Reaching Your Potential

Posted: April 29, 2009

Our trip to work with the “7 Bridges” ministry this past weekend was awesome!  I was excited to see members of our church working with other churches sharing God’s love with people who needed food and clothing.  At the end of the day, as I reflected on all that we had encountered, I realized that we gave food and clothing to every single person that lived under those bridges and not a single one of them will go hungry tonight.  Our church has great potential!  When we come together, joined by great vision, there’s really nothing we can’t accomplish.  There is nothing that we can’t overcome together.

Webster’s Dictionary defines potential in this way: “Something that has power; something that is very potent, but it’s unrealized and hasn’t come into being.”  I’m not saying that we don’t do awesome things together as a church, but I do believe we haven’t come close to realizing our God given potential.

If we are going to reach our potential, we must develop “spiritual vision.”  Spiritual vision is knowing where God is calling you to go and then having the faith to pursue that calling.  Spiritual vision is the ability to see the direction God is leading you – it’s having the ability to “walk by faith and not by sight.” (2 Corin. 5:7)

Proverbs 29:18 states: “Where there is no progressive revelation the people cast off restraint.”

What this verse is really talking about is having “spiritual vision.”  When you don’t have  ability to see things in the spirit, you run the risk of chasing every whim that comes your way, and you never get to where God wants you to go.  Ultimately, you will never reach your God given potential.

I want to give you four things spiritual vision will do for you.

Spiritual Vision will ….

1.  Help you make difficult decisions. When you have a clear revelation of what God’s calling you to do you will be able to make difficult decisions because you know where you’re going.

2.  Cause you to pay the price. Your God given potential is bigger than you are – that’s why it’s God given.  If it’s not bigger than you are, then you aren’t seeing the capacity of your potential.  Do you have a dream inside of you today?  Then it’s going to cost you something to get there.  When people don’t know where they’re going, they’re unwilling to pay the price to get there.

3.  Cause you to overcome your fears. When you really see what God wants for your life and when you understand your potential in Him, your insecurities will vanish.  Fear is the greatest road block to reaching your potential.  You must overcome the temporary fears if you want to reach your potential.

4.  Cause you to live for the eternal and not for the immediate. Many times people don’t reach their potential because they react to temporary circumstances instead of focusing on the big picture.  The greatest problem in the world today is our obsessive desire for immediate gratification.  Pursuing the immediate gratifications in life will always keep you from reaching your potential.

Dr. David Yonggi Cho is the senior pastor of the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea.  The church has 900,000 members and 3,000 pastors on staff.  WOW!!  Dr. Cho once said something that is imprinted in my mind.  He said, “Tell me your vision, and I’ll tell you your future.”  Because if you can’t see it – you can’t have it.

I want you to know that you have great potential!  The God who created you has already given it to you, but you must go get it!  The key is having spiritual vision to see where God is leading you even when your present circumstances make it look impossible.

7 BRIDGES MEETING TIME!!!!

Posted: April 23, 2009

I look forward to being with you this Saturday as we share the message of the kingdom together.  Please let me know if you are coming with us.  My email address is jody.ray@mtbethel.org.  We need to meet at Mt Bethel at 11:00 so we can get on the road by 11:15.  See you Saturday!

Jody

Radically Changed!

Posted: April 22, 2009

We are in the middle of a three part series in the Encounter Service titled “A Dangerous Church.”  This past Sunday we challenged the congregation to be dangerous by coming together to feed the homeless who live under the bridges of Atlanta.  We will be working with 7 Bridges (www.7bridgestorecovery.org), a ministry here in Atlanta, that minister’s to homeless men and women.  I hope you will join us the Saturday from 11:00 to 4:00.  Please let me know by email if you would like to go with us.  My email address is jody.ray@mtbethel.org.

I’ve asked Gaylyn Kelly to be my guest blogger and share her experiences working with 7 Bridges:

People get uncomfortable when folks take the gospel seriously. When we begin to live as if the Bible is true and we respond to God with our lives, comfortable Christians and others get uneasy and call us RADICAL. That is exactly how God has “messed me up” (as Jody Ray would put it). When I moved from being a believer to a follower of Jesus, my thoughts and my life radically changed.

To read the scriptures and to know they are not just historical records but rather they are our calls to LOVE and MOVE and LIVE like Christ- that can mess you up!  Combine that with the Spirit alive and active in you, and you will move from believer to follower; you will be compelled to respond to it with your life.

“Now go and I will help you to speak and will tell you what to say” Exodus 4:12

“Devote yourself to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship and to prayer”  Acts 2:42

“Love God with all of your heart and your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:37

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you WILL be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” ACTS 1:8

When scripture moves from words on a page to battle cries of our hearts, we are moved to RESPOND to Jesus with your life.  My hope is that as we spend time in God’s WORD and hear HIS messages, and then we are moved by the fact that those writings are for us – HIS followers now and today.

We have an opportunity to serve with some amazing followers of Christ this weekend.    7 Bridges ministry is a group of Christ followers who live out the instructions of Christ, “‘… whatever you did for the least of mine, you did for me.”  Matthew 25:40

I got involved with 7 Bridges a few years ago.   My dear friend, Annie Coppedge, brought me to the ministry because she thought I would love the personal interaction and the chance to love and pray for those in need.   NO doubt she knows me well!   To love others as Christ has loved me is how God continually uses this opportunity in my life.  I have been able to share Jesus and receive Jesus from countless, to pray for needs of others that I take for granted in my own life,  to be moved to tears of JOY when someone gets a place to live and is no longer on the streets and to share the only hope I know, that of holding onto to Christ in the most desperate of times.  Bottom line I get to witness and be a part of the scripture coming to life.

7 Bridges  is a ministry rescuing the last, the lost and the least from the streets of Atlanta and beyond. They save lives through front line rescue and meeting their basic needs to be loved and acknowledged.  The love of Christ is shared by giving them food to eat and water to drink, at times supplying a blanket or a coat, but always the love of Christ through a hug, prayer, and listening to their story.  Through Christ’s power, compassion is shared by meeting them where they are and loving them there.  Many are rescued.  After rescuing people from the streets,  placement is provided into a spiritual recovery program where the healing and restoration process takes place. Once healed, the aim is to connect them to a next-step resource at one of many discipleship homes or other in-depth programs, depending on their personal needs.

7 Bridges vision & desire is that those who are rescued will someday be the ones doing the rescuing. They are now beginning to see this modeled in the lives of the men and women that once lived under the bridges and in difficult life situations.

Luke 14:23  Then the master said to the servant, “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.”

In 2001, Pastor 7, the leader of these Christ followers,  literally took the words of JESUS to heart and began a ministry that goes to the places where the homeless, the prostitutes, the addicts and alcoholics reside, so they might hear the GOOD NEWS that JESUS CHRIST died for them and can heal and restore their lives. This is how 7 Bridges to Recovery was born.

Please come prepared to serve those in the streets.  While we will bring food, clothing, and other necessities to them, the most important thing we bring is JESUS CHRIST. The Love of Christ, Prayer, and the WORD of GOD are what will have an eternal impact on their lives.

Hope to see you Saturday.

Submitted by one earnestly trying to follow Jesus,

Gaylyn Kelly

What’s All This Talk About “A Dangerous Church?”

Posted: April 16, 2009

A Dangerous ChurchI’ve invited Chris Dunagan, a member of the Mt Bethel family, to be my guest blogger today.  I hope you will take a couple of minutes to read his blog post.  Let us know what you think.

What’s all this talk about a “dangerous church”?  What does that look like?  Does a “dangerous church” see something we don’t see?  Is that what Paul had in mind when he wrote to Timothy about that which was revealed to us by the incarnate living God in the person of Jesus Christ?  Is this something new, or is it already done?

Paul writes to Timothy, “Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me His prisoner; but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher.”  2 Timothy 1:8-11 (NASB)(emphasis supplied).

Biblical scholars tell us 2 Timothy is Paul’s last letter.  Paul is in prison awaiting his execution.  Paul is a death row inmate, waiting his turn to walk “The Green Mile,” so to speak.  Paul is in a sobering season of waiting for his head to be separated from his body in a dramatic and decisive way.  While he waits, Paul is thinking of others more than himself.  Paul, in his final days, is concerned to care about Timothy, to build him up and encourage him.  Paul writes to remind Timothy “of the sincere faith within you” and to “kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you[.]”  v1:5-6 (partial).  Paul then goes on to instruct and encourage Timothy.

Do you see how Paul is a very dangerous man?  Do you see how Paul is a great threat to the spiritual forces of wickedness and the evil powers of this world?  Do you see how Paul, so very dangerous to the enemy, is a powerful encourager to those who build the Kingdom of God?  I believe the greatest encouragement Paul offers to Timothy, the greatest encouragement 2 Timothy offers to me and the encouragement I want to share with you, is when Paul says, essentially, “Timothy, it’s already done.  You just need to receive it and walk it out in faith.”  (My paraphrase.)  Friends, I believe when we catch hold of what was revealed to us “from all eternity,” and believe it’s already done, we are going to be a very dangerous church full of very dangerous followers of Christ.

What do I mean, “It’s already done?”  How can that be?  Well, what does “from all eternity” mean in Paul’s letter to Timothy?  When I first think of eternity, I think of the future.  I think of an unending future that goes on forever, for all eternity.  Fortunately, God is not limited by my logical, analytical, linear concept of time.  “From all eternity” is not limited to the future.  A popular lexicon defines “eternity” as “without beginning and end, that which always has been and always will be.”  Eternity is something qualitatively different than time.  Eternity both succeeds and precedes time.  Different modern translations give additional insight to the words translated in the NASB as “from all eternity.”  The NRSV translates the same phrase as “before times eternal.” The NKJ version says “before time began.”  The ESV says “before the ages began.”  Do you see where this is going?  What God revealed to us in Jesus Christ was not new from God’s perspective.  From God’s perspective, it’s already done.  God already has it handled “before the ages began.”  What the Father revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ, already is handled “from all eternity.”  We see it in the biblical meta-narrative of creation and redemption.  That is to say, we see it in the story of the Bible, from Genesis to Abraham to Moses and the prophets to Jesus to Paul and the other apostles to Revelation.  God revealed to us in Jesus Christ what was already granted to us from all eternity.  Abraham was reckoned righteous through his faith, before he was circumcised.  Romans 4:10-11.  “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.”  Ephesians 2:8-9.  The nature of God’s purpose is unchanging.  It’s already done.  We just need to receive it and walk it out … in faith.

Does that mean that our salvation is predestined?  No.  The eternal fate of “Israel,” the collective body of the people of God, already is determined.  The identity of “Israel,” however, those who are of the faith of Abraham, is a choice that is in our hands.  Will we choose to accept God’s grace to believe and follow Jesus and be the people of God, or will we choose to follow culture, or a myriad other idols, and be people of the world?

Today, some of us are on the brink of something big.  Some of us are at the decision point of a breakthrough.  Some of us, metaphorically speaking, are on the edge of the promised land and we have to decide whether we are going to run back to the false security of Egypt or whether we are going to drive out the Canaanites and take the land that God has prepared for us.  That is to say, some of us are on the brink of decisions between spiritual death and spiritual life.  Today, some of us are at the foot of the cross and we have to decide whether we will deny Christ and indulge our flesh or whether we will die to self and be crucified with Christ so that He may live in us and we may have eternal life.  Today, some of us have to decide whether we will cling to our commitment to our plans for what we think life is supposed to look like or whether we will take that hard right turn and surrender to God’s plans for our life in Christ.  Today, some of us need the encouragement of Christ to sustain us.  Today, some of us are wounded and hurting and we just need a bear- hug of love from the nail-scarred hands of Jesus.

Where are you today?  Where is your land of Canaan?  Do you believe the grace of God is sufficient to overcome your giants?  What areas of your life do you need to surrender to Jesus for the glory of God?  Are there any relationship issues in your life that need God’s healing grace?  Is there any part of your being that stands between you and the full measure of God’s grace, mercy, hope, love and purpose for your life?  “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”  Hebrews 4:12.  Do you believe you are set free, through Jesus Christ, from the law of sin and death.  “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”  Romans 8:1-2.

Wherever you are today, God loves you right where you are.  He also loves you too much to leave you there.  “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.”  1 John 4:9.  I ask myself today, am I going to keep trying to do things my own way, or will I yield and follow Him?  Have I had as much grace and transformation as I can stand, or will I continue to follow Him daily?  Am I going to quit the race, or am I going to finish the race marked out for me?  Am I going to shrink back in spiritual timidity, or am I going to be dangerous to the pattern of this world, walking in faith, blanketed by the peace of knowing it’s already done?

A little more than two years ago, I was a partner in a successful law firm.  With 14 years of law practice under my belt and closing in on 40 years old, I was heading into my prime.  Then one day God messed up my plans for my idea of success with a few, very simple, very dangerous, words:  “It’s time to get out of the boat.”  God did not speak to me in an audible voice, but the message was as unmistakably clear as the sound of a large truck falling into a small pond.  The next day, I got out of the boat – with a wife, two kids and a mortgage.  It was a huge leap of faith.  (Note well:  I am not suggesting anyone should quit their job.  No one should follow me.  Everyone should follow Jesus.)  As we began walking in faith, things started taking shape.  The full path was not immediately made visible, but God has been incredibly faithful as we have taken the steps revealed to us.  Along the way, Jesus Christ changed me.  Jesus Christ flipped my perspective upside down, or, perhaps I should say, inside out.  In a way, He healed me from something that was holding me captive.  For a long time, I thought I had to be something other than what God created me to be in order to “be somebody.”  I was a slave to my professional identity, and true satisfaction and fulfillment were always just one step away.  Jesus Christ changed my identity.  Now, I am His child and I find true satisfaction and fulfillment in His purpose for my life.  There has been a dangerous, formative thread running through this season of my life.  God has been faithful in preparing the way and making provision.  Through this experience, which continues today as a walk of faith, He continues to form and mold me to trust in Him and not my own abilities.  He continues to reveal to me the false sense of security of ever preferring my own abilities to His redeeming grace.

Sign me up for the dangerous church, the one that finds its identity in the biblical meta-narrative of creation and redemption through Jesus Christ.  Sign me up for the dangerous church that scouts the land of Canaan, counts the cost and says, “the sovereign God is with us.  By His grace, we can turn from idols, worship Him and take the land for the glory of His Kingdom.  It’s already done.”

Wherever you are today, my prayer for you is that you will remember the sincere faith within you, kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you, and receive it and walk it out in faith through the power of God’s grace and blanketed in Christ’s peace because it’s already done.  Praise God, it’s already done from all eternity and I pray for God’s grace for you to just receive it and walk it out in faith with renewed power and strength in the name of Jesus Christ, to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been granted.  May your walk be cloaked with the authority of the most powerful Ambassador of all eternity.  Thanks be to God for the blood of the Lamb; thank You Jesus for showing us how to walk it out in faith all the way through to the finish line.  Thank you Father, Son and Holy Spirit, “It is finished!”  John 19:30.  Great, worthy God, encourage us with the grace to experience the joy of believing it’s already done!  In Christ’s name, Amen.

Chris Dunagan

The Power of One

Posted: April 1, 2009

One Solitary Life

“He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.  He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter’s shop until he was thirty.  Then for three years he was a wandering preacher.  He never wrote a book.  He never held an office.  He never had a family or owned a house.  He did not go to college.  He never visited a big city.  He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where he was born.  He did none of the things one usually associates with greatness.  He had no credentials but himself.  He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him.  His friends ran away.   He was turned over to his enemies, and went through the mockery of a trial.  He was nailed to a cross between to thieves.  While he was dying his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth.  When he was dead he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of friend.  Nineteen centuries have come and gone.  Today he remains the central figure of the human race, and the leader of mankind’s progress.  All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of this planet so much as that one solitary life.”

Anonymous

All through history there have been people, against the greatest of odds, who set out to change the world.   Individuals who refused to except things as they were but rather chose to believe the world could one day be a better place.  People like Martin Luther, John Wesley, Mother Teressa, Dorothy Day, and Billy Graham looked at their world with the incredible desire for things to be different.  These men and women didn’t start out as the popular influential leaders they are recognized as today, but rather they lived as outsiders to main stream culture and in the organizations in which they belonged.  They where, however, in tune with God to the degree that they took great leaps of faith, often with much resistance and personal heartache, to pursue the call of God.

Jesus demonstrated the power that one person can have in the world, and I believe today he’s calling all of those who follow Him to take great leaps of faith for the Kingdom of God.  What can you do today or this week that could influence someone for the Kingdom?

There’s POWER in YOU because of the ONE who lives in YOU!!!!

Jody