On Saturday, June 26th, the call to fast and pray kicked in for America, our national event and our future service to the Lord. Thanks to all who have joined and are participating in this heartfelt seeking of God on the behalf of our nation and our children's future. The call to intercession accompanied with fasting will officially end at lunch Saturday, July 3rd, but I would encourage you to remain vigilant through our national event in Charlotte. We will probably face litigation and some rabid pro-aborts who desperately need Jesus.
Update on Lundi
Lundi is nursing!!!! The doctor came in this morning and said we could go home!!!!!!!!! Victory in Jesus! We are so grateful to the Lord for His goodness. Lundi had another Xray and her lung that collapsed on itself hasn't improved. We can tell she is in pain so keep praying for complete healing! She also needs to gain weight as she is pretty much back to her birth weight.
Ministry of Reconciliation
On Friday, July 2nd, the Thomas Nation will head out of Waco to begin a month of serving the Lord in New Orleans, Georgia, and Charlotte, NC. We covet your prayers, love, and support as we bring the Gospel of the Kingdom to the gates of hell.
This Sunday, July 4th, while we will be ministering in New Orleans, our local church, Life Church, will set up a booth at our local 4th of July celebration. The purpose is to help Waco citizens to connect the dots between faith, family, and freedom. They will pass out Bibles, tracts, and witness the saving grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ to those who care to listen. One of the tracts that you might interested in if you plan on reaching out to those in your sphere of influence on July 4th is called America's Christian History. Click here to obtain a copy.
To encourage our church in our upcoming outreach, Pastor John Wachsmann opened the door for me to preach yesterday. The message was entitled The Ministry of Reconciliation. If you find any merit, please pass it on in your sphere of influence.
THE MESSAGE
Our church has begun a great Gospel venture. We have crossed the line of obedience as we lift up the name of Jesus in the public square. We have had two outreaches thus far and God has already blessed us with some Kingdom fruit. I've heard from South Africa, a Christian man seeking a church like this in his nation. We witnessed the transformation of a man right at our altars the Sunday following out first outreach and we are receiving phone calls of other Christians in our area seeking involvement.
As we move forward, it is important to define our vision and mission. When Jesus at 12 years old was found in the Temple instructing His religious elders, His distraught parents questioned His absence from them. His response is highly instructional for you and I as we step out of our comfort zones to engage our community with the Gospel of the Kingdom. He stated, "How is it that ye sought me? Don't you know that I must be about my Father's business (Luke 2:49)?"
It is this business that we were born again to fulfill. In a word, this Kingdom business is called the Ministry of Reconciliation. To understand the significance of this particular ministry, one must first discern the root causes that makes this ministry so vital and necessary.
Noah Webster's 1828 edition of his dictionary defines RECONCILIA'TION as:
1. The act of reconciling parties at variance; renewal of friendship after disagreement or enmity.
Reconciliation and friendship with God, really form the basis of all rational and true enjoyment.
2. In Scripture, the means by which sinners are reconciled and brought into a state of favor with God, after natural estrangement or enmity; the atonement; expiation.
Romans 8:6-8 describes this enmity:
For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
Thus, reconciliation presupposes enmity, variance, quarrel, disagreement, strife and contention between two parties. It signifies a breach in a relationship. It speaks of estrangement. For our purposes today, the two parties we are exploring are Holy God and His dealings with sinful man. Isaiah 59:1, 2 tells us plainly, "Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear."
The wages of sin is not just death (Romans 6:23). It also brings alienation. When we sin against God by breaking His holy commandments or sin against one another, separation and isolation are the consequences we suffer. It is this wretched condition of broken fellowship that God seeks to address and remedy through the ministry of reconciliation.
2 Corinthians 5:17-21 states:
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
Verse 17 connects the church to the promise and prediction foretold by the prophets of old. God promised a New Covenant. He promised a new spirit that would yield to God's will and delight to obey His commandments. He would accomplish this righteous goal through performing spiritual surgery. He would remove our stony, obstinate hearts and replace it with a new heart. Ezekiel 11:19, 20 states, "And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh: That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God."
Verses 18, 19 remind each believer that God was in Christ reconciling us to the Father and we now have been commissioned to carry on in God's great redemption plan for men and nations. After Christ was raised from the dead, He stated, "Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you (John 20:21)."
Verse 20 likens this sending as the sending of an ambassador. When we were transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and placed into the Kingdom of God's dear Son, we were recruited to become ambassadors sent from God to secure heaven's interests upon earth. The opinions and feelings of the ambassador matter little in these negotiations. The duty of the ambassador is to stay faithful to secure the interests of the One who sent him. The ambassador has the important task to speak verbatim the exact message, which proceeds from the authority that sent him. The ambassador does not have the authority to deviate nor misrepresent the will of the One who sent him. This is the great failure of the seeker-friendly, so-called emergent church, which falsely believes the sincerity of belief is all that matters to God. Not so. The truth of what one believes is far more important than how much he believes it. This is an important statement. Our beliefs, no matter how sincere, does not determine truth. The truth, God's word, must determine man's belief.
This is why God warns not to add or subtract from His word. Proverbs 30:5, 6 states, "Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar."
Verse 20 reveals Christians are called to stand in the stead of Christ to make known His appeal to those outside the faith. We are to go to those who are without hope, without a covenant, and without God in this life to secure the peace of God in their lives by calling them to genuine repentance, acknowledgement of the truth, and saving faith.
Verse 21 reveals how this is made possible. Christ became the propitiation for our sins. He, on our behalf, endured the agonizing torments of a cruel cross to appease the wrath of God that is against us and to satisfy God's justice. And make no mistake about it, God's word declares in Psalm 7:11 that "God is angry with the wicked every day." And that is not just an Old Testament revelation, John the Baptist stated, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him (John 3:36)."
It was at the cross where God's holiness, justice, mercy and grace met and kissed. Christ made a way to meet God's conditions of justice in order to pardon guilty sinners like you and me by not imputing our trespasses against us. In other words, Christ repaired the breach and removed every obstacle in order for man to be restored in a right relationship with their heavenly Father.
We are therefore called to faithfully execute this ministry and give God's appeal to a dying world, a plea from dying men to dying men be reconciled back to the Father through the merits of Jesus Christ. Let us introduce our very best friend to those who are alienated from Him because of their sin and rebellion. Let us move forward by God's grace and faithfully preach the Gospel in Jesus name!
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