverbs 3:34 James 4:6 1 Peter 5:5 ) These verses also tell us that God sets Himself against the proud. He literally holds back His very presence from those who are operating in a prideful and puffed up attitude before Him. I don’t know about you, but that is a pretty good motivator for me to humble myself before God. The natural result of genuine humility is the very presence and grace of God being poured out in our lives.
This is a great explanation of the temporal implication of humility or meekness. But Matthew 5:5 gives us a glimpse of something much more profound. It speaks of the ultimate reward of meekness. The preposterous claim that Jesus makes is that the meek and humble will actually be given the planet.
Posted in Devotional, General, Missions, The Beatitudes | No Comments »
Praying for Laborers
Monday, August 16th, 2010
This morning in our campus prayer we prayed for one of YWAM Tyler’s satellite ministries that is located in New Orleans, LA. It was a powerful time of standing with our brothers and sisters that are serving the Lord in the city of New Orleans. One of the things that we prayed for was for God to send out laborers into the harvest field.
This terminology comes to us from the words of Jesus in Matthew 9:37-38 and Luke 10:2. As I was thinking about these portions of scripture I felt stirred in my heart to communicate a few things that stuck out to me.
The first thing that stuck out to me was Jesus’ perspective on the harvest fields. He was convinced that the harvest was ripe. It was ready to be harvested. Sometimes it is possible for us to have a pessimistic attitude toward the world and think of it as a dark and depraved place with no possibility for things to change. Jesus was not plagued with pessimism like we are. He was hopeful. He looked and the desperate situation of the hurting and lost people around Him and He declared they they were ready to receive the Gospel and be plucked from the harvest field and brought into the kingdom of light.
Jesus was so convinced of the readiness of the people to hear the Gospel and respond that He knew there was too much work for Him and even His disciples. He looked at the hope-filled fields of people’s hearts and then looked at Himself and His trusty disciples and thought, “We need more help, there is so much glorious harvesting to be done that we need more people to work with us.” Then He turned to His disciples and said, “We need to ask Papa, to raise up people to work with us.”
This is the perspective we need to have if we are going to follow Jesus’ command to pray for Laborers to be sent into the harvest field. We need to see the hope-filled fields like Jesus did.
The second thing I wanted to point out is that the harvest fields are God’s harvest fields. They do not belong to the enemy. We are not going out into the enemy’s fields and stealing his crop from Him. The harvest fields belong to God and we are sent out as laborers who are authorized to reap the harvest. God gives us authority to go and be His laborers. This is a place of victory, authority and privilege. We are blessed to be laborers for the King of Kings and we can fully expect to go into His harvest field with His blessing and endorsement.
I want to encourage you to pray for God to give you His perspective on the harvest field He has put you in. No matter where you are you are in His harvest field and you are endorsed and called to be there. Let God lift your eyes up to His perspective. Let Him give you a vision for your school, job, or community. Let Him grip your heart with compassion for the people who are around you everyday and I guarantee you will begin to pray like Jesus asked us to and you will passionately ask God to send laborers to help with all the work there is to be done.
Be filled with confidence that God has called you to be a laborer in His harvest fields today. He is ordering your steps to get you to a place of fruitful harvest.
Be blessed,
Kurt H.
Posted in General, Missions, Prayer | No Comments »
An End-Time Strategy
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
To say that we live in exciting days is an understatement. Never before in the history of man has the fulfillment of the great commission been so close. I know some of you may be a little cynical about this point, but it is true. Some of the top statisticians for the big missions organizations are saying that every people group on the earth will be engaged and have either a written bible translated in their mother tongue, or an oral set of bible stories in their mother tongue with in the next 5 to 15 years. This is absolutely amazing. When we really understand the full impact of this it means that with in the next 15 years, every tongue, tribe and nation on the earth will have the Gospel of the Kingdom presently being proclaimed there. The last time I read the Gospel of Matthew I remember a short little verse that says this Gospel of the Kingdom would be preached in every nation of the earth and then the end would come. See Matthew 24:14
Do we really understand what this means, It means that literally we could be living in the generation of the Lord’s return. There could be people alive today that will physically see Jesus come back to the planet and set up His everlasting Kingdom and His global government from Jerusalem.
You might be asking if there are any other things that must take place in order for Jesus to come back to the planet? The answer is yes, and it has to do the with prophetic purpose of the nation of Israel.
In Matthew 23:39, Jesus says to the people of the city of Jerusalem that they will not see Him again until they cry out, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”
We know from Isaiah 2, that in the last days that the nations will flock to Jerusalem to be taught of the ways of God by Jesus. It is necessary that Jerusalem receive Jesus as her King in order for the nations to be taught by Him there. We know that currently Jesus is not reigning as King in Jerusalem so something will have to change between now and then.
(more…)
Posted in End-Times, Missions, Prayer, Prophecy | 1 Comment »
Urbanization & Missions
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Today in our generation, the rate of urbanization far surpasses anything we have ever seen in human history. Never before have people been moving to cities at such a rate. According to National Geographic we are encountering a “world crisis” due to the mass amount of urbanization. By the end of this century about 90% of the world will be urbanized. Currently, over 700 cities in the world have a population of at least one million. Several of these have more then 36 million. Due to urbanization we are seeing levels of poverty and brokenness of humanity like we have never seen before. All of this is evolving in an environment that has an infrastructure that can’t develop fast enough to keep up with the rate of urbanization.
A close friend of mine has worked in Chicago for the past 20 years. He shared with me a few statistics relating to the rapid growth rate of that city. Chicago has a population of nine million people, with over 200 nationalities represented! Within a five-mile radius of my friend’s place there are over 350,000 people; one out of three is foreign-born. In the nearest public high school more than 53 languages are spoken. This is diversity like we have never seen before! Chicago acquires 170 immigrants a day—that’s over 44,000 a year! Out of those 170 immigrants, 80 are from unreached nations, or some of the least evangelized nations in the world.
After listening to my friend share about Chicago, I got excited. Why? Because we have a missionary God, and urbanization is literally bringing the nations, even the unreached nations, to a reachable location. When immigrants come to our cities, they are doing half the work for us! They come ready to learn the language and culture. This is a gift to the Church…if we can see it.
People move to the city seeking education and advancement because this is where they can be equipped. People come open to change. Who is there to meet them? Will they be greeted by the Church, or by the world? While these people are in a place of making a fresh start are we (the Church) going to allow them to be influenced by drunkenness, pornography, martialism, and humanism? Or are we willing to step out into the streets we call home and greet this global phenomenon with the love and truth of Christ? With such a rapid growth of ethnic communities in the cities, are we willing to engage them with the same energy we would for foreign missions? Do we find the nations represented in the city equally valuable as those across a body of water or a geographical border? I can’t answer these questions for the whole body of Christ, but I know the eyes of a missionary God see these cities with excitement, and heartbreak. I believe God is glorified in the cities of the world. His character is expressed through the magnitude of diversity of the cultures represented. I find it incredibly exciting that God is inviting us to partner with Him in what He is doing in the nations, which includes the rapid growth of cities around the world. Urbanization is bringing the world to our doorstep. I hear God asking our generation if we will engage, or if we will continue to turn our backs on the cities as they influence every sphere of our culture.
Posted in General, Missions | 2 Comments »