Psalms 96:3 tells us to "Declare 📣 his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples," and God has been shaping our lives throughout the years, where our testimony speaks about the awesomeness of God so that hopefully, many will behold His glory and come to know the Father's love.
We don't know the full picture, but we're giving God our 'YES!' so we are packing up and selling everything, as we ready ourselves to say bye 👋 to the place we've called home for the past 30+ years.
We also hope to hear about your stories as in Romans 1:11-12
"I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong — that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith."
Please fill out the form below to stay connected and let's encourage one another to greater faith! 😍
WE WERE SO BLESSED TO BE SENT OUT DURING THE START OF PASSION WEEK!!!
Thank you Pastor Ray for the timely word about the way to approach this week and why reflection matters - we love how you also read the passage from Joshua in correlation to our commission!
In the video, Jay calls "everyone a missionary," and we wanted to qualify some of that with this statement: "Not Everyone Goes"
You may be asking “Does Jesus command every single believer to be a missionary to the nations with the gospel, with a focus on crossing cultures and reaching all the nations, which is the focus of the Great Commission (not just local evangelism)?”
The answer to that question from the Bible is clearly no, he doesn’t expect that or command that. And one evidence for that is that Romans 15, where Paul is recruiting people from Rome not to go with him to Spain but to support him as he goes to Spain. He knows that all those people he’s writing to in Rome — all those Christians where the gospel is already rooted — have jobs. They have networks of relationships. And so he’s not calling them, saying, “Hey now, all you serious Christians, everybody get on a boat and go with me to Spain.” He’s saying, “Support me as I go.”
So it’s clear from the New Testament that God does not expect every person to hear the Great Commission as a summons to cross a culture and be a missionary. We do think that 1 Peter 2:9 instructs all believers to declare the excellencies of Christ in their network of relationships: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
The New Testament does not teach that every believer should be a cross-cultural missionary, trying to penetrate unreached peoples as a frontier missionary. However, the Great Commission is to be loved and supported and advocated for by all who love what Jesus loves. God has mysteriously and wonderfully called us as his front line emissaries and we hope the burden of missions is lifted up continually at Living Way Community Church!
“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:7-9