Blessed To Be A Blessing - Psalm 67:1-5 - Make And Multiply

All right, Psalm 67 is where, thanks y'all, Psalm 67 is where we're going to be today. And man, this is so fitting. Hey, so what's happening right now at all of our campuses is there's going to be people that start handing out these books.

They're called Make and Multiply. They're kind of a series guide because we start a brand new series today. This guide is going to carry you through the series. All right, so man, I want you to get to know it, take it to your community group, use it as a prayer tool.

It's got stories, it's got some different things in it, so just kind of keep up with that. And what we're doing, I know some of you guys are brand new today. I want to try to just bring you in quickly to where we are, and others of you sort of maybe know this or it's going to be a refresher for you. But two years ago, we embarked on a journey called Deeper, and we're still in the middle of that journey, okay? This was the end of 2022, and what was happening in our church was that our church was turning 10 years old, and at that 10-year mark, me and the other elders and pastors of our church really felt like we needed a recentering on God himself, okay?

Why? Because God had blessed our church like crazy. I mean, he is pouring out blessings, but there is danger in that. Like anything in life, you know, humans can uniquely take the blessings of God and start worshiping them rather than the blesser.

You know, we can begin to be a people who fall in love with what God does for us, more than we are in love with him himself. And so at the end of 2022, it was like, hey, we are right 10 years in, we're casting vision for the next 10 years. So that's where you guys began to hear, what's our 10-year vision?

We want to see 5,000 baptisms and 500 missionaries sent out for Mercy Hill Church by 2032. But as we were casting that vision, we said, wait a minute, we need to pause. We need to make sure that this is not about just what God is going to do, but it's about him. And so we started asking this question, if you remember, it's a very deep question.

It'll rattle you, all right? Is God the deepest desire of my heart? What we talked about from Psalm 1, if you remember, is this idea that what does a tree do? A tree wakes up every day thinking, find the water, find the water, find the water, right? Their roots are going all out looking for the water.

Why? Because they were created to be satisfied by the water and they longed for the water. And so we liken that to our life. And we said, hey, we were created like that tree, you know, that looks for water. We were created to long for God like that. And when we think, man, I'm longing for God and I'm finding what I'm ultimately satisfied in with the Lord, then all of a sudden the fruit in my life goes really wide. And that's what we talked about. So, hey, 10 years in, is God the deepest desire of my heart? We want everybody.

That was primary. Everybody wrestled with that question. Secondary question is, what is that going to produce? And we said, that's going to produce a generous life. It's going to produce a life that wants with time, talent, and treasure for us to live like this. And so we cast a vision for the church.

Hey, $30 million by the end of 2024, 25 months, $30 million. It's going to set us up for ministry for the next decade. And man, the church bought in, we leaned into it. And so that kind of brings us to where we are right now. Y'all, we're not in the fourth quarter of this thing. We're at the two minute warning.

Okay. This is not the last lap. This is like the last turn.

And now here's the straight away, because we're talking about a couple of months and this thing's in the books. And so we want to call the church to lean in. If you're new, hey, there's a good chance for you to jump in.

We stay at Mercy Hill all the time. Don't get on the merry-go-round if you're not going to push. Okay. And so jump in with us if you're here.

And if you've been with us, let's lean all the way in and let's finish strong. If we do, I think over the next decade, we're going to see unique influence, because God's already done this, in five areas of ministry. These are just, man, for us, we feel like this is where we can be at our best as an organization and as an organism. Church is both. Okay. Well, baptisms, missions, college students, chosen ministry, that's adoption and foster care and family ministry. That's kids, high school students, marriage. This is men, lead your home.

This is kind of family stuff. Okay. We feel like God is going to give us unique influence in these five areas of ministry. And so here's the series. I know there's a long intro.

Here's the series, make and multiply. Let's talk about those five areas of ministry. If we lean all the way in, we finish deeper strong, we feel like we're going to make disciples and multiply churches and we're going to have influence in these five areas. Today, we're going to start with missions. I mean, you saw the commissioning. We had an opportunity to hear from the president of the international mission board.

What a blessing that is largest sending agency in the whole world. Okay. So that was pretty awesome. We're going to talk about missions today and here's what we're going to do. We're going to try to put back together something that many of us, including me, have pulled apart at different times in our life.

And that is this, the blessings of God from the purposes of God. Okay. Um, if, if you're around Mercy Heal, you have heard me preach this sermon before and you will hear me preach it again.

Okay. All scripture is equally inspired. I get that, but there are different scriptures that just sort of get into the lifeblood of a church. Psalm 67 is one of those for us. Psalm 127 is one of those for us. Ephesians 3 20 is one of those for us.

I could give you some more. Okay. Psalm 67 is that way. Cause here's what we want to do. We want to put the blessing of God with the purposes of God together.

Here's the big idea this weekend. God blesses us to bless the world. There is purpose and reason in God blessing you. And when by blessing, I'm reading in the Old Testament right now, I'm reading in Genesis right now, I'm talking about flocks and herds and lands and relationships and spiritual gifts and anything that you can think of as a blessing in your life. We're not sheepish about those things. We want to live a big life at Mercy Hill, but here's why it's because we know whatever God puts in our hands, it is for us to steward for his kingdom for the sake of his renown. He is the famous one.

And we get a chance to shine that light to the world with the blessings that he brings into our life. I don't know about you guys, but sometimes I just need a slap reset. I need a pause button. I need, I got a lot going on in my life. You got a lot going on in your life. Okay.

Students got pre SATs, ACTs, youth sports. You got budgeting starting to happen and ramp up for next year at your business. You got, I mean, there's just a million things that are going on in our life right now. Right? And for just a little while this morning, I feel like we just need to call a time out and remember God is huge and he is worthy of being praised through the prism of a thousand languages.

He is not a tribal deity in a certain region of the world, but he is on a mission to see all people come and a people from all peoples come to the knowledge of who he is. Do you guys remember the show Saved by the Bell? Does anybody remember Saved by the Bell? Okay. I was talking to one of our college students this week. They had no idea what I was talking about.

I'm like Zach Morris, Kelly Kapowski, never heard of them. Okay. If you guys remember in that show and I know you could, depending on what generational, you know, you may not know it from either side.

Okay. But if you know that show at all, the protagonist in that series, Zach Morris, sometimes he would call a time out and it was funny. He would just time out.

Everybody freezes and he talks to the camera and it's a chance to reset. We need a time out today. Just, Hey, remember what we're trying to do. We are put on earth to worship God and to spread his fame to others so that they might worship him. Y'all missions is not the ultimate name of the church. Worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn't.

There are places in the world where the sun rises and sets and nobody there knows who to give the credit to. And we get a chance to stand in the gap. We get a chance to go send, pray, commission, disciple, all of that. This is what we get no matter if you're a preacher, a missionary, man, our business owner, our school teacher, whether you're single, married, bunch of kids, no kids, we all have a part to play.

We all have a role to play. Psalm 67. Here's what it says.

All right. This is one of my favorite passages here in the book of Psalms. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us that your way may be known on the earth.

You're saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you. Oh God, let the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth. Let the peoples praise you. Oh God, let all the peoples praise you. May God be gracious to us, bless us, make his face shine that your way may be known in all the earth. You know, one of the things that we remember, we put two things together today that many times we pull apart. It's blessing and purpose. Now I know my audience here at our campuses as well. There are a lot of brands of Christianity that don't struggle with this.

There are a lot of streams I should say, but our stream, I think sort of struggles with this. Some of us in here, and I've been here, may feel really weird about saying, wait, I'm supposed to ask God to bless me. Like this one is may God be gracious to us and bless us. And what does that even mean? I mean, does that just mean spiritually or does that mean a lot?

I told you I'm reading the Old Testament right now. I mean, blessings are really anything you do, anything you have or anything that you are. I mean, what else is it? I mean, God is a source of all blessing. We are called to ask the Lord here, God bless me. I mean, think about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

It's lands, it's territories, it's flocks and herds, it's relationship, it's children. I think one thing we've got to ask today is this. Do we feel weird asking God to bless us? Do we feel odd about that? Because if we do, we're becoming more spiritual than the Bible.

We're out, we're doing more, we're out spiritualizing Jesus, the Bible, all that. What the Bible is telling us here, the Psalmist is saying is, no, ask God to bless you in your life. Man, ask him to expand your territory, one passage says. Okay, but why?

Here's the deal. Some of us say, well, I don't want to ask God to bless me because I feel selfish doing that. Well, you got to ask the question, are you being selfish doing it?

Do you feel selfish because you are selfish? The point is not the blessing. The point is, what are we going to do with that blessing? Can we say, God, pour it out, tip over your abundance in my life. I want everything that you have for me in terms of career path, in terms of family, in terms of relationships, spiritual gifting, but why?

It's because I'm going to leverage it for your kingdom. Look at this, may God be gracious to us and bless us, make his face shine upon us that your way may be known in all the earth. Now, this language here, and I know, man, our church is still every week, every campus. There are people, this is your first rodeo, you're a few weeks into this thing. There are people that have been around the church and the Bible for decades.

Okay, if you're one of those decades people, some of this language should sound familiar to us. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us that your way may be known in all the earth, your saving power among all nations. There are two famous passages in the Old Testament, and most commentators believe that the psalmist is dwelling upon them. He's ruminating upon a passage that God gave Aaron in number six and an Abrahamic covenant in Genesis chapter 12, or there's other places too, but that's one. Okay, and what he's saying is, wait a minute, this is, he's just sort of dwelling upon God, your blessings to Abraham, your blessings to Aaron, and he takes these two places in scripture and he sort of smashes them together, and what comes out is this poetry.

It's not a direct quote, but it's very influenced. God bless us, make your face shine upon us. What does that mean, make your face shine upon us? Doesn't your face shine upon your kids? Don't you dote on them?

Don't you have just a, aren't you lit up by them in some ways? God bless us, be a father like that to us, but here's the deal, this is what we got to keep together, that your way may be known in all the earth. I thought that was a missionary's job. It's the Christian's job.

It's all of our job. Every one of us, the gospel came to us on the way to somebody else. We can't be a pond, we're supposed to be a river of God's blessing that's flowing.

Now you can do that in a lot of different ways. We're going to talk about praying, going, and giving today, but every one of us has got to be engaged. The blessings in our life are for others. Here's the question you got to ask, how has God blessed you?

That's the question really. What are the blessings in your life? I know some of us in here right now, you might be going through a very hard time and we got health issues, we got marriage issues, we got things going on with work, financial stuff. Maybe you have a lot going on in your life right now, but here's the beauty of what God has done for his children, even in the midst of that very difficult time. Even no matter what you're dealing with, one old preacher said it like this, if you take a piece of paper and a pen and start writing out your blessings that God has blessed you with, you'll run out of ink and paper before you run out of blessings.

That's true even in the most dry difficult times in your life. What has God blessed you with? Anything you have, anything you do, anything you are, he is the source of all benefit.

God is the blesser. What do you have, do, or are that you did not deserve? Maybe it's family related. There's a child.

I want you to think about it just over the last couple years. Have you, man is there a new child that's coming to your home, a new grandchild? Maybe you have a new part of the family that came in through marriage or maybe something with your kids is going to, maybe it's not that. Maybe you got into a program at work.

Maybe you expanded something in terms of your degree. Maybe there's financial margin there that wasn't there before. Maybe there's a new faith. So many people have come to Christ in the last couple years just in our church. Maybe it's a brand new faith journey for you. Maybe it's new friendships.

Maybe it's a new home. I don't know what is in your mind that you're thinking the blessings have come into my life, but here's what you got to see. Whatever those blessings are, they are not for you.

They are for him to be glorified by us leveraging them for the sake of the world. That doesn't mean we don't enjoy them. Okay? That doesn't mean we don't enjoy them.

Man, we don't have that kind of ethic at Mercy Hill. Maybe somebody here today you finally are in retirement, you bought the beach house or bought the mountain home or whatever. That's okay. Great.

Enjoy it. Build your family there. Disciple kids there.

But also are you going to be willing to leverage it and use it when City Project comes? They need a place to go. You see what I'm saying? It's like, hey, enjoy it, but leverage it for all for the sake of God's kingdom. All of the blessings in our life are that way. You know, we had a really big blessing over the last couple of years. We had the opportunity. And a lot of us did this with the deeper initiative. The people that committed early, we wrote down some things that we wanted to see God do in our life over the next couple of years. This was in 2022.

This is actually in the summer of 2022. And some of you guys might remember that if you've been around that long and you were one that committed early. And so we wrote some things down. They're kind of a time capsule.

You know, we sort of have them. We want to see what God is doing with them. Well, Anna and I wrote down that we really wanted to see our son, Benaiah, place faith in Christ and get baptized. And he had not done that. And he was young.

He's nine years old now. And man, praise God. At Kids Week last year, he was led to Christ by one of our awesome college students, just in a normal, everyday Kids Week day. And so we praise God for that. And then we got to see him baptized.

I want to show you all this picture. We got to see him get baptized just a few months ago. Side note here, when he saw the new baptismals at the Ridge campus, he asked if he could do it again. Okay.

I think he thinks he got cheated. Okay. Be in there.

So he wanted to do a cannonball, I think. But I think about Benaiah and I think about that blessing. Listen, this is why I bring that up.

Okay. Then I bring it up for this. That boy got baptized, saved and baptized, and it wasn't for me. One of the biggest blessings of my whole life for the last six or eight months, right? What's it for? God saved him for him. Now I get to enjoy it.

I'm excited about it. But you guys know, man, I pray for my kids. I pray that one of our kids would go to the mission field. I don't want to put a bunch of pressure on them.

And I don't normally say that even if they're sitting right here, but I'll tell you that, you know, and it's like, man, I, maybe it would be him. I don't know. It's not for me. The point is even that blessing, one of the biggest in my life, it's for him. What other blessings are not that way? What tangible blessings are not that way? And that's the point of this passage that your way would be known in all the earth, that you're saving power among all the nations.

And that's the point. It's about the nations that they would come to know who he is. Now you say nations.

What does that mean? Like a country? Does it mean like France or something? No, it doesn't mean like a country like Italy or something. It means the nations, the people groups of the world. Then that word nations in the Bible really means that people with a common ancestry, common language, common culture. There's a lot of nations that are within a geopolitical nation, if that makes sense. It's a people group.

When I was in South Asia, where some of our folks are going that were commissioned today, you would drive 30 minutes from one village to another. They'd be speaking a completely different language. They might be worshiping completely different false gods.

Okay. It's a cultural thing. It's a people group, even inside the nation. We have an incredible team that is in Africa that came right from here, came from your community groups.

We support them. Many of you guys know them very personally and they're over there sharing the gospel through storytelling, story cloth kind of thing. They're sharing the gospel with different tribes. Y'all those tribes all live within one country, but they were there a thousand years before any of the countries even existed before somebody drew a map. It's not about the country. It's about that common ancestry, beliefs, culture, background.

And here's the deal. God is glorified when those nations turn to him. You know why? Because it shows that he is not a tribal deity to be worshiped in one region with one language. It shows that he is much bigger than that. The diversity of people that holds something to be valuable shows how valuable it really is. And one day from Revelation 5, what we see is that our God will be praised by every single tribe, tongue, and nation.

There will be a remnant of all of those people. And in the diversity of that crowd, the multi-ethnic multitude, there will be something of God's value that has shown off that would not happen any other way. You guys understand what I mean. The diversity of people that see something to be valuable shows how valuable it is.

Here, let me give you an illustration. Some of you guys are Duke fans. Some of you guys are UNC fans. Some of you guys are state fans, right? Some of you guys are whatever. East Carolina, Wake Forest, okay?

I'm a Nunavut fan. I'm from Florida, all right? So y'all can have your own battles with all this stuff.

But you got your different teams. If I came in here waving an East Carolina flag, there'd be people to stand up. If I wave a Duke flag, there'd be people that stand up and cheer. If I wave a UNC flag, there'd be people to stand up and cheer. Groups would stand up and then they would sit down.

Groups would stand up and then they would sit down. The people that were loyal to that flag would stand up and sit down. Then if I brought out an American flag, we would stand up and put our hand over our heart. Can't you see in the diversity of people that hold it to be valuable, which one has the greater glory?

It's the one that makes everybody stand up. And that's the idea of God. One day, the multi-ethnic multitude, the people from every tribe, tongue, and nation will say, He is the one true God. And in that, God will be glorified. God blesses us so that we can make His glory known among the nations. With our time, with our talent, with our children, with our jobs, with our friendships, with the margin that we have, with our health, we enjoy God. We praise Him. We live our life on mission for Him. But we spread that fame and that renown with praying and going and giving.

Now look, I know this is sticky for some people, especially new believers. This is the part in our culture people don't like, man. They don't like this. You're going to go to another culture. You're going to tell them about your God. And people just don't like that.

It's like, man, that feels elitist. I don't like the idea of telling somebody else that they're wrong about something or that there's a new way of thinking about it or that Jesus Christ is the one way to heaven. I mean, Jesus said, I didn't say it. He is the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes to the Father but by Him. That's just what it is. Now, here's the thing. If we don't, if you're here today and you're like, man, I don't like that part of Christianity that people go out and share their faith with others, then I would challenge you to your core and I would ask you, do you actually believe the claims of Christ? Do you actually believe it or are you just paying lip service to it?

Because here's the deal. If the Bible is true about what Jesus, who He is, what He says, okay, that there is a world that is lost, that we are on a mission to share His fame and renown so that people can be reconciled to Him, that there's an actual heaven and there's an actual hell. If that stuff was all true, we wouldn't be skeptical of the missionary endeavor.

We would love it. We would say we have to do it. When people don't want us to go on mission or they don't like that part of the faith, honestly, it's because secretly they think probably that, man, this actually isn't really all true. Because if it was true, we'd have a different attitude about it. Because we're talking about life and death here. We're talking about spiritual eternity here.

You know, nobody is, okay, I'll give you an example. A few years ago, there was a trainer at SeaWorld named Don Branchu that was killed by a whale named Tilikum. He was a killer whale, orca. Man, it was a very tragic situation. They made a big documentary about it that went kind of all over and all that, and it was kind of a save the planet type of thing. But they had this whole documentary that went out. But the idea was this.

This is what was crazy. After he killed Don Branchu, it came out. Nobody had told her this that Tilikum had killed two other people in his life. There ain't but four people who on record who on record have ever been killed by an orca.

I mean, ever. And three of them were killed by one. So overwhelmingly, like overwhelmingly, the interactions humans have with orcas are not, you know, deadly. But this one, it was pretty deadly.

Three out of the four. Now here's what I want you to imagine. Don Branchu is about to get in that water with Tilikum, and somebody comes running up to her and says, you don't understand. This whale is dangerous. He's killed two other people. This doesn't happen. He's got something wrong.

Don't get in the water with him. How many of us would say how arrogant is that person? How arrogant is that to come up and try to tell Don what to do in her life?

Right? We wouldn't think about it like that. We'd probably think about it like, no, you think that person because they're trying to save your life by telling you the truth. And so for us, the missionary enterprise, if you're new or you got to understand, the way you feel about going to share the gospel, the way you feel about the whole missionary enterprise, it really does come down to whether you believe in the truth claims of Jesus Christ or not.

And if we do, how could we help but not want to go and share with people who have never heard. And the Bible certainly is filled with this type of language. Acts 1, 8, Jesus says, what? Preach the gospel here and to the other most parts of the world. Matthew 25, what does the Bible say? Jesus says the gospel will be preached in all of the world before his return. That's why Revelation 5 says there's a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation that will be represented before the throne. God is worth the praise of all of the peoples.

Look what it says in verse 3. Let the peoples praise you. We think it's about people. No, it's about peoples. It's about the nations.

It's about the people groups of the world. Let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.

Why are they glad and sing for joy? Because that blessing of Genesis 12, that Abrahamic covenant is coming to them. That through Abraham, God would bless the whole world. Ultimately, through Jesus Christ, there would be a light that is shined in every single part of the world in all the people groups. For you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth.

Y'all, I'm going to call you to pray and to give and to go today. One of the things I want you to see is that is for your joy because this is your purpose. You were created to be a worshiper and a spreader of the fame of God.

Now whether you're doing that or not is a different thing. But it is how you were created and it is why you are here. Another thing people don't love about the faith, and this might be where you are today, they're like, man I don't like that. I don't like the message that God created everything in the universe to reflect his glory. He created it for himself. People say it sounds like God has a God complex.

Well, I want you to just think about that for one second. How could God have a God complex? He doesn't have a God complex, he is just God. If he created something, if he created something and he was going to worship that or if there was something else in the universe that his glory was given to, Isaiah 48 says, the Lord says, I will not give my glory to another.

Don't get it wrong, it is about him. But here's the deal, this is why people don't understand. You understand that if that is true and you were created as a contingent being to worship God and be a spreader of his fame, then it is so joyful to find out that that's who you are. Your purpose and your joy are inextricably linked.

They cannot be pulled apart. Your joy and your purpose are to worship God and to spread the worship of God. Y'all, when you find out why you're really here, when you find out the unique giftings that you have and how they connect into that grand purpose to worship God and spread his fame and renown, man, something very deep in the wells of your soul gets unlocked.

I want that for every single person. Joy and purpose are bound together. I've told you guys this before, every January and February, me and my boys will go down and hog hunt in South Carolina. And it's fun, we get the dogs out and all that kind of stuff. And my buddies have been into it for years and years since college, really 20 years, one hobby. I really respect them for that.

And they've been so into it. Well, finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. And last year I brought one of the puppies home. Okay. So now we have a hog dog at our house named Susie the Uzi. Okay.

I mean, she's bad. All right. And I don't know if she's going to hunt a hog or not.

We're going to find out in January and February, but all indications right now are that she's going to get after one. Okay. And so we're really excited about that. In the meantime, we're substituting hogs for squirrels. Okay. So she's hunting a lot of squirrels. Okay.

So, uh, so she's having a lot of fun. She's a cur dog. Um, now here's the deal about a hog dog. Okay. They're different kind of dog.

These cur dogs, these pit bulls, all the dogs that go to hogs. They're different. Um, we live in a strange time. Okay. We live in a day and age where people put clothes on their dogs. They put Halloween costumes on their dogs. Okay.

We live in a time where people give their dogs anti-anxiety medication. That's just where we are as a culture. And I'm not judging you about that. Okay. I'm judging a few of you about that. Okay. I know I know. I know a few of you.

I'm not judging everybody. All right. These types of dogs, these dogs are not that type of dog.

Okay. Um, they're just not, man. They, they, they have been born and bred literally for 200 years to do one thing, go find the hog and bark at it.

That's what they do, man. They go out in the woods, find the hog and bark at it when they're sitting in their kennel. All they can think about all day long is find the hog and bark at it.

They, they have one singular purpose in their life. And this is the funny, this is the funny thing. And if you guys were coming up to me after, it ain't gotta be a hog dog. Really any dog that's a hunting dog is this way.

And you'll know it. If you've ever been around one, you have never seen more joy in an animal's life than when a hunting dog, when that tailgate drops and they go, you never, I don't care if you're hunting rabbits. I don't care if you're hunting, whatever it is.

Why? Because they've been bred for hundreds of years to do one thing. And when they get a chance to do that, you get to see what I'm talking about. Joy and purpose totally bound together. And you know what I think about in our life, y'all, what are we here to do? We all got different stuff going on.

I get that. But in the end of the day, we are, we are here for one purpose and that purpose is to glorify God with our life, enjoy him and spread his fame. And once we understand that, man, something really deep can be unlocked for us. And I hope that you're hearing that today and you'll want to do what this application is from Psalm 67.

Here's the application this weekend. Leverage your blessings for God's glory. Whatever you count as your blessing, leverage it for God's glory.

Here's the money question. It's not original to me. I, this was another sermon this week that we studied. Okay. Have we disconnected the blessing from the purpose? Whatever the blessing is in your mind that you're thinking of right now.

Okay. Man, I've been through a list of them. I don't have to list them again. Anything you are, do or have that you don't deserve. God is the source of all these things in our life. Listen, have we disconnected that blessing from its purpose? And all of a sudden it has become about me.

It's become about my happiness, become on my status has become about my, you know, rise in the company has become about my, the way I'm viewed in front of my peers has become about my pride. It's all, or can we take those things and put them back together today and realize, no, no, no, every single thing about my time, talent and treasure is for the Lord. He gave it to me so that I can leverage it for what his purposes in my life are.

And if we can understand that today, it's going to unlock some things for us. Now I was thinking about this for myself and I thought, okay, how do I get this in my soul? How can I begin to see anything from my vacation time to my job, to my health, to my four wheeler as a way to leverage my life for God's glory? How can I get that in my mind? And then it kind of dawns on me, you know what? I need to go to the biggest blessing in my whole life. And I need to see who that one was for, because if that one was actually for God, then all these other ones are for God as well.

Right? What's the biggest blessing in your life? If you're not a Christian, I don't know what your answer is to that question. That's a deep question. Maybe you need to wrestle with it. But if you're a believer, what is the, what is the biggest blessing in your life?

You know what it is? It's that you are not who you once were. Man, God reached down and snatched you inside out. He took you out of that grave and put you on a solid rock.

Now you are alive in him. Your biggest blessing is that you are no longer defined by your greatest failures, but you are defined by what God says and who he says you are is his precious child. That's the gospel. The gospel is Jesus came and stood in my place. He took what I deserved. In my sin, I deserve nothing but separation from God and hell forever. But what Jesus did was take that from me. He took that shame.

He took that guilt. And like we sang in the earlier, man, I'm not made to be 10 in that grave anymore. I can turn my back on those things because I am new. You get, you see in baptism, you come out of that water. You are brand new or that's a symbol of what God has done spiritually already in your life. When you're a believer, that's the biggest blessing in our life, right?

But I got to thinking about it and I thought, wait a minute. Did God save me for me or did he save me for him? Even my very salvation is not about me. Man, God saved me for him. God saved me to fulfill his covenant to Abraham in Genesis 12, that there would be a people from everywhere that Abraham would bless the whole world because through his line would come the light to the world, Jesus Christ.

Then it was about him. Isaiah 48, as I mentioned earlier, what does it say? It says, God will not give his glory to another.

Isaiah 48, 11. It's about his glory, his fame, his renown. And then I get to thinking, wait a minute. If my salvation isn't even about me, I enjoy it.

Yeah. My whole life is wrapped up in it. Yes, but it's not about me.

It's about him. Then what other blessings in my life are not that way? Kids, family, job, resources, money, vacation time, relationships, friendships, spiritual fruit, blessing, spiritual gifts in our life, whatever it is. God, you have given me these things so that I can turn them back to you and I can make your way known in all the earth. And that's what we need to go, hey, pray, go and give.

All right. That's what we need to get into. Pray, go and give. If these things are true, then we got to understand we will give an account for what we did in this life. You know, right now there are 2.5 billion people who don't know Christ. They have very little access to him. There are people who can walk out of their house and walk for days and months and never see a Christian and never see a Bible. There are entire people groups who not only don't have the gospel, they don't even have anybody trying to reach them.

They're called UUPG, unreached, unengaged people group. And for them not to hear the gospel is every bit the tragedy it is for you not to hear the gospel. For their kids to never sing Jesus Loves Me is every bit the tragedy it would be for your kids to not know that Jesus loves them. We're going to give an account for what we did with everything that we have. So the first thing I would say today is this, man, let's pray. Pray that the Lord would do incredible things in our life. Pray that God would bless us. Pray that he would pour out his resources on us. But don't do that in a selfish way. Man, we do it full well saying, God, I will leverage these things for you.

How can you leverage what God has given you? Pray that God will show you the answer to that question and pray for our missionaries. Pray for our sent ones. I want to show you all Anna does a really good job of this in our home just trying to keep mementos up so we're keeping in mind. And y'all these are some of our latest missionaries or these are the ones that are on the field now. Many of them you're going to get this card on the way out today.

Two cards from the two families. Put them somewhere where you can pray for them in our home. It's very simple. Listen, Mondays is for missionaries. It's very simple. Mondays, missionaries.

Say, man, I've never done any kind of thing like that. Great. Tomorrow's a Monday. Let's start tomorrow. We got the cards.

Put them somewhere where you can see them and tomorrow's a Monday. Okay, so let's pray for our missionaries tomorrow. Let's pray for the nations. Second thing I would say is, man, let's go to the nations. All right, let's go.

I was, I got a chance. There's a documentary called Beyond Utopia. It's kind of gone viral.

It's won all these kind of awards and all that. I got a chance to talk to the guy a couple weeks ago right here in our offices. And this guy, this brother has smuggled 1,000 people out of North Korea. I'm talking 7,500 mile journey one way. I'm talking about months. I'm talking about they get caught. It's jail. It's prison.

It's death. It's crazy. You know how many of these people have come to Christ? They live in such oppressive darkness where they are.

There are people who are doing stuff all over the world just like this. And how can we, yes, pray and support them, but how can we go? Maybe some of you, it's time to not just pray and give, but to actually go.

Go with our teams. They're praying for laborers. You saw that today. I love what Rachel said. No farmer looks out at the harvest and says, oh my gosh, it's so big. They're like, it's so big. We got, we got to get, Hey, we got to grab some people, get out here and help me. We got to get this harvest in. So maybe you would go, Hey, I can take this a million ways. I'm gonna take it two ways. Number one, uh, the president of the international mission board called us out specifically Mercy Hill.

Hey, master's program. You guys are in the fourth quarter. Some of y'all are in the fourth quarter. It's retirement age.

It's all that kind of stuff. The fourth quarter is the most important quarter in our culture. What people want you to say is, Hey, I did my time. Not at Mercy Hill. What we say is not, I did my time. Now you're in your prime. Now it's time to leverage everything for the kingdom. And some of you guys have an opera. I see it all over our church. We've got people right now who are busier now than they ever were working. I mean, they're, they're, they're, you know, Samaritan's Purse, Baptist on Mission, Hope Academy, mentoring people go. Anytime there's anything we're doing in the church, they're here helping and we can leverage that fourth quarter of our life.

Some of you can leverage overseas. I want to call you to think about that. What does two or three years look like? You know, Anna and I've talked about that a lot. I don't, faith and honestly, it's kind of a wild card with this, but here was our plan, our plan from the start, pass from Mercy Hill for 30 years, and then go to the mission field for two terms. That's always been the plan.

I don't know what faith and I don't know how that'll work out. Okay. But I'm just saying, can you kind of think about what you would do with those years of your life? And the second group of people that I want to mention is to our awesome college students.

Okay. Hey, many of them are not here today. Some of you guys are here.

You're at High Point Clifton right now, but many of them are not here because they're at their college retreat this weekend. God is doing incredible things. They're sending me pictures last night of baptizing people at midnight in Lake Gaston last night. Okay.

So I don't know what's going on up there. All right. But you know, we're excited about that, but I want to talk to you today. Okay. And those of you might hear this when you get back, I'm praying today would be the sermon.