Vision Without Boundaries - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, January 4th. Today we're challenged to turn ourselves toward a new year with renewed passion to put our faith into action. Here's part two of Vision Without Boundaries. I'm fully persuaded that most of us fail to achieve our goals, reach our dreams, our strong desires in life, simply because we unknowingly set boundaries, limitations upon ourselves, and just give up and consent to mental barriers.

We originate ourselves and then wonder why we don't accomplish those things. What is true in our life personally will be projected in the life of the church. What we hear in the church will be projected in our personal life. So I want us to take a couple of passages that are very, very familiar to us, and I want us to think in terms primarily about the church, but also in your own personal life. So I want you to turn to these two. They're two familiar passages, and usually people say, oh, I know that one by heart. But sometimes what I know by heart may be the very thing that trips me up. Oh, I know what that says.

And this is a good example of it. I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 28. And I want us to begin reading in the 16th verse, and when you turn to Matthew 28, then before we read, turn, if you will, to Acts chapter 1. So Matthew 28 and Acts chapter 1, two familiar passages, but two very important ones concerning this whole idea of visions without boundaries. In the 28th chapter of Matthew, in the 16th verse, remembering that Jesus has risen from the dead, this is his final meeting with his disciples here on earth, and he says, But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated.

And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some were doubtful. And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Then in Acts chapter 1, beginning in the sixth verse, Scripture says, And so when they had come together, they were asking him, saying, Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.

And you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest part of the earth. What is it that motivated them to do what he asked them to do? Well, I think the number of things and first of all, the thing that I think must motivate every person, that is their own personal experience with Jesus. What was their motivation?

When he said, I want you to go out and preach the gospel. That is, give them the good message of Christ, birth, death, resurrection, his atoning death at Calvary, his willingness to save them. What is it that motivated them? I'll tell you what motivated them.

First of all, is their own personal experience. These men were men whose lives had been transformed by their relationship to Jesus. When they trusted him as their savior, their Lord and their master, something happened in their life. They wouldn't ever be the same again. And therefore, when they went out, they went out with a message, listen, not just on their lips. They went out with a message that was a part of their very soul. It was a part of their very life. In fact...