My Role in the Mission

All of our campuses want to put our hands together and celebrate the faithfulness of God. One of the frequent questions I get from people who are newer to our church is I've never seen a place that seems so focused on trying to get people to leave the church.

They're like, is this just your way of trying to get rid of people that you don't like? And the answer to that is usually not. What we always say is that we try to send our very best. Which means, I'll tell you the same thing I tell our staff team, if no one has approached you about being sent out from this church, that means you're part of the mediocre team.

And I'm also kidding with that. Now, we want many of our best to feel right called here, called right here to the triangle. I certainly feel called to the triangle and we want many of you to feel called here to be able to reach this city. But we also know that the mission of this church, really any church, but particularly this church, is the calling is to multiply. Which means that we need to send out some of our very best people to be on church planting teams and places that need churches, even when we would rather keep a lot of those people here with us.

What you just saw is the story of one couple who did just that. These were not professional Christians, they were not seminary trained Christians, they were just normal people who wanted to leverage their lives for gospel purposes. So they pursued a job in a place where they could be a part of a team getting a church started in a place that really needed a church. I share their story because the number one reason that we hear back from people for why they won't go is that they're not sure how they're going to be taken care of financially.

I can tell you in the 400, more than 400 we've sent out over the last few years, we have yet to find even one that was not provided for financially when they got there. It won't always happen the way that you thought it would, that's kind of what you saw there in that video, but God will always provide as you follow him. We always say here that what it means to follow Jesus, for every person, what it means to follow Jesus is that you take whatever you're good at, God didn't make you all to be preachers and writers. Whatever you're good at, you do that well to the glory of God and then do that somewhere strategic for the mission of God. You got to get a job somewhere, so why not get a job in a place where God is doing something strategic and you can be a part of that. I'm not only talking to college students here, but let me specifically address you. A lot of factors are going to go into where you choose to plant your life and pursue your career.

Right? I mean, you know, where cities you've always wanted to live in, where you can make a lot of money, where your family is. Why not let the largest of those factors be the kingdom of God? Matthew 633, seek first the kingdom of God, his righteousness, and then all these things will be added to you. Why not let the largest determining factor in where you pursue your career be where you can be a part of something that God is doing? Now, that might be right here in the triangle to be a part of what's going on here at the Summit Church, or it might be to go with one of these plants to one of these places. You'll hear more later in our service about an interest meeting, but some of you need to act on that. You're like, well, J.D., this is radical. I've never considered anything like this. Listen, if the Cubs can win a World Series, that is a sign from God, right, that this ought to be a year of firsts for everyone.

Okay? So go to the interest meeting in honor of the Cubs, which brings me to today. How do you know specifically what God wants from you? Not just in a situation like this, but really in your whole life, how do you know specifically what God's divine purpose and calling is on your life?

What his will is for your life? I saw a statistic the other day in an article that I thought was quite fascinating, a set of statistics. The article was called something like desires that modern teens hold for their future. Now, this was not Christian teens. It was just general public high school students. And so they asked them to choose three, I think, and then they tallied up the number of how many included this particular one in their top three. I'll just show it to you.

I'm bad at explaining things. Achieving fame or public recognition. Only 18% of today's teens said that that was one of their top three.

The next one, working in a high paying job. Only 25% listed that as one of their top three. Owning the latest household technology and electronic equipment.

Samsung 7 so that your head can burst into flames. Only 27% said that. Owning a large home, only 28% said that was one of their top three. I thought that was fascinating.

Here's what did make their top three. Look at this. Show me the next one. Having a clear purpose for living. 77% of high school students said that was one of their top three things they wanted in life. How about this one?

Having one marriage partner for life. 82%. 82% said that's one of my top three. That's amazing. Go to church and ground your relationships in the Bible.

That's all I'm going to say. Have close personal friendships. 84% said that was one of their top three. Having a college degree, 88%.

Making a difference in the world, 96% of high school students listed that in their top three. I think that most people, regardless of their age, want to know what their divine purpose is. And you want to get a sense that you're fulfilling it.

I talk to people in their 60s and 70s who are still trying to figure this out and wanting to know, am I fulfilling the purpose that God has for me on earth? Listen, if you believe the Bible, you have one. How awesome would it be if I could just tell you what it is?

I mean, imagine if just at the end of the service, I'd be like, hey, you come up front. I've got an envelope with your name on it and it's signed by Jesus and notarized by Gabriel. And it'll tell you everything, where God wants you to be, the job and the place.

People would line up for miles to get that from me. Well, see, Paul in the book of Romans, Romans 15, explains that he had found just that for his life. He found this kind of specific purpose. And while Paul's calling is not going to be identical to yours, hear that very clearly, Paul's calling is not going to be identical to yours. He lays out the path for how you can discover yours.

So the path that he goes down is the exact path you've got to go down if you want to figure out what yours is. So if you've got your Bibles, open them to Romans chapter 15. Romans 15, as you're turning there, I know that you want to know, like, Pastor, do you have any last minute election advice for us?

I wore my purple sweater, which is the perfect nonpartisan clothing today. So there is my answer to you. With that, I will tell you this.

If you elect me as president, my first act as president will be to abolish daylight savings time for all time. Okay. Amen. You like that's a rather pathetic platform.

It's better than the ones that are currently out there. Okay. So no, we actually, you know, we've been praying for a month. Our church has had a focused time of prayer and a lot of fasting.

And so we will continue that as we go into Tuesday, and we will pray for wisdom for you and that, and for God to have mercy in the United States of America. So anyway, you should be in Romans 15 now, but let me take a couple of things as we get into it. I'm also at the very end of this message going to apply this very directly to a season that our church is in right now, that you heard about last weekend called Multiply. You got this book when you came in. Multiply is a statement, it's a vision of where we think the Holy Spirit has taken us in the foreseeable future.

It explains it more in here. There are some very specific things that we believe that the Holy Spirit has given to us, that God's given to us and he wants us to pursue. The vision of this church is that the gospel would multiply deeper in you and then wider in the world.

And so over the next couple of weeks, you're going to hear more specifics about what that looks like, and we're going to be diving down into it. But what I want you to hear this week and every week is Multiply has never been primarily about reaching some financial goal. Multiply is about 100% of the people who make this church their home, about 100% of them responding to God in faithfulness as disciples of Jesus with the resources that God has given them. We start everything from the presumption here, listen to this, we start everything from the presumption that God does not have financial needs that he needs us to fulfill. As if God in heaven is wringing his hands saying, well, I got all these things I want to do on earth, but the people of the Summit Church have all the money, what am I going to do? That's not how our God is. We start from the presumption that God has no financial needs, but that God is a God who is worthy of our first and our best in our resources and that the gospel that has been given to us of incredible grace calls a response for us to then be used by God and graciously responding to others.

So we believe that while God does not have financial needs, we believe that he is worthy of our first and our best. So this is a journey of discipleship and we want 100% of you who call the Summit Church your home from the youngest to the oldest, the richest to the poorest, from the newest person all the way to the person who is the most mature here, we want all of us to be able to say, God, I've laid this before you and I am living as a disciple of Jesus with my treasure, my time and my talents. That's what this is about and at the very end I'm going to talk to three specific groups of people that I want to address there. So that's coming at the end. But first let's just go through the passage. Romans chapter 15, let's go to verse 14.

I'm going to put it up here on the screen. If you don't have your Bible you can look up here. I myself, Paul says, am satisfied about you, talking to the Romans, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. By the way, that's Paul's kind of definition of what a mature church is, what he's after, people that are filled with the Holy Spirit, goodness. And then when you're able, not yet, go back, when you have enough knowledge that you're able to instruct other people, when your disciples who are able to make disciples, that's our vision for you, that the gospel would multiply deep enough in you that they would be able to multiply wider through you. So he continues, but on some points I've written to you very boldly by way of reminder because of the grace given to me by God. Now at this point, what Paul does is he starts to talk about his specific role in the mission. So he starts to use very personal phrases like grace given to me by God. This is the role that I have. God made Paul to be a writer and a speaker and a leader and an apostle. And he's like, that's the way that I fulfill the role.

That's why I wrote to you. So verse 16 now, to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles and the priests of service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. He sees his work here among the Gentiles as like a personal offering that he makes to God. Like an offering, he's like, God, this is what I'm giving to you. This is my gift to you. His offering. Keep going. In Christ Jesus, then I have reason to be proud of my work for God.

Again, very personal. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and by deed. Verse 19, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ.

Stop. Is Paul trying to say that everybody from Jerusalem to Illyricum knows the gospel and has gotten saved? Then how is he saying he's fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ there? He's fulfilled his role in it.

That's what he means. He's not saying everything's done. He's saying, I did my part. I had a very specific assignment from God, and I did it. So I can say I have fulfilled it.

Keep going. Verse 20, thus I make it my ambition. My personal ambition. What I want to do is preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been made. I've got a very specific place I want to preach the gospel.

Not to everybody, but to these people. Lest I build on somebody else's foundation, because it is written, verse 21, those who have never been told of Him will see, and those who have never heard will understand. Now, y'all, there are so, so many things we can focus on in that passage, but here's what I want to highlight. Did you notice all the really personal phrases that Paul used to talk about his ministry?

I don't know how you couldn't have noticed them, because I put them in red and I yelled about each one of them, okay? But verse 15, grace given to me by God for ministry. Verse 16, my offering. Verse 17, my work for God. Verse 18, what Christ accomplished in me. Verse 19, my ministry. Verse 29, my ambition. Paul seems really, really clear about what his divine purpose is, and that is for him to personally take the gospel to people who had never heard it.

Now, hear me. His particular assignment, his role to take Christ where he'd never been named, was not the same assignment given to everybody. Peter was a man of God. Peter was filled with the Spirit. Peter was called to stay in Jerusalem. Not because he was less than Paul, but because he had a different assignment.

Now, Apollos. Apollos was a guy that Paul refers to very favorably in the letter of 1 Corinthians, and Apollos was a guy that seems to be a build on other people's foundation kind of guy. Furthermore, if you look at Paul's life, you'll notice that he didn't have this ministry focus at the beginning of his ministry. Paul started out debating Jews in the synagogues, and then he would minister to church leaders, and then he would deliver food and clothes to poor Christians in Jerusalem. As Paul got older, you saw the focus of his ministry narrowing. He got more and more specific about those few things, those one or two things, that God had called him to do specifically. In fact, verses 22 and 23, Paul explains that it kind of became a ministry grid, or a decision grid for him to figure out what decisions to make.

This is the reason I'm so often been hindered from coming to you. What is this? My calling. Paul, I wanted to come see you guys. I always wanted to go to Rome. I wanted to go to the Colosseum.

They wanted to be fed to the lions there, but I wanted to come. But I couldn't. Even though I wanted to, I couldn't because I was constrained by my calling. There's all these good ideas out there, but I had to say no to a lot of good ideas because of the yes I said to the God idea. Isn't that what you want? Don't you want to be able to look at all the good ideas in your life and say a lot of good ideas, but I'm saying yes to the God idea and saying no to the good ideas because of the God idea.

That's what we all want. Paul found it. So how did Paul find that narrow calling that he fulfilled and that gave him a grid through which to make decisions? There are two things you're going to see in Romans 15 there and I'll show them. This is the two part path of discovery that all of us have got to go down if you want to understand the will of God.

Number one, you've got to understand the purpose of God in the world. Notice how Paul grounds his understanding of his purpose and what God had declared to be his own purpose, God's purpose in scripture. You see verse 20, Paul says, I make it my ambition to preach Christ where he's never been named. And when Paul says, here's why I'm doing that, he goes, verse 21, because it was written those people who never told him will see and those who never heard will understand. Honestly, y'all, at this point, I would have expected Paul, if I had been Paul, I would have said, you know why I'm preaching Christ where he's never been named? Because Gabriel or Jesus, excuse me, knocked me off my horse on the Damascus road and told me that's what I was going to do.

I feel like that would have been pretty, that's what I would have said there. Paul doesn't use that. Paul instead goes back to scripture. Why does Paul ground what he's doing in scripture? Here's why, listen to this, this is for you, because not all of you have been knocked off a horse on your way to Damascus. Anybody?

No? But all of you got the same Bible in your hand that Paul has. Paul says God's purposes in scripture are the foundation for my purposes in life. God's purposes in scripture are the foundation for Paul's purpose in life. I start here because we've got a lot of people in this church trying to figure out the will of God for their life who've never stopped to ask what God's purpose is in the world. So you've got all these questions about what's God called me to do?

You're like, hey, what's God doing in the world? Because you're never going to understand your personal purpose and ambition until you understand God's bigger purpose. When I ask people here in the Summit Church what they want to do when they grow up or what they want to do now that they have grown up, things like, well, I want to be a great doctor. I want to be one of the best heart surgeons in the world so I can help a lot of people. I want to be a corporate lawyer. I want to be a lawyer who does a lot of pro bono stuff to help the oppressed. I want to be a professional basketball player so I can buy a nice house for my parents and give back to my community. I want to own my own business. I have a passion to teach third graders. I just want to make a good living. Some people say I just want to maybe make six figures one day, retire nicely, or maybe I just want to do my best and provide for my family. I met a rich guy one time who had retired wealthy in his 30s who said now his ambition was to have the largest collection of a certain type of sports car, the biggest and nicest collection.

I was like, well, my ambition is to have the largest and nicest collection of Nicolas Gage memorabilia. So he and I had a lot in common there. But a lot of those things are fine.

A lot of those things are fine. For those same people, what this agenda has to do with God's agenda, I get these blank stares back from them half the time. Y'all, God is doing something on earth that He has told us very clearly about in Scripture, and our understanding of our personal ambition has to begin with His stated mission. We talk about, oh, I've got to find God's will.

It's not lost. The Lord is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance, and if your life is not part of that grander purpose, if your ambition is not part of that mission, then from God's perspective you are living a purposeless life, a wasted life, even if you make a lot of money and do a lot of good things with your life. You see, Paul recognized that with the discovery, shall we say, of the gospel comes the responsibility to be a part of spreading the gospel. Here's how Paul laid the foundation of his life. It's back in Romans 1. You stay there, Romans 15.

I'll take you back there. Romans 1, here's how Paul describes it. He says, I'm under obligation both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, to the wise and to the foolish.

Now, barbarians is anybody who's not a Jew or a Greek. The word he uses, under obligation, is a word that you would use when you were under pretty severe debt with somebody else. For example, say you owed half a million dollars to the mafia. If you got an extra $50,000 in your paycheck, you got a bonus or you inherited some money, hey, bad news, you don't get to do with that $50,000, whatever you want to do. The mafia has the first claim on that $50,000.

You can't take a nice vacation. They're going to take the majority of that. They get your first and your best because you are under obligation. You are a debtor to them. Paul said, I am a debtor. I'm under obligation to the Greeks and the barbarians. So you say, well, what did Paul owe to them? And Paul's answer would be nothing specifically.

But see, here's the thing. Jesus saved me. And I wasn't any more worthy of salvation than the Greeks and the barbarians. It wasn't like God looked at me and said, he's more worthy.

That's why I gave it to him. And because I've been selected for grace, with that comes a responsibility to spread that grace in the people who are no less worthy to receive it than I was. With the gospel comes the responsibility to spread the gospel. You are not sitting here because you are more righteous and worthy than somebody else. It is grace that you are sitting here and that you understand the gospel.

And with that comes a responsibility to take it to people around the world who have never heard it. Hey, where would you be without Jesus? Where would you be without Jesus? You'd be lost. Where would you be without Jesus?

You'd be at exactly the same place that millions of people in the world are without you. Because you all see, it wouldn't matter if Jesus died a thousand times if nobody ever heard about it. And the way that God extends the message of the gospel, Paul understands, is by the sacrifices of his people. It's like our friend David Platt says, every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every unsaved person this side of hell. You're no longer free to do with your life what you want. Because you are under obligation to Jesus to take the gospel to give with grace the way that you've been given grace.

Do you understand that? Let me be really candid with you guys for a minute. I used to think the gospel was really unfair, just to be totally honest. I thought it was unfair, it was almost like God was holding people responsible for something they never had the opportunity to hear. I had this vision of God showing up at people's bedside and saying, Ah! You didn't believe in Jesus! And they were like, Jesus who? And he's like, it's too late now. And their souls go tumbling down into hell, Jesus who?

And he's like, it's those tough cookies in Latin or something as they go down. And I was like, this just doesn't seem fair. It sounds like God is holding them accountable for something they had no chance to experience. But see, Paul explains in the book of Romans that people, listen to this, people will only be judged according to the light they had access to. People will be judged only according to the light they had access to. You say, well okay, then they're not responsible to receive Jesus since they've never heard about him.

Well see, here's the thing. Paul explains in Romans 1 that every human being that has ever lived in the world has heard about him because they're created in the image of God and from their conscience and from creation God has testified about his glory and his authority. In Romans 1, 18 every person who has ever lived has suppressed the truth about God's glory and his authority that they do know. Romans 1, 18-23 says every human being knows about God from creation and their conscience and our hearts have rejected his authority and his glory and we've stolen it for ourselves. We are not condemned for not hearing about Jesus.

We are condemned because we rejected the authority and the glory of God that we perceive with our hearts and would rather have used on ourselves. The gospel is an undeserved second chance. You see, if the only people who are responsible to receive Jesus are those who have never heard about him or those who have heard about him then you might say to Paul, Paul, back it down there, pal. Maybe you shouldn't go be telling all these people about Jesus because maybe it's better if we leave them in ignorance and hope God has mercy on them. Because when you go tell them about Jesus they're going to become responsible to receive him and you're going to put them under jeopardy so maybe it's better to just leave them ignorant. Romans 1 is Paul's answer to that. All these people, he says, are already without excuse. They're not condemned because they hadn't heard about Jesus. They're condemned because they've rejected the authority of God in their heart.

Romans 1 is written about those nations who've never heard showing that they are already under condemnation for rejecting the light that they did have. Here at this summit church there is only one hope for every person in the world hearing and preaching and believing the gospel of Jesus Christ. And when I first understood this, I was late in college and shortly after college and I had a crisis of faith. Because I realized that I only had three options, three raw options.

Number one, this was the most attractive option to me. I could deny parts of it and take the path that we call liberalism which means that you get to choose what parts of Jesus you like and leave what parts you don't. Jesus is the great divine buffet where you just pick the parts and leave the parts. But I knew y'all, I knew that wasn't intellectually consistent. It's either the word of God or it's not. Jesus didn't come to give suggestions.

He's either Lord or he isn't and if you're the kind of person who feels like you can take what you like from Jesus and leave what you don't, I don't think you get the concept of lordship. So I knew that it wasn't intellectually consistent to deny different parts of the truth and I wanted to go down that path. I saw several of my friends go down that path but I knew I couldn't. Which led me to option number two, to ignore the truth. This was appealing because I felt like 98.4% of the church lived this way. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, this is of course what we believe but let's just go on playing church.

Let's get in and sing our God songs and do our nice little comfortable grooves and let's talk about how Jesus is the completion of our lives and our Christian radio stations and let's just pretend the world's not dying and going to hell. Let's just pretend that's not true. That seemed worse to me than denying because at least with denying there was some kind of emotional consistency with what you believe.

This just seemed like utter hypocrisy. I remember sharing Christ one time with a girl from New England who was born in America. She literally never heard the gospel and after talking with her for an hour, she looked back at me. She's very intelligent. She said, do you actually believe this? And I said, well, yeah, I believe this is what the Bible says. She said, because you don't act like you believe it. She goes, you're very passionate about what you believe. You're a good debater.

You're trying to show me that you're right and I'm wrong. She said, but I don't really hear a lot of compassion in you toward me. She said, if I believe what you say you believe, I would go on my hands and knees to every person I knew. And I would say, you got to listen to this.

And you act like this is an argument to be won and it just doesn't match up. I knew she was right. You see, there's a lot of us who say I believe this, but functionally speaking, we live as if it's not true. And that seems worse than denying it, which led me to the third and really the only option, which was to embrace this, to say, God, I'm going to use my life as best I can to make a difference. With the knowledge of the gospel comes the responsibility to take it to those around the world who've never heard it. You see, I started out thinking the gospel was unfair. Paul explains to you, no, the gospel is fair. In fact, it's a whole lot more than fair, it's grace that you don't deserve.

What is not fair, Paul says, what is not fair is that those of you who have received the grace of the gospel not be doing everything you can to extend the grace of the gospel to people who haven't heard it. So here's my question for you. Have you examined the priorities of your life through that lens? Have you looked at your life as one under obligation and made choices about your career and your future and your resources based on that obligation?

Again, I'm not just talking to college students here, but let me talk specifically to you for a minute. Some of you guys are very sensitive to the world's needs and that's good. You want to make a difference. The greatest need in the world is for people to hear about Jesus. You want to relieve suffering, that's good. Eternal suffering is the worst kind of suffering and that suffering is prevented by hearing about Jesus Christ.

You got a specific part in this mission. It may not be identical to Paul's mission or his ambition. You may not be gifted to write and to preach like he was. You may not be called to go personally to live in an unreached people group.

By the way, you might be and probably a lot more of you are than are actually thinking about that now. That's why we got teams going out all the time to places with no gospel witness. 378 of our members have left our church to go live in unreached people groups around the world. 20 of them are what we call Global Cities Initiative, which is where somebody takes their business platform, their business and they figure out how to do that business or work in that business in one of these strategic cities overseas.

We got 20 that are there, 75 more that are actively investigating and going out and joining them. So it might be, that might be your role. It might not be your role, but what I can assure you is that you have a role. Your role might be to go on one of these domestic church planting teams. Like I said, over 400 have done that from our church to transfer your job as a part of one of these church plants to the place where they're planting. It might be for you to stay here and reach your neighbors and co-workers with Jesus and be a big part of the Summit Church's mission of reaching, discipling and sending from the triangle and for you to get engaged financially and otherwise.

It might be for you to help reach an underserved part of our city like the homeless, the orphan, the prisoner, the unwed mother or the high school dropout. It might be for you to engage in that way. I'm not sure what your part is specifically, but what I know is that each of you have a part, which leads me to number two.

How do you discover that part? Number two, sensing the gifting of the Spirit in you. What you see in Romans 15 is that after Paul recognized the overarching purpose of God, spelled out in scripture, he began to learn from the Spirit of God his specific role.

So we talked about his ambition, his calling, his ministry, his offering. What Paul developed, listen, was an ability to hear from the Spirit of God. I've told you before that most Christians in churches like ours aren't exactly sure what to do with the Spirit of God. You know, they fall generally into two camps, right? You've got Christians, you know, that are obsessed with the Holy Spirit.

Everything is a spirit thing to them, right? You know, I was praying about whether or not to ask that girl out. And as I was driving home, I saw a billboard. And the last two digits of the phone number were the same as her age.

And the background color of the billboard was the same color as her eyes. And just at that moment, my favorite Christian song came on the radio, Jehovah Jireh. I knew that Jesus was telling me to ask her out. And you're like, bro, I backed that down a little bit.

That doesn't sound like the Spirit of God, it sounds like the preamble to a restraining order is what that sounds like to me. So bring that back down right now. All right, so you've got that category. But then you've got probably a larger group of us that are like, I believe in the Holy Spirit, but I've always said that you relate to him like I relate to my pituitary gland. I know that it's in there somewhere. I'm not even sure exactly where to point, but I know it's in there somewhere. I know that it's really necessary for something. I don't want to be without it.

You can't have it. But I don't really relate to my pituitary gland. That's how most Christians are about the Holy Spirit.

I know it's in there, I know it's bouncing around, I know it's in there for something, but I don't really relate to him. Our trinity at churches like this one are usually God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Bible. That's how we think about it. The Holy Spirit is the forgotten member of the trinity. But what you see from Paul in the early churches, that is not how they depended on the Holy Spirit.

They depended on the Holy Spirit to show them the specific part of the ministry that God had for them. In the book of Acts, I've explained this. In the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit shows up 59 times.

59 times. He's the main character in Acts. In 36 of the 59, you know what he's doing? He's speaking. He's talking.

Now here's the frustrating thing for me and probably for you. Not one time does it ever really clearly tell us how he speaks. Acts 13, too, the Holy Spirit said to Barnabas and said to the church, Separate Barnabas and Paul from ministry. And I'm like, how did he tell them? Did it just appear on the screen? Did all of a sudden it appear in the clouds?

Did all of a sudden they find themselves arranged spelling out, separate Barnabas? I wish I did know. Do you know? It doesn't tell us. And I'm like, why?

God, why didn't you tell? It has to be intentional, the ambiguity. Here's why I think it's intentional because more havoc has been wreaked in the church and on the world following the words God just told me than probably any other phrase in history. So I think God wants us to have some ambiguity about what we think he is saying unless it's spelled out in scripture. But what is also clear is that while there may be ambiguity to how he speaks, he speaks. You cannot convince me that the only book ever written about what it looks like to walk with the Spirit of God is filled with a bunch of stories of people whose experiences have nothing in common with us. The way that he spoke is the way that he speaks to us today. And so, yes, there might be some ambiguity in it, but they depended on the Spirit of God to reveal to them their specific role in the mission of God.

You say, well, how do we hear that? Now, I hate doing this, but actually I wrote an entire book on this question. It's called Jesus Continued. And I'm not trying to promote the book because, A, that's really tacky and, B, whenever you promote a book in church, an angel loses his wings and a puppy dies in heaven. So I'm not promoting the book. And I will tell you, nope, if we ever sell a book here that I wrote, money never comes to me, it always goes back to the church. But the reason that I wrote it was trying to get in and really unpack this question of how do we hear the Spirit of God speak to us?

How do we hear? Because what I know is that I'll never know my role in the mission of God until I understand the gifts of the Spirit of God. I'll never know what He wants from me until I look at what He has put in me.

Other books have been written better than mine on this question. Rick Warren has one called Purpose Driven Life in which he talks about something called shape. He's like, you want to know what the Spirit of God is doing in your life? You want to know what God wants from you? He says, look at your shape.

Here's a cross take. Spiritual gifts, your heart, your ability, your passions, your experiences. He's like, these are things the Holy Spirit has done in you.

The way he says it is this. You know what God wants from your future by looking at what he's done in your past. Your past shape is indicative of your future purpose.

There's another one that we use here. Your spiritual calling, your gifting of the Spirit is the confluence of these three circles, this Venn diagram right here. The first one is your ability, which is not an ability to spell, evidently. Your ability. That's the first time I've noticed that.

Five surfaces, I just noticed that. Your affinity. Affinity is just a fancy word that means what you care about, what you're passionate about.

We needed something that started with an A. Ability, affinity. The third thing is your affirmation, which is what other people in the church tell you that God is using by you in their lives. When you get the sweet spot of what you're good at, what you're passionate about, and what other people say that God uses you for, at that point you've probably discovered a spiritual calling.

Because as you discover that, then all of a sudden it gets really clear what God wants from you. C.S. Lewis had a great way of illustrating this. It wouldn't be a sermon without a C.S. Lewis reference, so here is this week's.

Chronicles of Narnia, Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Do you know what I'm talking about? Some of you all look at me like, please don't.

C.S. Lewis, some of you all talk about him every week. Is he in the Bible? No, he's not in the Bible. He wrote this book, The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, which you should read to your kids. In the book, right before the children go into battle, Father Christmas shows up from Ashland, who is the lion who represents Jesus. Father Christmas shows up, and he's got these gifts for the children, and the gifts are mysterious. He hands Peter a sword, and he hands Lucy a bottle of ointment, and he hands Susan a bow and arrow. The children are like, what are these gifts for? All Father Christmas says is, you'll know.

You'll know. Right after this is over, they go into the battle. The battle comes to them, and all of a sudden, Peter realizes he's got a sword. He's supposed to lead a charge in battle. Lucy realizes her ointment is there to bind up the wounded after they get wounded in battle.

What C.S. Lewis is trying to show you is that the way that you know what God wants from you in the battle is by looking at what he's put in you by the Spirit. That's what he's trying to show. How you know what God wants from you is by understanding what he has put in you. Do you understand that calling? We are very committed at this church to trying to help you discover that, to trying to figure out what is the role that God has given to you and how you can unpack that. You say, well, how do I learn that? How do I learn that? You learn that, first of all, you get in discipling relationships.

That's the biggest thing with small groups. Go on mission trips. Get involved in ministry. And what you'll find is that God will begin to reveal these things that he wants you to use in the mission. But see, what I want to caution you with, because this is the mistake I see people make, is I want to caution you to never try to figure that out apart from our first point, which is understanding of the bigger purposes of God in the Bible.

Because you guys are Americans, most of you. And that means that you're a little bit narcissistic just because you're you, right? Because we're always talking about, oh, what's my gift?

What's my calling? I'm a snowflake. I'm a rainbow. I'm a Skittle.

No, you're not, okay? And you're always trying to find your purpose, but you never think about it in terms of God's purpose. And until you think about your purpose and your giftings only in light of the bigger purpose, you're always going to get it wrong.

I'm going to illustrate this in a way. I can't remember the last time I did this at this church. I was nervous about it not working.

It's worked okay in Forest Services. I'm going to try it for the fifth too. I need the people that I think we got some people who agreed to help me or did we just totally forget? Are they coming? Are they working their way? We got them. So I see two coming up here.

The camera hates dead space, so just hustle on up here, all right? Come on up. Here we go. All right. So these are our why don't you put your hands together and thank them for being willing. All right. This is going to be our firefighting crew.

That's what we're going to we're going to we're going to do here. Now, have any of you at any point or are you now a firefighter professionally? I've set things on fire.

You've set things on fire. Okay. Well, okay.

That is going to make you really good at what we're about to do. Okay. All right. So what we're going to do is follow me here. Tell her about your name, Julius.

Julius. Okay. So I want you to drive because you look like a guy that I would trust behind. So I want you to kind of we're going to sort of act this out.

These steering wheels are a lot bigger, my friend. Okay. Big old thing. And that's your and told by your name. Tina.

Tina, you're going to stand right here. You look like a person who likes to be in charge of things and actually know you well enough to know that you fit very well in that role. So you are the company officer, which means that you are in charge.

So you sit right here in kind of the shotgun seat and you are in charge. Your other second job is to do the siren. So can you make your best siren noise? Fantastic.

That's really good. All right. Okay.

So all right. Tell about your name. Adam. Adam, you are going to be the nozzle man. The nozzle man is the guy who rides on the side of the truck, they say. And your main job is to point the nozzle at the fire. Now, typically you don't do it when it's driving.

But for purposes of this illustration, I'm just going to have you just go ahead and point it. Okay. And you're Tom.

I mean, I know that I'm just I really do this. Tom's plays a guitar for us all the time. All right. So, Tom, you're going to you're the backup firefighter, which means that your main role is while he's holding the nozzle.

You've got to keep the hose from getting tangled up, which evidently is a big problem. That's what I read on Wikipedia. And how about your name? Martha. All right, Martha, we got a very special job for you that also has two roles. Not the dog. Not the dog.

That was I should have thought of that. You are that what they call the tiller man or tiller woman. Okay.

Have you ever seen like Seinfeld where Kramer rides in the back and he steers? That's you. You get to steer the back of the long fire truck to make sure that it goes.

Okay. And so that's your main role. And then your other role is miscellaneous. So anything that doesn't get done, that's yours. So what's your role again? Miscellaneous.

And? Tiller role. Tiller woman.

That's tiller woman. Okay, good. All right. So this is our firefighting crew. Let's go over it one more time. Julius, what's your primary job? Steering the truck. I'm in charge. Just cut through all that other stuff and went right for that, didn't you?

All right. Manning the nozzle. Manning the nozzle. Backup firefighter. And what were you supposed to do? Hold the hose.

Hold the hose. All right. And? Tiller woman and miscellaneous. And miscellaneous.

There you go. Now, this is our firefighting crew. And the one thing that they all have in common is when I asked them what their primary job is, they all got it wrong. Right?

They're wrong. Your primary job is to put out fires. Right? Now, I totally set them up for that.

I mean, I really did. These are some of the smartest people we have in the church. So I'm not, I'd set them up for that. The problem is you get so focused on your particular role that you forget what the whole truck is about. And this is what people do with the mission of God. They get so focused on, this is how I'm designed, this is what I'm supposed to do.

You can't understand your role as a tiller woman until you understand where the truck is going and how urgent the place that it's going is. Does that make sense? All right.

Would you put your hands together for our firefighting team? Thank you, guys. Thank you. So this is what people do in how they perceive these things. And that's what you've got to, you've got to begin the discussion of finding the will of God for your life the way that Paul did. I understand his purposes from scripture. And then I began to sense the spirit of God where he has specifically gifted me and how he wants me to play a role in what he is doing.

Now, I told you that I wanted to apply all of this at the very end of our message, which is where I'm at, to this emphasis that we're in right now called multiply. As a church, we're trying to respond to what God is doing in the world, his grander purpose, and we're trying to respond specifically to what we think the spirit of God is leading our church to do to make Jesus famous in the triangle and to send the gospel out to all the world. We believe that every single one of you as a part of this church has a role in that, and that includes multiple levels. It includes your volunteer, your ministry, and it also includes financially.

We do that. We kind of go through the same grid that I walk you through in Romans 15. First, we have a responsibility to the gospel. Those who have been saved by Jesus, those who have been given grace have a responsibility to extend grace to those who have never experienced it. Where would you be without Jesus, Summit Church?

Where would you be? You'd be in exactly the place that millions of people in the world are without you and me because it wouldn't matter how many times Jesus died if nobody ever heard about it. And so those of us who have experienced the incredible generosity of the gospel ought to have lives that are marked by generosity as we pour ourselves back out to see Christ taken to places to people that are no less worthy of them than we are. That's the role that we have in responding to the gospel, and we ought to give in a way that makes people say, why would you give so much money away? And we would answer. We would say because Jesus gave so much to us.

Because he was so generous to us. We're eager. We're so eager to be able to respond and to give ourselves to others the way that Jesus gave himself for us.

Second, we want to be really sensitive to what the spirit of God is asking us to do because ultimately we are being led by the spirit. So my challenge is for you to lay your life and your resources out as an offering to God and say, God, it all belongs to you. Every bit of it, every penny of it, every second of my time, it all belongs to you. What do you want from me specifically? In this multiply initiative, all my finances belong to you.

What do you want, spirit of God? I'm going to offer this to you. I told you there were three groups of people that I wanted specifically to focus on.

Here they are. And I'll talk about them again in the next couple of weeks. Number one is there's some of you that are new here.

You're new. You literally, when we went through this, we did this last year, November 2015. A bunch of us made this of what we call multiply commitment. We committed to radical generosity for two years. And when I say a bunch of us, 4,870 of us. 1,290 of us, this was the first time we'd ever given in a significant way to the mission of God here. So it was a lot of us that joined in. There was a lot of you that just weren't here for that. And there are a lot of you that were here, but you didn't make a commitment. And so what we want to challenge you to is if this is going to be the church that you are going to make your church, don't sit on the sidelines.

The church is not an event you attend on the weekend. It's a community of disciples that you belong to. And one of the most spiritually significant moments is when you get out of the audience and you get into the ministry force.

And one of the ways you can do that is by engaging in the mission financially. So I want to challenge you that are new or that didn't make a commitment to join up with the 5,000 of us who did. And I want you to make a commitment for the next 12 months as a part of this halfway point of multiply.

That'll be coming in a few weeks. Group number two. Group number two are those of you who did make a commitment to multiply, but things have gotten difficult. Because sacrifice always is difficult and faith is difficult. And all of a sudden it's been like, ah, it's just difficult. I want to challenge you to show the faith at the halfway point, the same faith that you showed at the beginning.

Right? So that the faith you started with is the faith you continued with and I want to challenge you to finish strong. Group number three that I want to talk to is there are some of us who made a multiply commitment back in November of last year. And while it has not been easy and it's probably required a lot of sacrifice, you are sensing that God is stretching you to take another step of faith for him. To increase the commitment that you made last year. Y'all, you see, if multiply truly was a discipleship journey, which it was, then it's never been about gathering up commitment cards and adding up totals. It's about us responding to the gospel and to the spirit of God with our first and our best. It's about us saying, God, I want to live as a disciple in this area. I want to obey the spirit and I want what I do with my resources to be a worthy response to the gospel. You see, there are many of us that made a commitment, like my family. And you look at it now and you're like, yeah, it's sacrificial, but does it really represent my first and my best?

Does it really represent a proper response to the gospel and is the spirit of God stretching me to do more? As I indicated, that's kind of right where my family is. I mean, Veronica and I, my wife and I, we made last year, November, we made the largest, the most significant faith commitment we've ever made in our lives. And it's not been easy. We got four kids and at no point are our four kids like, we got enough stuff. You can give the rest of the money away. My kids are like your kids.

They don't act like that. So it's been hard, but we look around now at what God is doing in this church and the incredible opportunities that we see in front of us. We feel such excitement when we hear the way that God is working in people's hearts and how He's changing them. We look at how God has blessed us and enlarged us and we're saying, you know, I'm not sure this number represents our first and our best. I'm not sure it represents the right response to the gospel. And so we're going to increase that commitment that we made.

I would imagine that there are many of you that are in that same category. And so I want to challenge all three groups in the next few weeks to begin, listen, a journey of prayer. That's all I'm asking for today. A journey of prayer where you just go before God and you say, God, it all belongs to you. God, I want to respond to the gospel. I know that with my belief in the gospel comes an obligation to help get it to those who haven't heard it. And I want to obey what the Spirit of God is saying to me.

That's what I want. Summit Church, God has put us here at this moment in the triangle for this time. And He is beckoning us. He's like, I got more for you than you could understand.

I want to do exceedingly abundantly above all that you would ask or think, which means bringing salvation to people in the triangle and around the world that you've never even met yet. And we just want to say yes. Why don't you bow your heads at all of our campuses.

Bow your heads with me if you would. Let me ask you this question. Are you ready right now to put your yes on the table with your life? Forget your finances, just your life.

If you're a college student, are you ready to put your future right now on the table to do what we always say around here, put your yes on the table and let God put it on the map? You say, God, here it is. It's a blank check. Show me my particular role in your kingdom and your mission. Now, listen, all of you, can you say, God, specifically in this area of my finances, here it is.

It's a blank check. It's an open book. Will you show me what it's like to live in surrender, what it's like to be a disciple in this area? Show me how I should respond to the gospel and what you're calling me to do. Lord, whatever the question, the answer I'm giving you right now is yes. Can you say that to Him?

The answer is yes. Now, as you're pondering now, let me say that I know that there are some of you that this is like your first time at the Summit Church. And you're thinking, oh, man, I came on the wrong week. Listen, I want you to understand that, yeah, we understand your first time.

I'm not talking to you. But I do hope that you get to see these moments, who we are and what we're about. You see, we're a group of people who believe that we've received a blessing in the gospel. And so we're always pushing ourselves and pushing one another to respond to that by seeing this blessing, leave these walls and go to people who haven't experienced it yet.

And that includes you. A lot of people have been generous so that you could hear this gospel today. And our hope for you, my friend, our hope is that you will receive Jesus.

And that one day you'll actually become a part of this mission. And you'll join up with us and you'll begin to be a part of the mission of what God is doing in extending this gospel throughout the world. Father, I pray that we would be a church that is led by the Holy Spirit.

I pray that every person would respond with a yes. That 100% of us would respond to the generosity of the gospel and an obedience to the Spirit. And I pray that these things that you have for us, God, I pray that you would move us to faithfulness so that we can experience them. The only way we'll do that, the only way you'll do that is if you give us the faith and surrender. So we ask for it right now. I ask for it for these people, the Summit Church, and for me and my family. I pray in Jesus' name. You keep your heads bowed. Kind of soak here in a minute with the Holy Spirit and our worship teams will come and they'll lead us from here.