Today was an awesome day at Central Assembly of God. As I arrived at the church this morning I met Pastor at the door. We let ourselves in and took a few minutes to settle in and get ready for an awesome day of worship. It was tough to some extent to last the entire day after "springing forward" and losing a precious hour of sleep today. However, somehow I found the strength to make it.
Pastor Gaylen Clontch, missions director for the North Texas District of the Assemblies of God, came and ministered the word to us today. He shared with us about the parable of the talents. I guess I had never realized how much money one talent could have been. "Scholars say it could have been as much as one years wages," he told us. He spoke about:
1. The Principle of Expectation - In other words, that we need to take what God gives us and do something with it. Realize that when God blesses us and entrusts us with something special, He expects us to do something productive with it - and not bury it in the sand.
2. The Principle of Distribution - "God can stretch your 90% and bless you more with it than you could ever get from 100% of your wages." All of the money that you and I are entrusted with truly belongs to God - he has simply allowed us to be stewards of His money. God wants us to be like the man in the parable who through his servants he sowed his money in order to reap in places that he could not personally go and sow. Let me challenge you to give to missions and "store up for yourself treasures in heaven!"
3. The Principle of Obedience - One bone head took the talent he was given and burried it in the sand. He could have hoped on his chariot and headed down to the nearest bank and drawn interest on that one years worth of wages. Instead, he burried it in the sand. Can you imagine burrying a large some of money in the ground. How crazy! Actually what this man was saying was, "Jesus, I'm not going to play your game." Poor guy...he missed out and scripture says "so they threw the evil one out".
God has blessed you. You may think you need more, but that's simply because the more we have the more we think we need. In all actuality, God has given us much and with much comes great responsibility. What will you do for missions this year? What will you do to advance the kingdom of God? I will blog a little more this week, but please keep our teens at Ignition Student Ministries in prayer as we travel to Monterrey, Mexico for our Spring Break Missions Trip. I'll post more details later. As always, this is my low down and until next time please let me encourage you to keep pressing in for more of Jesus. Love ya!