Vision/Mision and Prayer

This past Sunday was hopefully a time of encouragement and clarity for everyone.  I know it was for me.  In fact, I have never (I mean, never) been more excited about what God is doing at Colossae than I am right now.  To say that I am enjoying living life alongside of you all here in our community would not even begin to scratch the surface of what I'm feeling.

This past Sunday I just wanted to clarify a few things to assure we are all on the same page.  First, our mission: to join in God's mission of reconciling the world to Himself through Jesus.  The main passage that drives us to embracing this as our mission is 2 Corinthians 5:14-21.  If you haven't taken a look at that lately, I would recommend you spending some time in it.

But the question is, how do we "join in" God's mission?  There are all sorts of ways to do this and we have two phrases that sort of summarize all them.  We say, in order to accomplish our mission we need to be balanced in two ways.

We need to be the Body to the Body.
We need to be the Body to the World.
It's that simple.

Being the Body to the Body would lead us to do things like taking care of one another's needs, praying for one another, studying/talking about scripture together, embracing the beauty of accountability with one another.

Being the Body to the World would lead us to do things like be intentional in our relationships with neighbors and co-workers, helping them learn about and from Jesus over time (this is called 'discipleship').  It would lead us to organizing ourselves to serve the poor and needy in our city.  It would lead us to keep our eyes out for needs that we can bring to our community so that we can meet them, together.

This ought to be how we measure ourselves, our communities and our church as a whole.  I should ask myself, "Am I being the body to the body...and am I being the body to the world?"  We should recognize the areas we are weak in, evaluate that, and talk about how we can take steps toward a greater obedience.

BUT, even though this is clear and simple....we cannot lose our heart in midst of 'doing' these things.  We need to be motivated by our love and intimacy with God.  Personally.  This is why Sunday I talked about remaining connected with God in prayer and what our prayer lives reveal about us:

1. Dependence on God.  A lack of prayer in our lives reveals a lack of dependence on God.
2. Humility.  A lack of prayer reveals arrogance; thinking as though we don't actually need God.  We can do it in our own power.
3. Proper view of God.  A prayerful person shows an accurate view of God and His sovereignty.
4. Proper view of ourselves.  A prayerful person shows a recognition of our limitations as human beings.

This is why I challenged us in the area of prayer and why we will concentrate on it for the coming weeks.  We will press forward in our mission, but we will NOT do so without remaining connected to and dependent on God.  

Final challenge: as a church we will be collectively praying through Ephesians 3:14-21 together.  We are praying this for ourselves and those around us....as often as we remember.  Please join us in our pursuit of a humble posture before God as we seek joining in with all He is doing.