Well, good morning. Mercy Hill Church, I'm excited to be here this morning. I think one of the things, just to be a little transparent with you, one of the things that's most exciting to me this morning is that I get to follow Travis Suits from last week. Just kind of bringing things full circle. You know, I met Travis back when he was 18 years old.
as a freshman at Appalachian State University. And I've been walking with that guy for the last 17 years. The first sermon that he ever preached was in the ministry that I was leading. And so I'm going to tell you this: the sermon that he preached last week was a lot better than the one that he preached that first time. But super, super excited about what's going on and seeing Travis plant Declaration Church.
And so to be able to follow him this week is just a super big honor. To me. You know, my job as executive pastor of Sending has mostly to do with sending people away from Mercy Hill Church. You know, that number of 500 is what I spend most of my time thinking about, chasing that number. And so, because of that, I'm pretty excited because the passage that I'm going to get to preach this morning is about the nations.
And so that means that you're going to need to buckle up. It's going to have a bit of a prophetic edge, maybe a little bit sharp. But I'm just going to tell you this. You know what else is sharp? Saying that this precious animal Right here.
Um has no purpose. Yes, my dog. It's my dog. I mean, does he hunt? No.
Does he retrieve anything? Yeah. Can he give a signal when someone is in some kind of medical emergency? He can't do any of those things. But he was bred for a purpose.
Purpose that he was bred for was to keep the feet of the Chinese emperor warm. The way that he does that now is with my wife. His new purpose, though, seems to be making me look ridiculous. and given Pastor Andrew some really great sermon illustrations. I will tell you this.
His dog Suzy, the Uzi. that he compares Theo to. Um you know there's an AI picture that has transformed Susie the Uzi into Susie the Floosey. And um I have promised Pastor Andrew that I will not show that picture to anyone ever. And so I'm just going to let your mind come up with what that image.
might look like. All right? Hey, let's go ahead and turn in our Bibles. to uh Psalm 47. That's where we're going to be today.
And um I'd just like to read the passage in its entirety before we begin. All right then. Psalm 47, beginning at verse 1. says this. Clap your hands, all peoples.
Shout to God. with loud songs of joy. For the Lord the Most High, is to be feared. A great king Over all the earth. He subdued peoples.
under us. and nations under our feet. He chose our heritage for us. the pride of Jacob, whom he loves. God has gone up with a shout.
The Lord, with the sound of a trumpet, sing praises to God. Sing praises. Sing praises to our King. Sing praises. For God is the king of all the earth.
Sing praises with a psalm. God reigns over the nations. God sits on his holy throne. The princes of the peoples gather. as the people of the God of Abraham.
For the shields of the earth belong to God. He is highly. Exalted. Hey, will you pray with me before we get started? Father, thank you.
For your word. that speaks to us. Thank you for the Psalms specifically. that help encapsulate The emotions that we feel. That connect us to you.
God, thank you for all of that. And God, this morning I pray that you would use this sermon to move your church. I pray that you would. that you would help people to take a step toward the mission of God. That you would, even more than we already are.
Set our course on a trajectory. of being a great sending church. Father, I pray that you would speak through me in spite of myself. And may you be glorified in everything that happens this morning. It's in the name of Jesus that I pray.
Amen. A Psalm 47 is what scholars call an enthronement psalm. When you think about psalms, there's all different kinds of them. An enthronement psalm is simply a psalm that is about the kingship of God, putting God in his rightful place on the throne. Psalms are songs that the people of God would sing to God collectively together as a people.
And this one is about God's reign over the earth. It celebrates that He alone. Is king. It's like some of the songs that we even sang this morning, the three that we've just sung. Here's some of the lines from those songs.
I will praise you. Praise your holy name. I will bless you, O my God and King. The same kind of thing. Then I shall bow in humble adoration and then proclaim, My God, how great thou art.
Beautiful song. As long as you were on your throne. I'll sing your praise. And we sing those songs in here. All over our church and all over the campuses.
And what happens is our souls get stirred. It it swells something up in us. And that's good. But God wants it to happen more than just in our church. at our campuses, in our lives.
God's desire It's for it not just to excite us. But for it to excite the entire world. Here's the big idea. for today. Our God deserves the praise.
of all peoples. Let me just take a moment here as we get started. To show you what I mean, let's look at verse 5 to begin with. It reads this: God has shown, has gone up with a shout. The Lord with the sound of a trumpet.
We've got some underlined words there, and I want to just point out what's going on there.
So the word God, that comes from the Hebrew word Elohim. It's a common name for God, just in the same way that we would say, We love God. We follow God. God is king. It would be the same kind of way of saying that.
But then next you have Lord. And so whenever you see in the Bible the word Lord in all caps like that, with the O R D and kind of a smaller print, what we know is that that word is being translated from the word Yahweh. Which was the personal name? of God. It was the name used by people that were following him.
It was the personal name of God. It would be kind of like when we're praying to God and we call him Father, bringing him near, that nearness, indicating that personal connection that we have to God. Then we look at this word shout. Shout comes from the Hebrew word teruah. Which means a loud blast.
Like something loud. Like a horn. Like a trumpet. Trumpet comes from the word shofar, which was literally a ram's horn. That they would blow when they were going into battle, or when they were blow when they were calling people to worship.
And so what we have is we have two different words for God, and we have two different ways of talking about the same expression of worship for God. This is a scene of God enthroned as king with his people gathered around him in exuberant worship. That's what scholars mean by enthronement, Psalm. I grew up going to the Cleveland County Fair. As a kid.
I understand now that you may not even know what the Cleveland County Fair is, but the Cleveland County Fair is a big, big deal. It is the most majestic of all county fairs. It is the largest county fair in the state of North Carolina. This is the way you can picture it. It's kind of like The Dixie Classic?
Mashed up With Bowman Gray. Because at the Cleveland County Fair, you can get your funnel cakes. And you're going to see a demolition derby, but not on a track. It's going to be a demolition derby that's out in the dirt, total chaos. You can barely see the cars crashing into each other from the cloud of dust that's around.
They race pigs. at the Cleveland County Fair. They race ducks. If you can think of it, they will race it at the Cleveland County Fair. It is an amazing place.
They have this guy at the Cleveland County Fair, and he would stand beside this giant scale. And you could go to that, you could go up to that man, and here's what he's going to do: he is going to guess, you get to choose either your weight. your age or your birth month.
Well, it just so happened that the Cleveland County Fair was at the same time as my birthday. And so every single year, I would go up to this man by this scale and I would get him to guess my birth month. And the dude lost every single year. My dad may have Peter Moss. It's possible.
But here's the thing: I go away to college and I start talking about the majesty of the Cleveland County Fair, and I just refer to it as the fair. Anybody want to go to the fair this year? And they start saying things like, oh, you mean the state fair? And I'm like, what are you talking about? The state fair?
The Cleveland County Fair. They had no idea what I was talking about. The majesty of the Cleveland County Fair, and they had no idea. Do you know? that there are people in the world.
Where the sun sets, the same sun that we see set, the same sun rises. And they have no idea. Who to give the credit to? There are people in the world that breathe the same oxygen. that we breathe.
But they have no idea. Who put it there? And let me say it again. God deserves the praise. of all peoples.
I believe that. I really do. That's what took me to China. Yeah. You see in uh nineteen ninety nine The Chinese government decided that they were going to restructure the education system in China.
And so, because of the population problems that they were having in their cities, what they decided that they would do is they would create university cities. What that meant was, they would move all of their university students out of their major cities into smaller cities. on the outskirts of their large cities. and they would be nothing but college students.
So picture like T anywhere from two To eight universities that are in one city, and there's nothing but university students that are there. You're talking about. Half a million. to like 7 million college students living in a city together. And they're coming from the villages of China into these places.
And so in thinking about it from a missiological perspective, What we're starting to think is what if we could get students to go study in China, become missionaries there, start churches in those university cities, and then we would be able to see those students go back to their villages, taking the gospel back to their families. And we could see an amazing revolution take place in the country of China. They started their first one in the year 2000. And so we had been figuring this thing out for a few years, and we jumped in in 2013. And my job was to go in and figure out how we were going to start mobilizing college students into that space.
Well, I get ready to take off and It turned out to be not so great of a trip. For one thing, um I had a sinus infection. And I don't know if you've ever had to take a long trip like that when you have a sinus infection, but it's not a good thing, like flying and all that kind of stuff. I get on the plane that's going to be the first leg of 17-hour flight. And I'm a big guy.
I'm a big guy.
So I'm sitting in one of those middle seats on one of those large. Large planes in the economy section, and they tell me if to please put my tray table up. But uh The latch on my tray table was broken. I couldn't put it up. I'd have to hold it up for 17 hours, but for 17 hours, I'm sitting like this between people with a trade table pressing down in my lap.
Very uncomfortable situation. I get there. Arrive on the scene. And all this other crazy stuff starts happening. I get to the hotel.
I'm exhausted because I can't sleep because I spent 17 hours crammed between people with a tray table squish in my lap. I get to the hotel. I go up to my hotel room on the 17th floor. I go to open the door to my door, and there's no doorknob. It's just a hole in the door.
I go inside. I guess security is fine in this place. I walk into my room. I lay down on the bed, and I start hearing noises, like traffic noises, that seem way louder than what they should be.
So I get up to go check out why in the world the traffic is so loud. I open up the curtain like this. And I feel the wind. Hit me. And I'm like Did someone leave the window open?
And I look around and no.
Someone had broken the window out, and there's jagged glass all around the giant window frame. And that's when you kind of go like this on the 17th floor. You know what I mean? I mean, you don't want to be the person that goes out the window.
So all kinds of crazy things like this start happening. I end up in a university setting talking to a bunch of college students. And when you have somebody from America and college students here, college, they come running.
So the class was like standing room only. I'm standing in there. And they asked me this question. Will you sing a song for us? What I didn't realize was they were wanting a piece of American culture.
They wanted to hear, you know Something maybe like Wrecking Ball at the time by Miley Cyrus. But I had by that point stepped way off of the relevance train when it came to music. And for some reason, I just froze. And I sang a song that I sang at a talent show when I was in the first grade about a billy goat. That eats some shirts off of a line.
A guy gets mad at him and ends up tying him to a train track where the goat's about to die before he coughs up the shirts. That's what I sing to these students. After I finish the number. The number. I step back and I sit down on one of their desks, and the desk breaks.
Right to the floor, just like that, reinforcing everything. that their country thinks about ours. Get to the end of this trip, and I'm talking to the missionary that we're supposed to be working with, where this whole thing is supposed to be run through. And he says, Oh, Jonathan, by the way, I'm leaving to go back to the States in a month. I'm like, oh, for like a break?
No, to never come back. And I'm like I've just spent 10 days here. Trying to figure this thing out with you, and you're telling me that the whole thing is just kibosh. There's no way we can pull this off. That was devastating because I could see the desperate need in that place.
There were so many people. People who had no idea. Who sits on that throne? But the idea was dead in the water. You see, there's a huge discrepancy between what God deserves.
and what God has right now. If God deserves the praise of all people, I believe Psalm 47 is going to help us understand more about how that will happen. Specifically, I think it shows us three pretty uncomfortable truths about the mission of God. You ready for him? Man, I hope you're more ready than that.
All right, here's the first one. God's mission is about peoples. Not people.
Now I know when I say that. And you read that on that screen. That rubs you a little bit.
Some of it, like when you really catch what I'm saying with that. That doesn't feel real good. And so I'm just going to ask you if you'll just stick with me for just a moment. I'm going to try to walk us through this and help you explain, and I think you'll see. The truth in it.
Alright, so our God is a missionary God. We can see it in the first three verses of this Psalm. in two very clear ways.
So let's look at those verses. At verse 1, clap your hands, all peoples. Shout to God with loud songs of joy. For the Lord the Most High is to be feared. a great king over all the earth.
He subdued peoples under us and nations under our feet. That second verse, for the Lord the Most High is to be feared, don't want you to get caught up around that word feared, because when we think about fear, fear is that thing that we focus on. And so what's happening here is it's drawing our focus upon God. When you fear God, your life is focused on God. Yeah.
But the great thing, this first way that we can see God as missionary. We look at verse 2. It says, for the Lord. the Most High. is to be feared.
A great king over all The Earth. Once again. The psalmist uses two words for God. The one that we just talked about a few minutes ago, Lord, Yahweh, the familiar name of God. He uses that one.
And then he uses this name for God. Most High. Most high is the word for God when we're talking about God being over people. who don't yet know him. the people that don't follow him yet.
And so in the same verse, we're looking at God as familiar to the people who are following him, and we're looking at God who is God over people that don't even know who he is. And that's combined in the one verse. God is the great king over the earth, whether he is recognized as such. or not. At verse 1 and 3, check this out, where we can see the second way.
that God is a missionary God. It says, clap your hands, all peoples. Shout to God with loud songs of joy. And skipping down to verse 3, he subdued peoples under us. and nations under our feet.
I got to be honest with you that when I was coming up, growing up, first starting to read the Bible, when I would see that word peoples, I didn't like it. Didn't like that word because it didn't make sense to me. It didn't make sense grammatically. And so I just didn't quite understand what was going on. It was kind of like money and monies.
You know, when you talk about that, it's like I made some money today. Or My business allocated monies into marketing and facilities.
So it's kind of like the words are sort of the same things, but they're also different. They're related. but different. When we look at people and peoples, peoples are made up of people. People, just like you, just like us, just like at the campuses, all of us as a church, we are people.
But what we're talking about here in verses 1 and 3 is peoples. You see, God's mission is about peoples, as in nations. or people groups. The IMB defines a people group this way. An ethno-linguistic group, try saying that a bunch of times.
with a common self-identity that is shared by its various members. There are two parts of that word. Ethno, which has to do with ethnicity. and linguistic. which has to do with language.
So it's groups of people who share a language and an ethnicity. And that's what God is after. The mission, get this, is not about getting as many people in our family. Our neighborhood. our city, our state, our country, or even the world.
to follow Jesus. People often ask me. Why? Would we send people to other countries? when there are plenty of people here who don't know Jesus.
What would be the motivation for asking that question? I I think there's a couple of them. One is this, that we care more about people who are like us. than those who are different. From us.
Asking that question, that would be motivated by racism. I think it's probably the less prevalent of the two reasons that people ask the question. But it's a reason. The second one, the more prevalent one, is this. We simply don't understand what the mission really is.
Yes. Our obsession With thinking about Christianity. as a personal relationship with God. has short-circuited how we understand the mission. Let me let me catch that.
The gospel is personal. It does personally save us. It does give us a personal relationship with God. But make no mistake. The mission of God.
is not an individualistic thing. It's about every single people group. bowing to the lordship. of Jesus. Let me take it a little further to help you understand this.
We don't plant churches. Even Declaration Church. simply to reach more people. We plant churches. to be able to send more missionaries to the nations.
When you reach more people, you can turn more people into missionaries. He uses people to reach peoples, but the mission is the peoples across the earth, not every person. Let me give you an illustration. I would like to show you an amazing piece of art. This is um This is a piece of artwork.
This at our house. that our granddaughter Kyla painted. We love looking at this. She painted it at school and she brought it home to us and gave it to us. And so it's there in our home.
And we like to look at it. We love gathering around it as a family and admiring what a great job she did on that. But do you know how many people come and look at that from our neighborhood? None? Do you know how many people come from other countries?
to check out Kyla's beautiful painting of a rainbow in a sun. Not one. But If you go to the Louvre in Paris. There's another picture. of the Mona Lisa.
And people come from all over the world. to take pictures of the Mona Lisa. They come from all different walks of life, all different countries. to see this beautiful painting.
So when we're talking about God wanting the worship of all peoples, this is what we're talking about. It's not just gathering the people that are like us. To look at something, it's about gathering people from all over the world, from every single tongue and tribe. To magnify. Jesus.
Here's the second truth. God's mission exists. where worship Does not. I want you to look at verses 6 and 7. Sing praises to God, sing praises.
Sing praises to our king, sing praises. For God is the king of all the earth. Sing praises with a psalm. Did you catch that? What are we doing here?
We're singing praises five times, it says it in just two verses. In his book, Let the Nations Be Glad, John Piper points out that missions is a temporary thing. Have you ever gotten that mixed up, like the temporary for the permanent? I remember for us when we did this, we took our daughter and we put her, she joined the tennis team when she was in the sixth grade at her school. And when she did that, we were doing it for all the right reasons.
You know, it was like we wanted to develop her character. We wanted her to learn what it was like to be a part of a team. We wanted her to learn what it was like to win and lose. We wanted her to be able to figure all those kinds of things out. But the next thing you know I'm standing at the fence.
Coaching her up with lines from Cobra Kai. I'm starting to to picture her being like a college tennis player. I may or may not, well, I'll just say it. I was removed from a match by an opposing school's athletic director at a game. You see, I had taken something that was meant to be a temporary teacher in her life, and I had made it the main thing.
And we do that sometimes with missions and with worship. We make the temporary thing, missions, into the permanent thing. God's permanent objective is receiving glory from the worship of every tribe, every tongue, every nation on planet Earth. God's mission serves that end. Once every people group bows in worship, Before King Jesus, The mission.
will end. and worship. will be eternal. Here's the third truth. Let's look at verse 9.
The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God, He is highly. Exalted. That third truth is this. God's mission.
transforms peoples. Into a people. There's a subtle lie that's crept into the church. That every single person In the world. is a child of God.
Every single person is made in the image of God. and therefore is an image bearer of God. but only those who belong to the family of God. are children of God. It's like when I was younger.
And this guy says to me, Younger being like maybe last year or something. Sign? You need to stop spitting off that bridge onto that sidewalk. And I'm going, I ain't your son. See, God has a people.
Look at what it says in verse 9. the princes of the peoples. Gather as the people. of the God of Abraham. Peoples.
Every people group. Under the throne of God, become one. One. people. That one people is What's called the church.
Theologian Christopher Wright wrote this: It is not so much that God has a mission for his church in the world. But that God has a church. for his mission in the world. I'm not saying here that every single person under the sound of my voice, should move their lives overseas. But I do think this.
That more people should than are. I think a lot of us end up asking questions like this, or saying, you know, God isn't really calling me to go on a mission trip. Or saying, hey, I get the community mission thing. But that international stuff Ugh. Not sure about that.
Hey, I know this is sharp. I'm just going to say it anyway. Are you saved? Because if you are then you are part of the mission of God. I need you to understand that.
It's not one of the add-ons. It's the thing. I'll even put a finer point on it. As followers of Jesus, we're supposed to love what Jesus loves. What does Jesus love?
He loves the nations. Here's a way I think about this. One of my favorite families. in our church. Those of you at the Northeast campus, You gotta know him well.
Tom and Cammie Howe. They have one of the most awesome marriages. One of the things that I admire about it is when they decided that they were going to get married, they decided they were going to love what each other loves.
Now, Tom gets off a little easier with this because what Cammy loves is coffee shops. That doesn't mean that Tom has to like coffee. He just has to like coffee shops. And that's the way they've played that out. Cammy had it a little rougher because the thing that Tom loves is the Raiders.
You know, the team that never wins? And so Cammie had decided: hey, I'm just going to be a Raiders fan. And every single time. A Raiders game comes on, even though they know that they're going to lose, she's in there cheering like crazy. It's become a thing where their entire family are Raiders fans.
Why? Because they love as a family together. They love the same things as a family. And as a family of God, we are supposed to love what our Father loves. That's the nations.
We have a way of talking about that around here at Mercy Hill. This is the way we say it. My yes is Man, maybe I hadn't heard it. My yes is I'll say it. My yes is on the table.
What that means is this. I don't even need to know what the question is yet. My yes is on the table. I will do whatever it is that you ask of me. Before you even ask, the answer is Yes.
I hear so many people say that around here. My yes is on the table. And then I dig in a little deeper, and this is what I found out. What they really mean is this. My yes is on the table.
As long as I don't have to move. Or My yes is on the table. As long as I don't have to make less than this much money. My yes is on the table. As long as my life doesn't get any more uncomfortable.
And my yes is on the table. As long as my children can be born here first. For some people, my yes is on the table as long as God gives me a spouse first. Later in life, my yes is on the table. as long as my children can graduate from school here first.
or as long as I have good health care. or as long as it's safe. Can I just tell you those qualifiers negate the yes? It isn't a real yes. It's a conditional yes.
And that's okay. I need you to hear me say that. That's okay. Let's just not say something that isn't true. We don't say yes as followers of Jesus out of guilt or shame.
and certainly not to earn his love. He gives that freely. We go because he came for us. He moved. A lot of us say we won't.
We gotta we won't move.
Well, he certainly moved, didn't he? He moved from heaven to earth. He lived a life of extreme discomfort, even though a lot of us are scared of the discomfort. I mean, he lived that to such a degree that he went to the cross. Never had a spouse.
Certainly wasn't safe for him. See, Jesus withheld nothing. We go because he stepped out of heaven. And he came for us. Here's the application.
Take your next step. in the mission of God today. It's kind of crazy, but back at the next conference. He started feeling called. to go be a part.
of the launch team of Declaration Church. He had one more year of school left as he was trying to figure that out. But he wanted to go. to Campbell University so that he could be a part of helping start that church. The irony in this is that his father His father's name is John.
His father is on staff with our church. Do you know what John's job is? John's job. is to help people take their next step. in the mission of God.
Many of you know him because he's had those conversations with you. And this is what John did when he heard Kenan say that. Hey, there are other churches that you could go be a part of. that maybe are a little cheaper than Campbell. Maybe there's a state school where there's a church plant that you could go to.
And then he found out that there was another student. that was going on the launch team with Declaration Church right now. and that he had made the same decision to go to Campbell.
so that it could be a part of helping start this church.
So he went to that person's. family and he said How are y'all affording it? And this was the response. We're trusting God. Amen, that just wrecked John.
He realized in that moment That him having open hands, they weren't quite as open as what he had realized. Let's be honest, most of us haven't given God the blank check yet. Should you? Yeah, I mean you should. Because you will never live a more fulfilled, adventurous life.
than one that is sold out. for King Jesus. One leader said it this way. The best way to experience life is to give it away. Most of us though.
We need to take some smaller steps first. Let me make a suggestion of a couple. Maybe you need to give for the first time. Or maybe you've been giving a little bit, but you need to take that to like a tithe.
Something that's a little uncomfortable for you. for the sake of reaching someone else. Maybe you need to invite someone to church. And you know, next weekend, Is a who's your one weekend. And this is what that means: that if you invite someone to church, someone who is close to you.
But far from God? You invite them next week, and this is what you're going to hear. you're going to hear a clear gospel presentation that they will be able to respond to.
So maybe that's the thing for you. You just need to invite somebody for the first time. It's a church. Maybe. For those of you here at the ridge, thinking about Father's Day?
Man, when Jason Robertson comes... There's going to be a lot of people wanting to have a seat here.
So we're opening up the Whatever you want to call it, the Edgefield Student Center Regional North, if you've been around here a while, it's had several names. If you haven't been around here a while, There's another facility that we have about a mile and a half away from here on Edgefield Road, and we're opening that back up simply to make room. in this space for more people. And so maybe you could go there. I mean, I never watched Duck Dynasty.
I'm fine not seeing Jace Robertson, right? I'm gonna go over there on Father's Day. That's where I'm going to be to make room for someone else to have a seat that might not otherwise be able to have a seat.
Some of us, what we need to do are take some of those steps where we are inconveniencing ourselves for the sake of someone else being able to hear. The gospel.
Some of us though. we need to say yes to something that inconveniences us in a much bigger way. You know, my China experience didn't end so well. That planned pathway collapsed.
Now, if I'm honest... I had the resources. to be able To find another way. But I thought about it this way. And that'd just be really hard.
It'd be so hard to figure out. another way and I got lots of other things that I can be working on. I walked away from that. And do you know, seven years later, The whole country shut down. There was no access.
Everybody got kicked out and you couldn't get back in. That was during COVID. Seven years later. Man, how much could I have done? in seven years.
and I chose to walk away from it. And because of that, There are lots of peoples. peoples, people groups. that didn't get to hear the gospel because of my decision to walk away from it. What I can tell you is this, what felt hard in 2013 would have been easy compared to now.
I missed an opportunity to impact many of those peoples. Maybe at some point in your life, you missed an opportunity like that too. Maybe you've been putting it off. For months, that you can feel God tugging at your heart, asking you to step into His mission. And you've been like, nah, I don't know that that's for me, God.
You might have the wrong person. Just because you missed it then. doesn't mean that God is finished with you now. I mean, look at what I'm doing. I'm chasing this thing of sending 500 people from our church.
The guy that's like leading that stuff, God gave me a second chance at the mission. He doesn't stop calling us. to step into the mission. When God gives you an opportunity, don't wait. All right, so maybe you're saying right now, hey, Jonathan.
Okay, I get it. I'm saying yes. I want to say yes. But I don't know what to do. I'm going to help you with that.
All right.
So there's a QR code that's going to go up on the screen. Most people don't know where to start when it comes to stepping into the mission of God.
So I'm just going to ask you to do this. I mean, I'm serious. Just pull out your phone right now. Right now. Let's scan the thing.
I'm I'm waiting. Clock's ticking, but I'm waiting. Scan the QR code. What it's going to do is it's going to bring up a form. And it's going to give you a few options.
of things that you can do to step into the mission. One of those is simply going to be maybe your prayer life has never had anything to do with the mission of God. And it's going to, maybe you need to start praying for the nations or praying for our missionaries that are in the nations. Maybe. The next thing that you could do.
would be simply It's a go-and-a-go team. Maybe you haven't done that yet. You know, there's a four-week class called Envision that happens in the fall. Maybe you need to step into that. Joining a DMI?
That's a 10 week. 10-week disciple making intensive. that you can step into. Maybe you're a high school or college student. And you need to jump into that ACTS study that's going on this summer.
Maybe you need to step into a church plant launch team. I mean, maybe it's not Declaration Church, but here's the deal: there's plenty of them that we have access to that we can get you connected to. It doesn't have to be. Travis and Declaration Church. We can help you with that.
I mean, there's one that's planning just in Burlington. Not far from here at all that you could step into. Here's what's gonna happen. You fill out that form and you're going to get contacted. by someone from our mobilization team.
John Truey that I just talked about and the people that he leads, they're going to contact you personally and walk you through taking that step and what it means. Here's what I'm saying, guys. Don't waste this opportunity. When the Holy Spirit prompts you. He's calling you now.
Step into the mission of God. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your goodness. Thank you that you call us. Thank you that your mission is so much greater.
than what we perceive it to be. And thank you. that you see fit. to allow us to be a part of it. God, move in your church.
Make us a church. that is chasing after the nations. Because that is what you love. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Mm-hmm.
