Daring to Dream Again: Become… – Part 5

March 20, 2012 by admin

Become World-Class Christians—Part 5

Children are hardly the people to blame for the problems of the world. Even so, many children, through no fault of their own, live very sad lives. For example, studies show that every year more than a million children worldwide are coerced into prostitution, pornography, or other forms of sexual exploitation. The number of homeless children in the world is also in the millions.

People don’t generally know that in our lifetime children in many settings have been forced to fight in adult wars. Between fifty and one hundred thousand children died in combat in the Iran/Iraq War (September 1980 to August 1988). Sometimes these youngsters were used to clear mines. They were tied together and obliged to walk across Iraqi mine fields to detonate explosives so that the regular army could proceed unharmed. Closer to home, reports of children being forced to fight adult wars have come out of Central American countries such as Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

Calling Children in Love

The Lord has a most tender heart for children. “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” But many of the world’s children will never hear about this love unless someone goes and tells them about our Lord. They will not grow up as my four children did, having heard about the Savior from a very early age.

I now have my first grandchild. As I write this, Little Caitlyn is one year old. She’s being raised in a loving Christian home and already is a regular attender at church. But millions upon millions of innocent children and grandchildren—little sons and daughters, beautiful grandsons and granddaughters—all with names and feelings and smiles and great potential for good and bad, will never hear about Christ unless someone goes to tell them the news that God and His Son, Jesus, dearly love them.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Daring to Dream Again: Become… – Part 4

March 19, 2012 by admin

Become World-Class Christians—Part 4

Concern for the Innocents

We must also remember God’s words to Jonah about the children, the innocents. Wherever we travel we see children. We can’t just write them off. As I talk, I’m picturing the many, many children of India I’ve seen. My wife, Karen, sought to help readers identify with the plight of the world’s children when she wrote Tales of the Resistance. This is from the chapter called “The Orphan Exodus.”

The orphan pavilion was to one side of the Dagoda, enclosed by a high wall with a surrounding courtyard. A sign beside the tall gate proclaimed…

WE LOVE CHILDREN
Orphan Keepers’ Association

…but everyone in Enchanted City knew that children were loved only because they provided forced labor to do the dirty work of the Enchanter.

Two huge wolves the size of lions guarded either side of the entrance. They growled as the men approached; they bared their teeth and drooled. A soft light gathered around the King. The wolves stared, whimpered, and then hid their heads in their paws while the two men passed them by. All closed places opened to the King when he so willed it.

Inside, a squad of orphans wearing tattered rags scrubbed the courtyard. A keeper’s assistant with a whistle around her neck chanted, “Clean-dean-clean!” and stood ready to beat the slow workers with a long stick. Another work detail, a long line of children tied together at the ankles with rough sections of rope, were getting ready to collect the city garbage which citizens tossed on the street. A whistle blew—Hweet! Hweet!—and the crew marched to the waiting carts while another assistant prodded them with the sharp tines of her forked shovel.

Huge vats of water boiled while children stirred the dirty clothes within. The hot water splashed on the orphans’ rags, burning them one moment and then soaking them to the skin in the cold night. An assistant prodded them with a long wooden turning spoon. Hweet! she blew her whistle and shouted, “Scoundrels! Dimwits! I’ll boil you if you spill any more wash water!”

All the orphans, boys and girls, wore the same haircuts, making it nearly impossible to tell one from another. Their clothes were an identical gray which grew increasingly threadbare during washing’s as they were passed down from one child to another. Skinny, sad eyed, covered with sores from the lack of proper foods, not one orphan smiled or laughed or told jokes or chased another in games of tag. Games were forbidden, and play had been outlawed. No one belonged to any other—brothers and sisters were separated. There were no holidays and never any birthday cakes.

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Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Daring to Dream Again: Become… – Part 3

March 16, 2012 by admin

Become World-Class Christians—Part 3

l fear that the North American church today is quite often like Jonah. We care about our own country but not for much beyond our borders. Our spiritual dreams might include the growth of our local church and the denomination to which it belongs, but only a small percentage of Christians identify with God’s great heart of love for other nations. This is especially true when we think about nations considered to be our enemies. Most believers haven’t yet “broken glass” and moved into that new vista.

We may even be a bit turned off when we hear challenges based on Christ’s last -words. Just prior to His ascension Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). Apparently He wanted us to begin to think globally.

Here’s how that commission comes out in Acts. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you: and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1:8). This includes places with foreign (even Assyrian-sounding) names like Mozambique, Afghanistan, Yemen, Chad, Chile, Indonesia, Somalia, Ukraine, Romania, Paraguay, Nepal, Mongolia and many more with people whose ways seem strange to us, but not to God. He loves them dearly. I didn’t name one country He doesn’t have intensely strong feelings for. I couldn’t have named one if I’d tried.

Would you believe that it’s nations other than our own where the kingdom is presently making its greatest advances? I believe it’s in places foreign to us where the most exciting stories of faith are being lived out. If we remain provincial in our thinking, we are the losers. The sooner we start looking at the rest of the world, the more likely it is we will see faith being lived out in New Testament ways. So it’s to our advantage to overcome the barrier of perceiving that we have all the answers, spiritually speaking.

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Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Daring to Dream Again: Become… – Part 2

March 15, 2012 by admin

Become World-Class Christians—Part 2

A God Too Merciful

I can picture Jonah reminding God, “Come on, now, I have no stomach for that kind of stuff! What’s that? … You’re sure they’ll listen to what I say? I can’t imagine it, God. But let’s just say they do, and they momentarily repent. I lose again. Because I know exactly what’s going to happen. I can see it coming. Even a little godly sorrow on their part; some sniffles and a few tears, and You won’t destroy them. That’s it. I’m right, I know I am. I know You very well, God. You’re too merciful. Your heart’s too big. Do You think those people will respect You if You don’t send a white blast of fire against at least a major portion of their city? Listen to me. Why be kind to them, God? They don’t love You. Forget about these foreigners, they’re not worth it. All they’ve ever given You or Your people is dirt.”

So that you won’t think I’m making up Jonah’s thoughts, let me quote from the last chapter of this short book. Jonah had already had his whale experience. That’s what finally made him willing to take on God’s assignment. So he preached, and—lo and behold—the Ninevites repented in sackcloth and ashes. And, sure enough, in chapter 3, verse 10 we read: “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, He had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction He had threatened.”

Jonah was steaming.

“But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the Lord, ‘O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity’” (Jonah 4:1-3). In other words, Jonah was telling God, “You don’t treat people dirty even when that’s how they act toward You. And that really frosts me!”

This account ends with God’s pointing out to this prophet that “Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left. Should I not be concerned about that great city?” What most commentators believe this means is that there were 120,000 children in this place. So calm down, Jonah. You might just overlook that fact when you ask for judgment fire to fall, but God can’t. “And yes, I love these people,” the Lord was saying to Jonah. “I just wish you cared about them too.”

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Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy

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