Ministry in Christ's name is not us doing great things for God. It is figuring out where the Father is at work in the lives of people around us and joining him in it. Hey, I got really good news for you. God does not need you to change people's lives for him. Everybody breathed a sigh of relief.
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Now, today is the final sermon of a brand new teaching series called The Whole Disciple, where Pastor JD provides a framework for how to do what Jesus has called us to do. Live with gospel intentionality in a way that results in true multiplication. years pastor JB. Good morning, everybody. At all of our campuses, three places I want you to open your Bibles to this weekend.
The first is John 15, where we have been the last couple of weeks, and then also I want you to. Find Acts chapter 1, and I want you to put your finger or something there because we will go there. And then Matthew chapter 28 is the third place. And if that overwhelms you, You're like, Pastor, I can barely find the one passage that you give us each weekend. By the end of the sermon, I'm just figuring out where it is in the Bible, much less try to find three.
Well, then just meet me in John 15 and just hang there, and I will put the other passages up here. for you as we get to them. I opened up the first week of this series telling you about the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, who opened each season with his Green Bay Packers professional football team by holding out one of these and saying to them at the start of each season, gentlemen, This is a football. We said that great coaches never ever take for it to ever take the basics for granted. And so, for four weeks, we've been doing the same thing here.
We've been talking about what it means to be a disciple. We spent two weeks talking about what kind of the basics were. What does it mean to actually be a disciple? Then we talked about what it means to grow as a disciple. That was last week, Christ in Me, the hope of glory.
And now, for this final week, we are going to end this series by talking about making disciples. And not just making disciples, but making disciples. Who make disciples. The great commission is to make followers of Jesus who. Multiply.
In John 15, the passage that we've been in for the last couple of weeks, Jesus said, by this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit. And so, by so doing, you will prove to be my disciples. Jesus' intention is that you. You, you personally bear much fruit. Everybody, right now, just look to your right.
I guess for you it'd be that way. But everybody look to your right. That plain looking person. Is somebody that Jesus intends to be incredibly fruitful. Multiplying is how you prove, in fact, that you are actually his disciple.
Living organisms reproduce. If Jesus' life is in you, then you will reproduce. One of the books that really impacted me when I was in college was a little classic book by Robert Coleman called The Master Plan of Evangelism. And you've probably heard the definition of a classic book is a book that everybody's heard about and nobody's actually read.
Well, this is one I would encourage you to actually read. In that book, Robert Coleman says, and I quote, a barren Christian is a contradiction. Because see a tree is known by its fruit. Fruitlessness was the thing lacking in the lives of the Sadducees and Pharisees, which made them so wretched in his sight. In case you don't know, the Pharisees and Sadducees were a group of very religious people that had mastered all the doctrines.
They went to Bible studies out the wazoo. They knew every word to every worship song. They were in the synagogue whenever the doors were open. But they did not have the life of God, the life of Jesus in them. And the evidence of that was that they did not reproduce.
So in Matthew 23, 15, Jesus said to them, Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You travel over land and sea to win a single convert. In other words, you go on lots of mission trips. And when you finally succeed in making a convert, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are. One of the things that proves we are actually disciples of Jesus is that we multiply John 15:8, by this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit.
And by so doing, you will prove to be my disciples. Here's what I want to do today, okay? We're going to look at two other places, three total, two other places in the Gospels. Where Jesus gave the great commission, and then I want to try. draw some implication for what it Means for you and me personally and practically, and I know almost immediately.
When I bring this subject up and you figure out what we're talking about today, you're like, well. I just don't have the personality for this. I am not outgoing. I don't like to talk to people. I don't like to talk to random people like you do, JD.
I'm not really quick on my feet. I don't know a lot of Bible. I don't know how to answer stuff. I just don't feel like this really fits me. I hear you.
I really do. But I promise you, there is something in this for you. First, let's go to Acts chapter 1.
So, leave John 15. Just for a minute, keep your finger there. Go over to Acts 1. Acts 1, Jesus is about to ascend up to heaven. And he's gathered his disciples one final time to give them some parting thoughts.
Think of this as the huddle right before they start the play. Verse 6, and when they had come together They asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? They wanted to use their last session with Jesus. to ask Jesus some questions about the end times. They want him to do a series on the book of Revelation.
They want to know about the rapture. They want to know whether Kirk Cameron or Nicholas Cage are going to get left behind. I will tell you as a pastor, I know this feeling. People are always asking, Pastor, when are we going to do a series on the end times? But Jesus does not answer their question.
Instead, he does what my wife does when our kids ask her a question that she doesn't want to answer. She redirects the question. Verse 7, he said to them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. Verse 8, but this is what you should be thinking about, disciples. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
And you will be my, everybody say this word together. You will be my... Witnesses In Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The last identity that Jesus emphasized before he ascended back up to heaven was witness. Many people feel like this is the one identity of the discipleship identities I gave to you.
This is the one identity they feel like doesn't apply to them. Like I said, they're like JD, I'm not an extrovert. I'm not like you. I don't like to talk to people. Recently, somebody was telling me about a person in their life.
And based just on the stories they were telling me, it was obvious. They got to put that person in their life for them to share Christ with. And so I said to them, Well, why don't you say this to them? And I said, You know, why don't you say to them? I think God is saying to you that.
And they said to me, Oh, I could never see myself doing that. I hear you. I really do. But God made your personality. He made your personality.
That's not a surprise to him. It's not a liability to him. And he's got a way for you to do this too. Witness was the last identity he gave to you and to me. It's the last identity he commissioned us with before he left.
Y'all think for a minute about all that Jesus could have said right there. He could have said, and you will be my Bible studiers. And you will be my worship song singers. And you will be my justice advocates. You will be my tithers.
He could have said any of those things. But his ultimate marching orders are you will be my Witnesses. It's what John said too in John 15. It's what John recorded: By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so proved to be my disciples. A barren Christian is a contradiction.
One more place to look at this, Matthew chapter 28, verse 19. Jesus said this. Go into all the world. And make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age.
I've told you this before, but this is super important. In English, there are several verbs in that sentence. Go, make disciples, baptize, teach. In Greek, however, there's only one verb. Make disciples.
And all the other words in that verse that look to us like they're verbs are actually participles. You say fascinating grammar lesson, JD.
So what?
Well, in Greek, that means that make disciples is the center of everything else in that sentence. Everything else Jesus charges the church to do, going. Baptizing, teaching people to observe all that He commanded falls under the larger category of making disciples. That means every ministry of the church. It means every passion of every believer should have as its central guiding purpose reproducing disciples.
So with those three passages. Let me give you four things that apply to all of us as it relates to you becoming a disciple maker, regardless of your personality or your gift makeup. And by the way, I hope that by using all three passages, John 15, Acts 1, and Matthew 28, you will see that each Bible writer emphasizes the same things when it comes to the Great Commission. Which is why every time I preach on this, I make essentially the same points, just in different words. These four things are how you can become a disciple-making disciple.
Number one, join Jesus in what he's doing. Join Jesus in what he's doing. John, Luke, and Matthew all emphasize the role of the Holy Spirit in the Great Commission. We are not the ones that are doing this. Jesus wants us to know that the Holy Spirit is the one that does this.
We just join the Holy Spirit in what He is doing around us. Let's look at John 15 first. John 15, Jesus said, verse 15: No longer do I call you servants, because the servant doesn't know what his master's doing. But I have called you friends. For all that I heard from my Father, I made known to you.
Earlier in the book of John, Jesus had explained his own ministry philosophy. He said in John 5, I don't do anything of my own initiative. I don't do anything on my own initiative. What I see the Father doing around me, that's what I do. In other words, even though Jesus, get this, even though Jesus was the Son of God.
He didn't just go around doing things by his own power. No, by the Spirit, he perceived where the Father was at work and he joined the Father in what he was doing around him. He perceived the Father already at work in somebody's life, and he recognized. that that was his invitation, his calling to get involved.
Well, y'all, if that is true for Jesus, how much more so is it true for you and me? Ministry in Christ's name is not us doing great things for God. It is figuring out where the Father is at work in the lives of people around us and joining Him in it. Hey, I got really good news for you. God does not need you to change people's lives for Him.
Everybody breathe a sigh of relief. He doesn't need you to convict them or persuade them or change their hearts. He does that. He's the only one that can do that. He wants you to join him where he is already at work around you doing that.
Small group leaders, this applies to how you lead your small groups. God is doing something in their lives, not you. You just join him in it. Parents, this applies to your kids. As a dad, I'm not responsible for producing spiritual life in my kids.
I can't do that. Only God can do that. I'm just called to join God and what He's doing in their lives. That applies to me when I sit next to a stranger on an airplane. I can't persuade this person to be interested in Jesus.
I can only join God in what He is already doing in their lives, which is why I've told you my main philosophy of evangelism is just running a metal detector over people's lives. to see if the Spirit of God is at work. I just do that by asking questions. And if he is not at work, I can't manufacture it. But if he is, that I can join him in it.
I've told you this before, but one of the most effective personal evangelists I've ever met told me. That an effective evangelist has to believe two things in his or her soul. Number one, you got to believe that salvation belongs to God. That means the pressure is not on me. God does the work.
Salvation belongs to Him. I just joy Him in it. You also got to believe, number two, that faith comes only by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. See, that's just my part in it. The word of God has to be sown in somebody's heart in order for it to do its work.
So when God opens a door for me to speak the word to somebody, I should do it. But then he's the one that has to make the word bear fruit, and that may happen later when I'm not even with them anymore. I've heard it said that the average person needs to hear the gospel twice. 20 times before they believe it. A lot of times I'm one of the first 19 and I don't get to see the response.
I'm just paving the way for somebody else. And when they get to see that person come to Christ, one day I'll be like, I was number 11. I was number 11 and you couldn't have gotten a 20 without 11. Being a disciple-making disciple first means just joining Jesus and what he's doing. Luke's account of the Great Commission in Acts makes this even clearer.
So let's go back there for a minute.
So flip back over to Acts chapter 1. In verse 4, before Jesus ascends to heaven. He tells them that before they're going to do anything for the Great Commission. They need to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. No, but you just Think about that for a minute.
I mean, take off your kind of Bible-listening hat for a minute and just think about that. The whole world. Needs to hear the gospel. It's the only way they can be saved. And these disciples are the only people in the world who know it.
People everywhere around them were dying every day. And these guys, these men, And that little group of our early disciples, those men and women, they have the only message that can save those people, and he's telling them. To wait. Do nothing until the Holy Spirit comes. You know, some of those people had to have been type A.
That would have driven me bananas. I would have been like, wait. Boy, but we got books to write. We got money to raise. We got conferences to organize.
And yet, even with all that great need in front of them, he told them to do nothing. Until the Holy Spirit came, because until he came, nothing they tried to do for him would make any difference anyway. It's like Jesus has said in John 15, apart from me. You can't do anything.
Now for us, of course, we have the Holy Spirit. We receive the Holy Spirit the moment that we trust in Christ, so we are not waiting for the Holy Spirit like they were, but hear this. There is still a sense in which we are to be in a posture. Of waiting on the Holy Spirit. We wait on the Holy Spirit to direct us individually into ministry.
We wait on the Holy Spirit to invite us into what He is already doing. I don't do anything of my own initiative. What I see the Father doing, that's what I do. The Holy Spirit shows me the part of the ministry that He is calling us to. I got a friend named Tony who adopted five kids.
Four from Ukraine and one from Kenya. He says, you got no trouble telling which ones are which, by the way. The four from Ukraine he adopted all at one time. When my wife and I asked him how he and his wife came to that decision, we were having dinner with him one night, he said, Well, They said, My wife and I were studying the book of Ephesians, how God had adopted us in Christ, and that there's no better picture of that in the gospel. And we just felt like God put it into our hearts to adopt, and so we started praying about it.
He said, Well, the next summer I went on a mission trip to Ukraine and He said, while I was there, I visited an orphanage. It's just part of what we were doing there, and the orphanage director had told him that somebody had just brought in a set of four siblings. He said, That's not why I'd gone. I just went there on a mission trip. We were sharing Christ to the streets and doing all kinds of stuff, working with churches.
These kids, they were aged two through eight, these four siblings, they were about to be split up and placed in orphanages all around the country. unless somebody would come forward to take all four, but that was such a huge thing that nobody would do it. That a worker brought the kids out before me, and what I saw were four scared little children. All of them were holding hands. They thought that they were being called in for some kind of discipline.
In that moment, my friend said, in that moment. The Spirit of God said to me, Those are your kids. His wife wasn't even with him. He had not come on that trip intending to adopt. He called his wife and said, hey.
I got some big news.
Some of you ladies just looked at your husband and said, You ain't ever going on a mission trip. I can tell you that right now. Those are your kids. If you're listening to the Spirit of God, He will say that to you about something. That's why we always say that not everything that comes from heaven has your name on it, but something does.
And it's your job to discern from the Holy Spirit what that is and then get after it. That's how Jesus calls you to join him in what he is doing. Number two. Pursue normal life. With gospel intentionality.
Pursue normal life with gospel intentionality. Many of us think of evangelism or disciple-making as some special activity that we do. You think I'm up here telling you to add something to your calendar, but when Jesus gave the great commission in Matthew, what he literally said, listen to this: what he literally said was: as you are going, make disciples. In English, we translate that as go, like it's a command. Like start going, like get off your rear end and go.
But the Greek can also mean as you are already going. The implication is that life already has us going lots of different places. And as we go, we should make disciples. Disciple making means pursuing normal life with gospel. Disciple-making intentionality, making disciples in all the places that we go.
I ran across this diagram recently, and I found it very, very helpful. This is how most of us see our lives right here.
Okay, your life is like a pie, and you got different sections of the pie divided up into the different responsibilities that you have. And in a series like this one, what you hear me saying is: increase your church pie. You need to take some time and you need to give more time to the church. And you sit there and you think, but I can't. There's just no more of the pie left.
I can't make more time in the day, and I can't take time from my family. I can't take time from my work. But what if? What if instead of thinking of your life that way, You saw the various dimensions of your life as places God already has you going, in which you are to be engaged in disciple-making. You see that?
What if you saw the different dimensions of your life as the places you're already going? And as you go make disciples, our college ministry, who probably does the best job in this church in disciple making, says. 70% of discipleship is informal. Sure, there are classes and there are books and there are things like groundworks involved in disciple making, but a lot of discipleship is just doing normal life with gospel intentionality. That's how it was with Jesus.
Jesus taught some things formally, right? Think Sermon on the Mount. He talked, they sat there and took notes. But a lot of what Jesus taught was in the moment. Helping one of the disciples process their fears or walking them through errors in their thinking.
In 1976, my mom and dad... Settled into Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 1976. America had just turned 200, and I had just turned two. My mom and my dad were brand new Christians, and they just moved from West Virginia so that my dad could start a new job.
Somebody invited them to this exciting, growing church. For most of their lives, they'd only ever been cultural Christians, but in this church, they preached. Real discipleship. And more importantly, The pastor took a special interest in my dad and made. and made him part of his life and he turned my dad into a spiritual giant.
A few years ago, that pastor went home to be with Jesus, and my dad and I drove down to Georgia to go to his funeral. And as we were driving down, my dad was recounting for me all the... the ways that God had worked in his life through that pasture during those those early years. And he said, he said, but you know what, JD? He said, I could not tell you, he's one of the finest preachers I ever heard, but I could not tell you the outline of a single sermon he preached in those early years.
Which is kind of depressing for me, honestly. He said, what I can never forget though. But I can never forget is hearing him pray. Or listening to him comfort somebody in their grief, or watching him share Christ with the lady at the grocery store. Observing his life impacted me far more than any sermon he ever preached.
Because of that man's life-on-life investment, my family forever changed. That's your role. That's your role. Living out the five identities: worshiper, family member, servant, steward, and witness. in front of other people in the normal course of life.
Maybe you can't teach like me. But you can invite somebody into your life to observe how you follow Jesus as a worshiper, a family member, a servant, a steward, and a witness. That means you can get together with them once a week to do your quiet time together, for example. Or you could ride to church together and talk about the things that you're learning and how you're growing. You can serve with refugees or in our prison ministry or in the student ministry together.
You can go on a mission trip together. You can invite that person to pray with you before work one day or in the boiler room on the weekend. Just do normal life as you go. with gospel intentionality. Number three.
WWJD HWLF. A few weeks ago, I referenced the WWJD bracelet that came out when I was in college and has recently made a comeback. WWJD stands for? What would Jesus do?
Well, there's a new companion bracelet that was not out when I was in college. And that is HWLF. And that stands for. He would love first.
Now, that may not express the totality of what it means to love Jesus. But that is a good starting place. And it's a major starting place for you in becoming a disciple-making disciple. In Jesus' final teaching session that we looked at in John 15. He references the command to love one another.
34 different times. That is by far what dominates his teaching in John 13 through 16: this command to love. For example, he says, John 13:34: a new commandment I'm giving to you: that you love one another. Just as I loved you. You also are to love one another in that same way.
And then he even says this: By this, all people will know that you're my disciples. How? If you've got love one for another. The excessiveness of your love for people is how the world will come to know that you are my disciples. And that's where it applies to a lot of you.
who wonder how you can be part of the disciple-making disciple process. Rosario Butterfield wrote a book years ago. called the gospel comes with a house key. And in that book, she makes the case. that in today's dechurched Post-Christian age The home.
is our most important instrument of evangelism. If you don't know, Rosaria was a practicing lesbian and outspoken feminist who taught women's studies at Syracuse University. In fact, she wrote one of the seminal works on critical theory and intersectionality that still gets referenced today.
Well, in the late 90s, a Christian movement called Promise Keepers came to her town. A movement that emphasized the need for Christian men to step forward in their leadership roles as husbands and fathers.
Well, as you can imagine, that's like oil and water to her.
So she writes a blistering piece in her city newspaper about the movement, calling it backwards and bigoted and yada yada. And as you can imagine, she got all kinds of responses back to that article. She said there were no neutral responses, by the way. She said they were either filled with fawning praise or had an angry, how dare you, tone to them. She said, I just filed the responses in two categories.
Had two baskets on my desk. And she said, I put all the love you responses in one pile, and then all the hate you responses in a different one. He said, Well, one afternoon, I opened up a letter from a local pastor, and I kind of braced myself because I figured I knew what was coming. She said, but then I read it and I genuinely couldn't figure out what pile to put it in. It was clear he strongly disagreed with me.
But it was so full of love and respect that I didn't know what pile to put it in.
So she said, I just left it on my desk and stared at it for a few weeks. Eventually, she called up the pastor and asked if she could ask him some questions. And that pastor said, sure, and that pastor invited her to his house for dinner. She said, my lesbian partner did not understand why I was going to an evangelical pastor's house for dinner, but I told him, to her, I was just going to do some research for the next critical thing I would write about evangelical Christians. She said, I showed up at that dinner ready for debate, but what overwhelmed me about this pastor and his wife.
Was there hospitality? She said, and I quote: there were so many people coming to their house. It was as if. The front door of that house didn't even exist. She became a regular house guest there, and to make a long story really short.
through their love. She eventually came to faith in Christ, and in the book, The Gospel Comes with the House Keys, she makes the point that in today's climate, hospitality is probably. The main way that people outside the church, especially if they're hostile to the church, have to be reached. She also shows that hospitality is the primary way scripture commends reaching out to people. It's how Jesus did it.
Just read the Gospel of Luke. Jesus eats his way through the Gospel of Luke. The whole narrative of Luke is organized around meals. Which is my kind of savior, by the way. You know, this is one of the lost arts of Christianity.
I'll prove it. When we think about hospitality, we think about entertaining church friends. But biblically, hospitality means welcoming in the stranger. Literally, the word hospitality in Greek and in English. Literally, it means love of the stranger.
When you welcome other Christians into your home around your table, that's called fellowship. And that is very important too. But it's different from hospitality. For disciples of Jesus, we should not limit our guest list to family, friends, and rich neighbors. We open our love up and our homes and our tables up to the outsider, to the stranger.
Y'all, this is so central in Christian ministry that Paul makes it one of the requirements to become a church leader. 1 Timothy 3, he says that all leaders of the church should be given to hospitality. It means it ought to characterize their lives. I love what Rosaria says here. She says, stop thinking of witnessing to your neighbors as sneaky evangelistic raids into their sinful lives.
Instead, she said, open up your lives to them and open up your homes with them and share with them from the warmth of your family. Number four. Serve locally. And abroad. In Acts 1.8, Jesus gave us the outline for our mission.
Jerusalem. Judea Samaria, the ends of the earth. In some ways, you can see that. As an outline for our ministry, we got our local city, that's our Jerusalem. Judea would be our country, our region shares the same general culture.
Samaria would represent those places close to us where people are culturally separated from us. Think of refugees, immigrants, minority communities right here in our midst, because that's what Samaria was to the Jews. Ends of the earth would be unreached people groups all around the world. God calls us to make disciples in all those places simultaneously. We should never feel the need to choose between the local and the global.
Faithful Christians do both at the same time. I've heard it said, the light that shines the farthest will also shine the brightest at home. And vice versa. The light that shines the brightest at home will also shine the farthest. Our mission there.
ought to be an extension and an overflow of what we're doing here. In the same way, we shouldn't pit pursuing justice or meeting physical needs against reaching people for Christ. Reaching somebody for Christ often starts with meeting their physical needs. That's how Jesus did it. Right?
He started with the bodies that needed to be healed and the stomachs that needed to be fed. But at the same time, the greatest need that people have is to hear about Jesus. John Piper said that Christians should care about any kind of suffering in the world. When people in the world are suffering in any way, it should move us to action, whether that's a lack of clean water or a lack of education or because they live under oppression. But the worst kind of suffering.
The worst kind of suffering, he says. is eternal suffering. And Christians should care about that. Listen, I'll just say it plainly. It is unkind, unkind for us.
As Christians, to give our money and our time to meet people's physical needs and not accompany that with news about the only Savior who can save them from their sins. I mean, imagine that somebody had discovered the cure for colon cancer or Alzheimer's. And you had it. And you're going over to elderly people's house. Many of whom are suffering from these very diseases and are about to die.
And you're there, what, cleaning up their house and mowing their yard? And you just never share with him. The cure, how cruel would that be? How cruel would that be to take care of their physical needs and not tell them about the one thing that could save their life? The Joshua Project, which is a Missions Research Organization reports that today there are 7,398 unreached people groups.
An unreached people group means a group of people in the world who, as it stands right now, likely will die without. Ever hearing a presentation of the gospel? For many of these unreached groups, there is not even a copy of the Bible in their language. The vast majority of them, about 85% of those unreached people groups, live in what we call the 1040 window, which is right there between the 10th and the 40th parallels. Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, places like that, and get this, y'all.
85% of the unreached people Are in that region, and less than 4% of Christian missionary work is focused on those people. 4%, 96% of our mission efforts are focused on places where there are churches. On every corner. Like Yemen. Yemen has a population of 8 million people.
That's about the same size as North Carolina. There are 20. 20 known believers there. Yeah. That's the size of one of our small groups.
And what, we got 490 small groups in this church? And we're one of 618 churches in Raleigh. 20 believers in 8 million. Listen, I am grateful for every single one of you who feels called to serve here in America. I am.
but I will never stop asking. Why are there so few willing to go where Christ is not named and preach him there? Why would God leave so many of us here in a place of so much access when there are so many over there with no access at all? Is God that bad at math? Why would he keep so many in a place where there is so much and send so few to places where there is so little?
It cannot be. that he is not calling. It has to be. But we are not listening. Why is it that so many people here feel called?
Even if you know you're called here, why is it that so many people here feel called to reach the easier communities? other middle class or rich people. And why are so few called to those most in need of Christ's salvation? And by the way, maybe as I say that, something stirs in your heart. I can't call you.
The Holy Spirit can, though. And maybe something's certain you were praying for 100 new missionaries, 100 new overseas missionaries over the next three years. That's what we're praying for. out of this church. Currently, we have around 270 of our members who live overseas.
We want to increase that number by about a third. Maybe that's you. Maybe it's not overseas for you, by the way. How about the Muslim community here? You don't even have to go overseas to engage with them.
Maybe God will put it in your heart to carry the gospel to those Samaria-like regions around here. This is our call, Summit. This is our call. And you have a part in it. What is that?
It is time to obey. And by the way, I want to encourage you, especially if you're a middle or high school student or a college student. I want to encourage you to consider doing this full time. See, we need more young men and women. We need our best and our brightest.
To step forward to lead the church as pastors and missionaries or teachers or leaders. I am praying that God will call many of you, some of our best and brightest future leaders. I am praying that you will walk away from a lucrative career. And I'm praying that you will invest your skill in seeing the gospel get to the ends of the earth. I'm not trying to make that first class.
I'm not saying that everybody else has an inferior calling. God may call you to business and use you more greatly than He's ever used me. That may be true. But I want to call, I want to invite many of you to consider doing full-time gospel ministry work. And maybe even as I say that, something stirs in you right now.
Maybe you sense that he's calling you. Thank you for joining us today for the Summit Life podcast.
Next time, Pastor JD looks at the way demons operate in the world today, and more importantly, how we can overcome their influence. And don't forget, you can stay connected with Summit Life throughout the week by signing up for our free daily devotionals at jdgreer.com. We'll see you next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
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