Worth It, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. You ask anybody that's with God for any amount of time, they'll tell you this exact same thing. There's nothing you can read, nothing you can memorize, nothing you can listen to that will grow you spiritually as much or as fast as just being involved in other people's lives.

In fact, here's how I would say it. I would say the best way to deepen your relationship to Jesus is to help other people discover theirs. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch, and I'm excited to be here with you today as we continue our teaching series titled First, The Preeminence of Jesus in Colossians. But we're looking elsewhere to begin as we dive back into Colossians chapter one. In the Old Testament book of Micah chapter six verse eight, it says, He has shown you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. Today, Pastor J.D. uses this familiar Old Testament verse to frame his teaching in the first chapter of Colossians. So let's join him for the conclusion of the message we began yesterday that Pastor J.D.

Greer titled Worth It. Less than 5% of the people in the world are Americans. Yet we Americans, we control, we own 25% of the wealth.

Now, I'm not trying to make you feel guilty about that. I mean, if anything, what that means is we produce more than anybody else, okay? But what it means is that you and I are a very blessed group of people. In fact, listen, if you make $34,000 a year in combined household income, 34,000 a year, you are in the top 1% of people worldwide, top 1%. And you got to consider the fact that there are 2.5 billion people who live in substandard housing or without adequate nourishment or consistent access to clean water.

Every single week, every week, 100,000 kids die around the world of starvation or preventable hunger-related diseases. And that requires something of us. Listen, American Christians have a combined annual income of $5 trillion. We are the richest faith community that has ever existed in history. What did God give us that prosperity for? That's what we have to ask. We're all part of it, regardless of where you are compared to your neighbors. We're all a part of that.

I saw this recently. I thought this was amazing. I want you to, I'm going to read you a list of things. I want you in your mind to guess how much it would cost to do all these things. This is like an awesome vision for the future.

Ready? How much would it cost to do all of these things, to sponsor 1 million indigenous full-time missionaries in poor nations around the world, and to completely fund the fight against global malaria, and to quadruple the global missions budget for all American missionary societies in engaging, unevangelized nations, quadruple it, to provide food, clothing, and shelter to every single one of the 6.5 million refugees across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, to triple the global Bible translation budget, to fund 150,000 seminary scholarships for promising students in emerging economies, to double the operating budget of world vision and compassion, to establish eight new Christian universities around the world, and to hire 25,000 additional American missionaries to work on our college campuses. How much money you think all that would take?

What would the price tag be? It could all be accomplished, listen, if the Christian community in just this country gave just 0.4 percent of its income, one dollar out of every 250, to the work of the kingdom of God. What I'm trying to tell you is God has put everything necessary, everything necessary for the evangelization and the transformation of the world within our hand. My point is, lostness in the world requires something of us.

By the way, don't overlook lostness. A lot of you are very moved by suffering, whether it's refugees, or whether it's people without access to clean water, or the sex slave trade. You should be moved by that, but understand that the worst kind of suffering in the world is eternal suffering. You can't overlook that when the greatest need that there is is for people to hear and understand the gospel while we also meet their physical needs. It requires something of us, and Micah says you got to do justice. You got to use your gift for the reasons that God gave them to you. Second thing he says is to love mercy, or to love kindness is what some translations say.

Now, Micah is going to start turning up the crank. Not only does God want you to do justice, he wants you to love mercy and kindness. That is, he wants you to love showing mercy and kindness.

Why? Because you are the recipient of great mercy. Again, where would you be if Jesus not chosen to die for you?

You would be at exactly the same place that millions of people are without you. That requires something of us. Those of us who have received great mercy.

Of course, we want to show great mercy. How could I receive the extravagant grace of the gospel and then not say, God, how can I be used to see the gospel come to people like me, just like me all around the world, who've never heard. Every single time when we send somebody out of this church, there's a little story that just kind of bounces around in the back of my head. I've shared it with you before. It's been a while since I've shared this.

It's why I do what I do here. It took place the day that I left Southeast Asia as a missionary to come home. There was a guy, his name was Ishmael. He's my best friend over in Southeast Asia. When I'd gotten there, when I'd gotten there, he was like an Islamic youth pastor. He was super cool, great personality. He taught me the language. He took me fishing, taught me how to survive. And I'd shared the gospel with that guy probably 25 times. And every single time I shared the gospel with him, it would always end this way.

He would always smile. He put his hand on my shoulder because they're very touchy. And he put his hand on my shoulder and he would say, JD, my brother, you are a great man of faith and you make your parents very proud, I am sure. He said, but you are a Christian because you were born as a Christian.

And I am a Muslim because I was born as a Muslim. That is how it's always been. And my friend, that's how it will always be every single time.

That's how the conversation ended. The week before I went home, he lived about an hour away from me at this point. Week before I went home, I met up with him and I just one last time, I sat down with him and I just said, I said, Ishmael, you know that I love you as you're my best friend here. And you know that what my Bible tells me, what Jesus says is that he is the way, the truth and the life and that you don't come to God except through him. And I just, I so want you to be in eternity with me. And he, at the end of the car, he sat there very politely and listened and he put his hand on my shoulder again, did the whole thing.

JD, my brother, you're an awesome man of faith. And then went through it. He got on his motorcycle and he left and that was the last time I thought I'd ever see him. The day that I was leaving, he showed back up at my house, unannounced, just showed up and I could tell something was on his mind. So I was like, Hey, you need to talk. He said, yes, I need to talk. So we go back in this back room and he says, listen, he said, after we had the conversation that we'd had like 25 times before, he said, I tried to just do what I always did.

I just, I didn't think about it. He said, but it was different this time. It was like, and he used the word, which meant like a weight, a weight that was just pulled in my heart. He said, I couldn't stop thinking about it. He said, I was thinking about it when I went to sleep that night.

And he said, he said, when I went to sleep, he said, I had this, I don't know, maybe you would call it a dream, maybe a vision, something. He said, I was standing on earth and I was standing right in front of my house. And all of a sudden he said, between my feet, this road just kind of sprung out and stretched all the way up to heaven. He called it the Jalan-Ludus, which in their language meant the straight and narrow way that leads to heaven, the Jalan-Ludus.

It was going up to heaven. And then he looked at me and his eyes got kind of wide and he said, and you, you were on it. He was so surprised.

I was like a little offended. I was like, yeah, that's what I've been trying to tell you for two years. And so he, he said, I watched you walk all the way up to the gates of heaven and the gates were shut. And I thought, well, no one can get past those gates.

And I thought my dream was over. He said, when somebody inside the city, they knew your name. They called your name out and those big doors open. He said, and you went in and the door shut.

And he said, my heart got very sad because I wanted, I wanted to go with you. Right? Yes. Yes.

I want him there too. It gets better. He said, and then, then the doors opened again. He says, and you came out and you walked all the way back down here to where I was standing.

And you reached out and you grabbed my hand and I resisted, but you grabbed my hand and you pulled me onto your back and you carried me up into heaven with you. Now, this is the exact, I'm not going to exaggerate or make any, this is the exact thing he said to me right now. He said, he said, JD, he said, at first, when I wake up, I think this, this was dream that come from eating strange fish.

He said, you cannot sing. He said, he said, but I've had many of those kinds of dreams. He said, this was not, this was dream from Allah. This is a dream from God. And then he says, isn't that question was, can you tell me, what does my dream mean? Now you go, I went to a Southern Baptist seminary.

Okay. We did not have a class on dreams and interpretations, but in that moment, without the first word of training, I knew exactly what to say. I was like, bro, you were so in luck.

Dream interpretation is my spiritual gift. And so for the next two hours, until the taxi literally came to take me away, I just, I shared the gospel to him and I would love, love, love to tell you that he became a Christian. He did not. And to my knowledge, he still has not. I do know that his family, all, most of them died in the tsunami in 2004.

He survived. I know that cause he wrote me after that. I've been back twice since then to try to look for him and figure out where he is. I don't know where he is. And I have no way of really finding him, but he wrote me. And so I, he didn't become a Christian.

It was just still too much for him. He said, he said, I'm not ready to become a follower of Jesus yet. He said, but here's what I know that this dream has to mean. It has to mean that you were sent here by God to show me the way of salvation. It has to mean that.

He said, JD, in one hour, you're going home. You were going back to America and you were the only Christian I have ever known who was going to teach me the way of salvation. There is not a single person we send out here from the summit church that I am not thinking in some way about Ishmael and people like him all over the world. You want to know why we do what we do as a church, why we always talk about this, why we're giving, why we're striving, why we'll never shut up, why we keep going through seasons like this.

It is because it is our commission. We owe it to them because we owe it to Jesus. Jesus paid it all, all to him we owe. And if Jesus hadn't done that for us and we'd be lost, they are lost. If we don't give and if we don't offer what we have for the sake of the gospel, it is our commission.

It belongs to us. The last thing he says is you've got to then walk humbly with your God. What that means is you've got to listen for what that individual assignment is for you. I said this a little bit last week, but the church in Acts transformed the world without any money, without any influence, without any power.

They did it because it was a group of people who were just listening for what God had to say to them. And what I want you to do in this season is just to listen to God and just listen to what he's saying to you. You're at all different places. I get that in your life, but what does God want from you in the season? By the way, it's not going to be some magical voice.

It's not going to spell it out in your alphabet soup. You're just going to ask the question the best of your ability and do what you feel like God is telling you to do. For some of you, listen, it is going to be the largest and the scariest thing that you have ever done. Hearing from God is always scary and obeyed him is always scary. I remember several years ago, my wife and I, after praying about it, felt like God was telling us to give one of our cars. And I was like, we drive our cars. I can't walk to church.

It's too far. And the Holy Spirit's like, this is what I'm telling you to do. And so I remember how scary that was and how amazing it was watching how God provided through in that season as we just listen to what God wants to do. That's it. That's what God requires of you. You want to know what he wants? He wants you to do justice. He wants you to use the time, talent, and treasure for the reason he gave it to you. He wants you to love kindness. He wants you to think about others the way that Jesus thought about you. And he wants you to just walk humbly with God. And that is listen to the Holy Spirit firsthand and do what he tells you to do.

That's what Paul was talking about when he said commission. Those three things. I am commissioned.

I've done those three things. That's what it requires of you. Are you fulfilling your commission? Y'all let's keep moving through Colossians one. We're almost done.

Almost done with our tour here. Paul says, my commission was to make God's word known to you. And I've done that.

I've done that. Then he goes on in verse 26 to describe a little bit about that message. The, what I made known to you is the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints.

Question. What is the mystery that Paul is talking about here? The mystery is Christ. That Christ was the point of the whole Old Testament. That Christ was the answer for every human yearning for longing and meaning and satisfaction and fulfillment and justice. It was all fulfilled in Christ. Christ is the mystery, but what?

He goes on. God wanted to make known among the Gentiles, people who don't know God, the glorious wealth of this mystery. In other words, you want them to see the full thing.

What is that? It is Christ. Not just Christ, but Christ in you, the hope of glory. There was supposed to be a mystery that took place in your life when you came to Jesus and Jesus came to live within you, that everybody else around you was just confused by.

And there was supposed to be conversations about our lives between neighbors and family who are like, you know, what's going on with so-and-so? Why do they give the way they give? Why do they forgive the way they forgive? Why do they sacrifice?

Why do they have the strength? Why do they have such joy and suffering? And the other person was supposed to say, I don't know, it beats me, man. It's a mystery.

We don't get it. And you were supposed to say, well, that's just because of Christ. Is that what is happening to you and through you?

Is your life a mystery to those around you in those areas? I've told you, I think the story of William Borden, who was the heir to the Borden Milk Company in the 1920s, 21 years old. He's already a multimillionaire, one of the richest people in America. I feel like God was telling him to go be a missionary in Egypt. He didn't want his wealth to be a distraction, so he gave it all away.

All of it. Left to go be a missionary over in Egypt, got there, was there three weeks and died of meningitis. Three weeks. Somebody asked him right before he died, one of his friends, they're like, you've been here three weeks. You're about to die. There's nothing we can do for you. You regret the choices that you made.

And by this point, William Borden was so weak, he couldn't even talk. So we got this little pad of paper and he just wrote two words, no regrets, no regrets. Died a couple of days later. He's buried over in Cairo in a little, not unmarked grave, but a little tombstone.

You'd never notice if you weren't looking for it. And it has his name, has the dates of his life and death, his short life. And then below it, it just has this one phrase, apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life. It's a mystery.

Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life. You are supposed to live like Borden and Paul and others who'd say, hey, apart from joy in Jesus, that's a mystery. That's what our lives should scream. We proclaim him. We proclaim him, Paul says, verse 28, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom so that we may present everybody mature in Christ. I labor for this, striving with his strength that works powerfully in me.

By the way, look at this. I labor for this, striving with his strength that works powerfully in me. What Paul is saying is, in order for me to grow spiritually now, I got to help you grow spiritually. You ask anybody that's walked with God for any amount of time, they'll tell you this exact same thing. There's nothing you can read, nothing you can memorize, nothing you can listen to that will grow you as spiritually as much or as fast as just being involved in other people's lives.

In fact, here's how I would say it. I would say the best way to deepen your relationship to Jesus is to help other people discover theirs. That's what Paul's talking about here. But here's what I want you to notice in this section. We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom to present you mature in Christ.

Paul's goal was to present this church mature in Christ. That is partially or a big part of my goal in this series because I understand, listen, that one of the greatest competitors for the first place in your heart is money. Honestly, I'm gonna be totally transparent with y'all. When we talk about money here, I feel a little apprehensive. I don't get nervous preaching sermons really anymore. But when we talk about this, I get a little queasy and I'm like, because I feel like you're gonna sit there thinking I'm trying to manipulate you, trying to guilt you into giving.

As your pastor, my goal is to present you mature in Christ. And I know there is nothing quite so dangerous as money. In 1 Timothy, Paul tells Timothy to warn the rich of this present age, that'd be all of us, about the deceptiveness of money. It is a snare, he says, and by it, many have been disqualified from the faith. It is the root of all kinds of evil. Jesus said, you cannot love, you cannot prioritize, you cannot seek, you cannot obey the kingdom of God and money. In this series, I have got a warning for many of you about your money. That warning is not, hey, if you don't give, then we can't do X, Y, and Z. No, the warning is if you're not putting Jesus in the first place in this part of your life, you are destroying your own faith and you're destroying the faith of your children.

C.S. Lewis said it this way, prosperity has a way of knitting a man's heart to this world. He feels that he's finding his place in it, when in reality, it is just finding its place in him and it's rooting out the love of God. Y'all, it's why Jesus talked about money more than he did any other subject. Jesus knew that no matter what else we say, until our commitment to Christ affects that area, it's all a sham. What Paul is saying is, this is my goal, this is what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to present you mature in Christ and I'm laboring, striving with all the strength that works so powerfully in me. God's moving in me so that he can move through me. God's like a spiritual cyclone, right?

He never draws you in without also pushing you back out in ministry. Okay, that's it. We're pulling back into the station.

Our bus tour is over. So here's my questions for us. Here's my questions for Reflection. Write these down. I want you to think about them all week.

I want you to talk about them in your small group. Number one, where and how are you fulfilling up Christ's afflictions? Does your life show the marks of sacrifice? I told you in the series, we're talking a lot about money, but it affects other areas.

But let's just talk about your resources for a minute. Has your giving affected your lifestyle? How could you say that you're bearing Christ's afflictions if your giving has not even affected your lifestyle?

How can you say that the kingdom of God is first if other things haven't been changed, haven't been sacrificed in order to make room for the kingdom of God? Question number one, where and how are you filling up Christ's afflictions? Question number two, are you fulfilling your commission?

Are you fulfilling your commission? He's shown you, oh man, oh woman, what is good and what the Lord requires of you to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. Are you doing that in your time, your talent, in your treasure? Have you ever asked yourself, why did God give me this thing? Why did God give me this chapter of retirement?

What does he want me to do in it? Why did God give me this career? Why did God give me this earning potential? Why did God give me these blessings? God, what do you want from these things? I want to use them first for the kingdom of God. Third question, last one, is your life so different from those around you that other people could only call it a mystery? Is your life so different that other people can only call it really a mystery? Let me make this super radical for you, okay?

Watch this. Average credit card debt in Raleigh, Durham, $13,343. We as Christians, we believe that God doesn't want us to be enslaved in debt, so you should stay out of debt. So let's say you make that choice that you're not going to be a debt, you're going to live within your means. Number two, you put Jesus first in your life, so Jesus gets the first and the best.

Number three, you're going to save for the future because God's word also tells you you should do that. Now, the average person is doing not any of those three things. They're living above their means, they're not putting Jesus first and best, and they're not really saving that much for the future. If you, that means, if you do those three things God's words tells you to do, you're going to be three steps behind in lifestyle of everybody else in your income bracket. And you know who makes the same amount of money you do. We all kind of look around like, I know that guy makes, that girl makes the same amount as me. When you're three steps behind in lifestyle, everybody else that makes the money you make, you will know it, and everybody will know it, and it'll be a mystery.

Are you willing to reduce that lifestyle so that you can obey God's word in those three areas? Is your life so different from those around you it can only be called a mystery? Y'all, don't you want to be able to get to eternity like Paul, like William Borden? Don't you want to get there and look back and say, no regrets, no regrets. I had one life. Your life is so short. It's so short. Only one life to live will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last.

It's so short. Don't you want to get there and say, I took, I did it God. I took my time and my treasure and my talents, and I didn't blow it on this 70 or 80 years trying to create some false utopia that wasn't even that satisfying anyway. I leveraged it for the kingdom, and I put it first, and I got no regrets, and I rejoice in my sacrifices and sufferings. Jesus is worth it all. If you get nothing else from this teaching series, we hope that you carry that truth with you every day. This is all worth it. You're listening to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.

Greer. If you missed any part of this message or if you'd like to catch up on the rest of our series called First, you can listen online at jdgreer.com. So, J.D., most Christians believe time in the Word is important, but when it comes down to it, we sometimes go whole days or even weeks without really spending time with God devotionally, especially if we're feeling depressed, angry, or feeling any other extreme emotions. You know, one of the strange things is that people even in Christian circles often look outside of the Bible and outside of the Christian community to deal with their emotions. Like, well, the Bible teaches me how to be a moral person.

It teaches me how to have hope in life after death. But when it comes down to dealing with anxiety, when it comes down to dealing with sadness or even some forms of depression, I don't really think the Bible is the place I ought to turn. I want to implore you, don't manage your emotions. Don't suppress them.

If they're like smoke from a fire, don't try to wave the smoke out of your house. Use it to diagnose what's really going on in your heart. And this tool that we're offering called Smoke from a Fire will help you by giving you some study helps and some diagnostic questions to really lay open your own heart and then see how the scripture is speaking to you.

As always, you can get it today right now at jdgrayer.com. We can only create these resources that equip and encourage our listeners because of your support. When you donate to Summit Life, you're helping more people to dive into the gospel message with us each day. And when you join this mission right now, we'd like to say thanks by sending you a new workbook with 10 devotionals and guided scripture reading that goes hand in hand with our teaching series that we just completed on the program titled Smoke from a Fire. It provides insight and scripture that will meet difficult emotions like depression, anxiety, and anger with a relationship with Jesus, prayer, and praise. Ask for the devotional workbook when you donate today or when you commit to being a monthly gospel partner.

The suggested giving level is $35 or more. Give us a call at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or you can give and request the new resource online at jdgrayer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. Next week, we'll finish this study in the book of Colossians. So have a great weekend worshiping with your local church family, and be sure to come back Monday for Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.