Fearing & Rebelling

Fearing & Rebelling

(Numbers 13:1-2, 17-33; 14:1-24) J G White

Sun, March 30, 2014, Windsor UBC

*Hymnal 560 Will Your Anchor Hold (stanza 1)

Let us take a scripture story in stages today, in three acts.  We read in the book of Numbers, chapters 13 and 14.  Listen to this amazing story.  It will not be unlike our story, here and now...

Scripture Numbers 13:1-3, 17-24

Sermon    Fearing & Rebelling: I

This is the time for “spying out” the next generations: the youth and young families we have within our Vision.  Author and pastor Brian McLaren has talked about the oncoming generations among us as a whole, unsaved nation arising.  And we are here, planed right in the midst of them, deployed here already, by God.  They are our children and grand-children.  Our young friends and neighbours.  

Why “spy out the land” in the first place?  To be prepared.  To know what we are getting into.  To understand what tools are needed.  To have better expectations about the outcomes.  To have a vision.

Why “spy out the land” in the first place?  Will it change the plan?  It sure did for the Children of Israel!  They ended up with forty years camping in the wilderness, instead of going right in to take the Promised Land that was for them.  But, I get ahead of the story.

Our first step, really, is to realize and know that we are entering a New Land.  May not seem like a Promised Land, but it is the land for us to live in, and be on mission, be missional, be the missionaries, be the ‘local field staff.’  

‘The Christian Century’ is over.  It’s now the post-Christendom era.  We are a minority, we, practicing Christians.  We are in a war zone, of sorts, conflict.  It’s Christianity verses ____, ____ and _____.  We are one of many spiritual and social options.  We are smaller group within the diverse world… as it was for believers in NT days.  Some keen believers want a New Testament Church. Well, we’ve got it now!

So, it is time to send out spies into the land.  Into the whole nation of younger people in Canada, into Nova Scotia.  Some of you may want to be trained.  Some of you are gifted at this already.  

We need to speak of what we do know already, about the people who are 10 years old, and 16, and twenty, and twenty eight, and forty.  

We must work together - be a team, a body - to know and understand what it means today to include the younger generations in the Kingdom, the Gospel.  

We already know some about them.  We must learn about younger cultures and trends, etc. We must be intentional in our interaction with real, live youth and younger people in West Hants, and beyond.  

The motivation must be love for them, interest in them, vision for them…  What does our Lord want for them?  This is the final word; more important that what we want for them, or for us.  Jesus said, Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.  Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road.  Whatever house you enter, first say, "Peace to this house!' (Luke 10)  We must be ready for challenges.  We must be ready to offer real peace.

Hymnal 560 Will Your Anchor Hold (stanza 2)

Scripture Numbers 13:25 - 14:10a

Sermon    Fearing & Rebelling: II

We also report ‘badly’ on what we find as we spy on the people God sends us to in our day.  We are not going to march to conquer and take over their land; we are going as Jesus went, to offer them entrance into the Kingdom of God.  To take up our cross so they can be free.  As we will sing, later, For not with swords, loud clashing, Nor roll of stirring drums, But deeds of love and mercy, The heavenly kingdom comes. (Lead On, O King Eternal, Ernest W Shurleff, 1862-1917)

But what do we say about youth and children, and their parents?  What is our ‘report?’

“Young people today…”  “Parents today…”  “Schools today…”

This week, The Current on CBC radio gave a preliminary view of a TV Documentary called: Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents.

The Journal of the American Medical Association suggests something unprecedented is happening with children. For the first time since this kind of data has been collected, more kids are diagnosed with mental health conditions than from physical ones. Parents confront children with high levels of anger, aggression, and other behaviour problems.

Experts in child development believe the problem is going to get worse:  "Parents are busy in their own stressful and chaotic lives. And there's very little time that children have where people are present with them just to be with them, just to play, just to read a book. And those circumstances, those quiet times where they get lots of language input, really help them to regulate their behaviour." Dr. Mark Greenberg, Child Development Expert.

What is our Vision of God’s heart for people?  How does he love them, who are angry, stressed out?  How does He go to the irreligious, the spiritual seeker, the unsettled soul? When we ask this we have our own challenges, for we find we are in a foreign land, as Christians… so we are missionaries planted here, and must enter this place and time where we have never been before.  Dear Church... are we afraid?

Like the ancient Children of Israel, we must express our fears. Not only about those we should be reaching with the Gospel.  Fears also about what we must lose, give up, change, modify.  “Oh, take us back to how it’s always been.”  “Get us outta here!”  This is where my own biggest fears come from, I must confess.

We must face our own rebellious temptations.  We want to go back to the old ways, the good ole days, the familiar things of our youth, the roles of power we had once, the things that suit our fancy, our taste.

We also must learn to disagree, to do conflict well, to resolve things.  Shall we learn again about the consensus process, Windsor Baptist?  May it not be that, on the edge of the promised land - a whole world of pagans whom Christ loves - that we are not prepared, and must head back into the wilderness for forty more years before we can go, go into West Hants with a mission. (Maybe we’ve now had our wilderness time, and are just about prepared.) OK, I get ahead of myself again.  Do not fear!  I think you can be ready to go, face your fears, and bless!  Does it seem that the Church is dying?  I believe in a resurrection, in new birth, for the Church!  For you.  For me.

Hymnal 560 Will Your Anchor Hold (stanza 3)

Scripture Numbers 14:10b-24

Sermon    Fearing & Rebelling: III

Do we find God as big a player in our lives as they did then?  In the days of Moses?  Here we view God’s wrath and mercy.  Let’s just start again, the LORD says to Moses.  I’ll start with you, and give up on the rest of this immature nation.  I’ll strike them down; make a new nation from you.

Moses - what an amazing leader! - what does he do here, yet again?  When the people are ready to mutiny, or murder, Moses does not verbally attack them or bash them.  He doesn’t take up the LORD’s offer to start afresh with him… he pleads with God for mercy, to forgive and stick with them.  

And God does.  There are severe consequences for the Hebrews, but they will be kept on the track to be the nation to bless the world. It is clear, God is ready to accomplish His plans through someone, such as Moses’ line, anyone whom he can use to get the job done.

This reminded me of the story of Esther.  And the scene where Mordecai, uncle of Esther, a new queen, sees that God will get His rescue mission accomplished through someone.  If not Esther, through someone. (Esther 4:14)  Mordecai to Esther:  

If you persist in staying silent at a time like this, help and deliverance will arrive for the Jews from someplace else; but you and your family will be wiped out. Who knows? Maybe you were made queen for just such a time as this. (Msg)

Who knows?

Maybe you were made a grandparent for such a time as this.

Maybe you were made a neighbour for such a time as this.

Maybe you were made a carpenter for such a time as this.  

Maybe you were made a runner for such a time as this.

Maybe you were made an ill person for such a time as this.  

Maybe you were made a musician for such a time as this.  

Maybe you were made a senior for such a time as this.

Maybe you were made lower middle class for such a time...

Maybe we were made a Baptist Church for such a time as this in Windsor and West Hants!

Jesus said to Peter and the disciples, at one point, “...I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”  Matthew 16:18  There is tremendous purpose and power in God today.  And in the Church that Jesus builds.  In the family that the Father adopts.  In the team the Spirit equips.  

We spy out the land we are on the edge of - the nation of younger people.  Have vision: see what the Lord sees!  

We face our fears, and also face the consequences of our failures.  Don’t rebel or be ready at any moment to turn back.  We can go forward into new places if we stop gazing into our rear-view mirror!

And we will find God, our God, to be merciful, and keep leading us, and preparing us for mission.  The Father is so patient with us.  He has such purpose for us, as He loves the world!

There’s a new world somewhere they call the Promised Land,

And I’ll be there someday, if you will hold my hand…

(Tom Springfield)

Quarrelling and Questioning

Quarrelling and Questioning

(Exodus 17:1-7) J G White

Sun, March 23, 2014, Windsor UBC

Some people are never satisfied. There’s a Jewish story about a lady's grandson playing in the water; she is standing on the beach not wanting to get her feet wet, when all of a sudden, a huge wave appears from nowhere and crashes directly over the spot where the boy is wading.

The water recedes and the boy is no longer there. He simply vanished. She holds her hands to the sky, screams and cries, "Lord, how could you? Have I not been a wonderful mother and grandmother? Have I not given to Bnai Brith and Haddasah? Have I not tried my very best to live a life that you would be proud of?"

A few minutes later another huge wave appears out of nowhere and crashes on the beach. As the water recedes, the boy is standing there, smiling, splashing around as if nothing had ever happened. A loud voice booms from the sky, "Okay, okay, I have returned your grandson. Are you satisfied?"

She responds, "He had a hat." (sermon central, haruth.com)

Most of us regularly have moments in life of not getting what we need as we want it.  We quarrel and we question God.  Let’s wander a bit with the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sin - sounds strangely appropriate to us in the English language. From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.

We don’t find what we need when we want it.

Life is often a personal journey by stages.  I’ve looked back at mine, at times, in chapters that happen to be eight years long; so I’m in year two of my latest chapter.   A fair bit of my own quarreling and questioning has been with myself, and my resistance to others have been hidden, maybe passive-aggressive.  I don’t get what I want out of my own life, and I stew about it, or get bogged down in self-criticism and inaction.  

Many other people, we realize, have real questions for others in their lives, and real quarrels.  Life for so many - even many of us - gets to be about getting what we want from others, and reacting to our disappointments.  

2 The people quarreled with Moses, and said, "Give us water to drink." Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?"

We quarrel with one another and test the Lord.  

There is a tricky connection between quarreling with one another, and testing the Lord.  When we are believers, we each want God on our side, the Bible to back us up, and the one who disappoints us must be the faithless one.  There is danger is saying: “If you don’t agree with me, you are disagreeing with the Lord!  You have not enough faith.”

But here, in this ancient wilderness, it is the quarreling of the people with Moses that is actually how they express their testing of the Lord.  “God is not providing; this must not be the right way.”  Moses get’s the brunt of their desperate frustration.  

3 But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?"

The quarrel intensifies.

For these Hebrew people, the situation seemed like a matter of and death.  But so many smaller conflicts in our lives can become heated and we act as if it is a life-and-death matter.  There will always be quarrels.  The resolution - there is the miracle!

History gives us a rather interesting account on resolution of conflict. French novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas  (The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo) once had a heated quarrel with a rising young politician. The argument became so intense that a duel was inevitable. Since both men were superb shots they decided to draw lots, the loser agreeing to shoot himself. Dumas lost. Pistol in hand, he withdrew in silent dignity to another room, closing the door behind him. The rest of the company waited in gloomy suspense for the shot that would end his career. It rang out at last. His friends ran to the door, opened it, and found Dumas, smoking revolver in hand. "Gentlemen, a most regrettable thing has happened," he announced. "I missed." (sermon central)

Quarrels intensify, and gladly there seldom are duels these days, though we know violence keep occurring in our society.  It is sad to see quarrels among God’s people, but its a long tradition of falling into this that we follow.  

I happened to run into Rob and Bethany Nickerson the other day.  Rob is interim Lead Pastor of New Minas Baptist Church.  He spoke of how things were going, in a church that suffered some sort of serious conflict last year and got into a bit of a shambles.  Bethany said, “We made it through the annual meeting all right.”  Rob shared about the little things, petty things, that people cling to and make so important, while other steps to vision and peace were really needed.  I told him I would keep him and his congregation in prayer.  

Back to the scene a few thousand years ago… 4 So Moses cried out to the Lord, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me."

The leaders call out to God when at their wits end.  

Yeah, this still happens regularly.  I’ve had a few moments of wanting to pull my hair out here, as I did while in Parrsboro; and I will in Digby.  On the other hand, followers often have reason to call out to the Lord, frustrated with your leaders.  And that is the best response - go to God.  Keep in communication with the Lord.  Giving the Father the silent treatment only works if we are earnestly listening and seeking Him.  But pouring out our concerns to God is one of the main paths of prayer.

You heard Judy and Lawrence that song, How Long Has it Been?  Mosie Lister, 1956.

Oh how long has it been  since you talked with the Lord

And told Him your heart's hidden secret

How long since you prayed

How long since you stayed

On your knees till the light shone through

The light shone through for Moses quickly, in the verses of Exodus Elizabeth read for us today.  

5 The Lord said to Moses, "Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink." Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.

God provides.  Basic provision.  

The Lord had been doing this all along, and would continue to… for decades, for ever!  But the plan for life is not always according to our plan.  Dear Moses and those ancient Israelites.  In Exodus 15 they complain because they have no good water to drink.  They get water.  At the start of chapter 16 they feel they are starving and are going to be killed with hunger by Moses.   Later in the chapter, once they are provided with manna, bread from heaven, so to speak, some of them ignore the reaping instructions and hoard it, so it rots and gets wormy.  Also, when they are supposed to rest on the seventh day, some go out to gather manna, and there is none.  Today’s scene of the thirsty, quarrelling people, is answered with water from a rock.  Later, their stubborn ways continue, when they build a golden deity to worship while Moses is off on a sacred, mountain top mission.  

On and on it goes - they people giving up on God and God’s leaders, and God providing.  Deuteronomy is the record of Moses’ last great speeches, forty years on, reiterating the law and their story in the wilderness.  In Deuteronomy 8:7 we read of Moses telling the folk, “you have been rebellious against the LORD from the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place.”

There are times when we get in God’s way when He is trying to tend to the business of His kingdom here on earth. "A man was struggling with a large box at the back edge of his truck. A passing neighbor saw his plight and came over to help him. He put his shoulder to the box. After a few tiring moments the neighbor exclaimed, "What’s in that box anyway? I don’t think we will ever get it on the truck." "Get on!" the exasperated man shouted, "I’m trying to get it off!"

Well-meaning Christians can be God’s worst enemies. When we judge and condemn others, when we set up our own standards of what it means to be saved, when we claim absolute knowledge of God’s will and of his Scriptures, we take over God’s role and attempt to run his business" (Hoefler, p. 47). That is the very reason that we sometimes fail to see that we are trying to put the box on the truck when God wants the box off the truck. (sermon central)

Thanks be to God, in His amazing grace He keeps calling us back to himself, using our quarrelling and calling His plan into question.  We have this tendency to doubt that God is doing what God is supposed to be doing.  

Our story today ends: 7 He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?"

It comes down to our consideration of God’s presence.  When we don’t get our own way, do we find God still with us?  We can be ready to learn from the Lord about what life will be, and how to thrive, not just survive.  Even when disaster strikes, can our spirits be trained to thank the Lord and say, like King David,  “The Lord is my Shepherd; I lack nothing.”  And with Job, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”  When we have Christ, what else do we actually need?  Beware of quarreling with God, when we actually have what we need.  

Years ago - not that many years ago - there was a cute, old-fashioned couple who always sat together at Sunday service in a tiny, rural Church.  Hughie & Dorothy had been boyfriend and girlfriend since the 1940s.  They never married. He lived down near the seashore, Dorothy lived up on a high hill covered with blueberry fields.

Hughie lived right across from the little, one room, Baptist Church.  He was the guy who came over early and turned on the heat.  He unlocked it, and later locked it up.   Two or three times each month, on Sunday evenings, the Church had service; every time, Dorothy and Hughie were faithfully there.

One year, Dorothy became ill, and she died.  Sadly - I found this very sad - Hughie quit the church.  Said he didn’t understand how God could do this to him.  He had a quarrel with God.  Sad, because it was so unreasonable an expectation.  Sad, because he was emotionally unprepared to lose his special friend.  Sad, because his faith in the Lord has such a gap in it.  This happens to lots of people.

But in the same area were others who got closer to God, when death visited them.  I remember Donnie & Krista, a couple about my age.  I had met them once, and met them again when Donnie’s father died and I was asked to have the funeral.  Krista and Donnie started worshipping - every. single. Sunday.  They devoted themselves to the Lord and were baptized into the fellowship of Christ, and served.

Is the Lord with us or not?  We ask this in many aspects of our lives, alone and together.  As Psalm 95 says, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did.  And, let the words in Isaiah 55 be ours.   Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. (6) AMEN.

Go and Bless

Go and Bless

(Genesis 12:1-4) J G White

Sun, March 16, 2014, Windsor UBC

“May the Lord bless you, and make you a blessing!” Isn’t that what the late pastor Perry F. Rockwood said at the end of his radio program each week?  Go and bless.  In other words, go and wish good upon others, do good to them.  

How do we “go and bless” when told to do so?  When ordered?  This is what we just heard about, what Joan read in Genesis 12.  A ancient Near Eastern senior named Abram, and his wife, Sarai, are to go south - move to a new place, and be a source of blessing for others.  

The prompting to move on and make change comes in many ways.  We turn the pages to a new chapter in life out of many a circumstance: some seem positive, some seem negative.  Hey, you have two pastoral people on their way out.  I told you I am going to go.  I looked into the opportunity for this move.  Considered it.  Looked for divine confirmation amid the agreement of people.  But, like Abe and Sarai, Sharon and I don’t know “where we are going.”  We know it’s Digby, but we don’t really know what we are getting into.  And Digby Baptist does not know what they are getting with us.  We leave this in the Lord God’s amazing hands, with trust and faith, with hope and enthusiasm.  With God we think we can go and bless.  

Jeff Hosick, on the other hand chose to depart out of unresolved conflict.  He sets out on a new chapter here in Windsor, continuing his pastoral counselling and coaching outside of the church.  

Speaking of this, Perhaps I should take an aside here.  I committed to you at our annual meeting to keep you informed about the conflict and the process with the deacons and Jeff.  I had stopped his report about this from being printed in his annual report.  The deacons have now offered their closing report on this matter.  But I have not yet spoken of this.  

It would almost be easier to explain if what happened was a matter of some kind of moral failure on his part, which it was not.  Or if it was some kind of financial problem, which it was not.  Or if he had a conflict with me, or was overstepping his bounds here, but our relationship has remained very good, and I have valued his input over twelve years here.  

Mainly, I see that some decisions Jeff made about a ministry he was planning were considered unwise and troubled some of the deacons, 1 year ago. Their relationships deteriorated from there.  Communication broke down, they did not understand one another, did not give and receive what each seemed to need from the other.  Trust was lost, and interaction got more and more limited.

So, out of this, what God has for Jeff Hosick and what God has for Windsor Baptist is simply now diverging, branching out from one another. I find Jeff is pretty much at peace about this new journey.  I pray that he will be completely blessed by the God who guides.  And we be blessed too.  We get to finalize our closure with him by our farewell event for Jeff this coming Saturday evening.  

Go and bless.  It is about offering the blessing of God.

Do you ever go around and bless things, silently or otherwise?  Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book, An Altar in the World, has a final chapter about giving blessings, something we all can do.  

Start throwing blessings around and chances are you will start noticing all kinds of things you never noticed before.  Did you ever notice the white and black striped stockings on the stick legs of that blessed mosquito before? Did you ever notice the tiny purple flowers on the blessed moss?  One liability of pronouncing blessings out of doors is that it gets hard to walk on things.  Once you become aware of the life in them, the kinship can really slow you down.

The same is true of other people.  The next time you are at the airport, try blessing the people sitting at the departure gate with you.  Every one of them is dealing with something significant.  (pp.201-2)

I thought of this the other day when I was stalled at the Masstown Market near Truro.  I’d stopped there to eat, and getting back into my car the key broke in half.  So I had an extra hour and twenty minutes to spend there, as Sharon drove over to meet me with a spare key.  

As I watched people at the Market, I remembered that I could be praying, praying a blessing over each stranger.  I soon got distracted and stopped blessing them. But what a good spiritual practice to develop!

The Abram and Sarai story is about blessing, and also about going.  “Go,” Abe is told.  And he goes.  His family of origin - father and clan, had started a pilgrimage from their homeland to Canaan, but half-way they stopped and settled in Haran.  Now, Abram is called on to go all the way, finish what had begun.  And he goes.  

I have been amazed in the past, chatting with various people who sensed a call from God to go one place, and ended up going somewhere else!  Years ago Hedley and Mary Hopkins prepared for missionary service in India.   They’d had training in the Telugu language, had their bags all packed.   But the way ended up being blocked.  Instead, they went to South America, to Bolivia, and served there as Baptist missionaries.  Their willingness took them on a journey, but to an unexpected mission field.

Abram and Sarai and family also headed off, not knowing where God was actually going to lead them.  Genesis 12 is a pivotal point in the book of Genesis.  Chapters 1-11 are about humanity; chapters 12-50 about Israel, the Hebrews, within the human story.  So here, 12:1-4 is the beginning of a special people, the Chosen People, the Jews.  And their beginning is all about being a blessing to the rest of the peoples of earth.  

What are our lessons from Abram and Sarai?

Is this inspiration for our obedience to the Lord’s will?  

Is it a moral lesson: do as they did?

Is it a matter of faith: have faith like them; do not fear?

Is it about God: know God as they did, and respond?

It can be all of the above.

Abram and Sarai were obedient to the call.  Obedient to the journey.  Surprised by the journey. They failed along the journey. Stayed on the journey. Read Genesis 12 through 25 again.

Going and blessing is all about making a difference in the world.  Being a blessing of God.  Having other peoples blessed.  

A few years ago, Reggie McNeal challenged Atlantic Baptists to become known as the blessing people!  And notice there is a whole nation of people arising among us - the younger generations, pagan people, really, who could meet the Lord Jesus.  We don’t have to go very far to be on the mission field. Our present Vision will get us to focus upon this mission field in which we are already deployed.

I had a very pleasant and inspiring visit with the Women’s Missionary Society the other day.  I notice we still tend to talk about our Baptist missionaries.  But Canadian Baptist Ministries does not call them that now.  Have you noticed?  They are now called our Global Field Staff.  I think I know why.  Because we are just as much the missionaries as they are, those who go to some other country.  We are the Local Field Staff of Canadian Baptists, & around the world are stationed our Global Field Staff.  We are to be on mission here at home, deployed by the Holy Spirit here.  There are plenty of outsiders to the Faith right here.  

The Biblical tradition the blessing, rooted in Abraham, is about ‘outsiders’ favoured by God, included, brought in. Draw the circle wide, as retired Anglican Bishop Gordon Light put it in one song.  

If we scan the references in the New Testament to Abraham answering this call, we are wisely instructed.

Dr. Luke, author of the Gospel of Luke and of the Acts of the Apostles, seems to highlight best how the story of Abraham and Sarah shows up God’s will to bless those who seem on the outs.  As Walter Brueggemann puts it, ‘unqualified outsiders’ are blessed.  

In Luke 1, Mary sings when she is told of the child she will bear, the Messiah.  She sings of how the poor will have plenty while the rich will be sent away empty, the powerful taken from their thrones and the lowly lifted up.  Mary speaks of many such biblical promises “to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”  

In Luke 13, a crippled, downcast woman is healed on the Sabbath, and called by Jesus, “a daughter of Abraham.”

In Luke 16 Jesus tells the parable of a rich man, and a poor man, who both die.  In the afterlife it is the poor man, Lazarus, who rests at the side of Father Abraham, while the unnamed rich guy fries in flames.  

In Luke 19 is the famous story of Zaccheus, who gets included in Jesus’ tour of visits and blessings.  Jesus exclaimed “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.”

And in Acts 3, Luke records a sermon by Peter to Jews in the Jerusalem temple.  Peter preaches Jesus, and quotes from Genesis 12, as he speaks of “the covenant God gave to your ancestors, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your descendants all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”

The theme is strong: God blesses and includes the outcast, the poor, the forgotten, the weak.  The “unqualified outsiders.”  

We could also look at how Paul quotes Genesis in Galatians 3:8, saying “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.’”  Or at the grand litany of Old Testament heroes listed in Hebrews 11, inducing Abraham and Sara.  “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.”

That is so often the way.  We set out to follow God’s lead, not knowing what really will be next.  Trusting the Lord.  

Do the times demand this again?  How many people from our Town, who have never been Christians, have we been bringing into fellowship with Jesus?  That many, eh?  Well, if something is going to happen, it will be a new thing for us, a new way of going into our own neighbourhoods!  We must ready ourselves to go in new ways. A new obedience is required.

In the hardest of times, and in the delightful times, we can find God saying to us, “Go; go and bless in a new place.”  How Sarai and Abram did this, how we do this, is part of the bigger picture.  Part of our relationship with our Lord, our walk with Him.  In our own county, we are hearing the call of the Lord to go into places right here, among those the Lord loves: everyone.  We are part of the big mission!

In the big Canadian study on young adults and the church, 2 years ago, many folk across our nation were interviewed. Ministry successes were documented, amid the failures.  Here are three examples:

“One thing that I love about our church is that we have homeless people attend, and we have doctors and lawyers attend. It’s just like a vast conglomeration of people. There’s not only certain types of people that come to this church … It’s just this mixture of the absolute poor and the wealthy. But it works and people love each other.” Roy

“Some of those ladies in that back row … pray for me every single day … there's a genuine investment. The two old ladies that ran the church library that I would go hang out with every Sunday and who would always ask how I was doing just loved me like a grandson.” Barry

“Like I saw my mom every day, I’d come down and she’d be on the couch sitting in the morning,reading her Bible in the quiet. Or like, I’d always see her flipping through her Bible when she had free time from not having to run around and do stuff. So she was very open to talking about it, and she talked to me about it a lot. ” Anna

This will be our experience in Windsor and area when we answer the call to go and bless those of our own county.  Our present Vision takes us to a place of having our sights on who we want to make into disciples of Jesus: younger people, the upcoming generations.  And also, we want to make disciples of all ages who sense and support this mission to younger people: men, women, youth and children.  

Go and make disciples of all nations, says Jesus. What’s written in Matthew 28, in Greek, could also be translated, As you are going, make disciples of all nations.  

Go and bless.  Our Lord has used us to do this.  There is much more going and blessing to be done.  It is a new day and age for this mission.  Let us discover what it means to go.  And let us discover what it means to bless, in Jesus’ name.  AMEN.