What Matters Most
If you have been reading this blog from week to week, you have probably detected a little repetition, a little recurrence, a little reiteration of a fundamental truth: Any endeavor that you undertake in your Christian walk depends entirely on your having a dynamic, personal, and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Each week’s message has hinged on this foundation. As the weeks of the summer have gone by and as messages and ideas have accumulated in this blog, those messages have continued to tie back to Jesus and our relationships with Him. For our church, last week represented a culmination of sorts. With the return of the Ghana mission team, we were able to see the result of something we had long prayed for and expected. The team of missionaries that went to Ghana had spent hours, weeks, and even months praying and preparing for the trip. Likewise, those of us at Mountain East who did not go to Ghana had invested much time into the team’s preparation. Sunday’s service, which included a report from three of the missionaries, represented a culmination and a product of this summer’s labor. And, it should be no big surprise that their testimonies echoed the same theme that this summer’s sermons have been speaking all along: the single most important thing in this life is having a real relationship with Jesus.
Before Kathy, Courtney, and Heather spoke about their most recent West African experience, Nancy read from Matthew 10:27-39, a passage in which Jesus instructs his followers on how serve Him in the world. This passage gives us an idea of what we can expect in our own relationships with Jesus today.
A Relationship with Jesus: What is it like?
It involves communication
The scripture gives many indications that the Lord speaks to those people who belong to Him. Before sending his disciples out to serve people, Jesus said to them, “What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops” (Matthew 10:27). We can expect Jesus to tell us things too. Moreover, we can expect for Him to tell us things that are meant for us individually. When someone whispers in your ear, he or she is sharing something with you that no one else is hearing. Likewise, Jesus has specific things to share with us as individuals, things to whisper into our ears. A relationship with Jesus is one involving communication.
It is life-preserving
Matthew 10:28 indicates that Jesus saves us from the destruction of our soul. We should therefore hold our relationship with Him in high regard and cherish it as much as we cling to our lives themselves. He brings life to our soul and rescues us from certain destruction.
It means you are cared for and regarded as important
From some of Jesus’ words, we understand that in His time, sparrows were not worth very much to men. In fact, in the marketplace, a person could buy two sparrows for a cent. “And yet,” Jesus said about these sparrows, “not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (10:29). Sparrows are so numerous and worthless to men that they are worth a half of a cent, but God values each one of them. He is so concerned about them that if something happens to alter their life, He is aware of it and cares. Jesus uses this example to make the point that our Heavenly Father cares even more about us and will protect us. “Therefore, do not fear,” Jesus reassured his followers, “you are of more value than many sparrows” (10:31).
It is a relationship with One who knows you better than you know yourself
Not only does God protect and care for us; He knows us intimately. In verse 30, Jesus says to his followers that in contrast to the sparrows that are sold for half a cent, “the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” In other words, if God pays enough attention to us to know how many hairs are on our head at any given moment, He certainly knows what is going on in our lives and is looking out for our well being. How lucky are we to have a relationship in which we are so highly regarded!
It requires things of us
A relationship with Jesus cannot be taken lightly. Jesus does require things of us if we follow Him. Jesus explains, “Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven” (10:32-33). In order for Jesus to claim us as His own before God, we must be willing to claim Him as our Lord before people. Our relationship with Him cannot be a secret that we keep from others. We must be willing to openly express how we feel about the Lord. If we are ashamed to acknowledge that we know Him, He will not acknowledge that He knows us when we are brought before God in judgment.
It divides people
In verse 34, Jesus states, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” This statement can be hard to reconcile in our minds, since so many other passages in scripture talk about Jesus bringing peace. The truth is that Jesus brings peace and division. Before we are in a relationship with Jesus, we are divided from God and belong to the world. Once we give our lives to Jesus, we have peace with our Heavenly Father and are no longer separated from Him by sin. This means that we shift our allegiance from the world and its systems to God and His kingdom. Our hearts change, our values shift, and everything is different because we have a new owner to whom we are devoted. This upsets family members sometimes, especially if they are not devoted to God themselves. So within a household of people who love one another, you could have two very different allegiances represented – one to the world and one to God. This is a type of division. Jesus doesn’t want us to be unaware of this. When we have a relationship with Him, it sometimes separates us from other people because we no longer have some fundamental things in common.
We must value it above all other relationships
Jesus goes on to explain that if we truly desire to have a relationship with Him, we cannot be afraid of the division that this relationship may cause. Ultimately, we must trust Him and know that He loves us enough to work out all of those things that concern us, even family relationships. If we would follow Him, we have to love Him and be devoted to him even more than we are to our own family members: “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me” (10:37). In her message, Nancy said that Jesus was trying to make a point about the devotion that we should have for Him. We all understand being devoted to our family members. For the most part, they are the people we hold dearest. In this passage, Jesus is saying that we should love Him even more than this.
It requires us to pick up our own cross
Having a relationship with Jesus will cause us to suffer sometimes, but it is not without reward. Jesus explained to his disciples, “He who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me” (10:38). Just as Jesus suffered in doing His Father’s will, we will sometimes be required to suffer in order to do what is right. But Jesus Himself did not suffer without purpose. His death on the cross brought all of us eternal life, and He was resurrected after He died in obedience to God’s will. Likewise, we will experience new life after our suffering, and it will bring good to other people. At the end of this passage, Jesus promises new life to those who lay down their lives to follow Him: “He who has found his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake shall find it” (10:39). Jesus’ resurrected life is a promise to us that when we suffer in order to follow Him, the suffering will not last forever, and it will be followed by renewed hope and life.
Ghana Team: Fruit from a Real Relationship with Jesus
As she introduced the Ghana missionaries on Sunday, Nancy returned once again to Matthew 10:27, in which Jesus tells his disciples to shout and “proclaim on the housetops” what they “heard whispered in secret.” Each one of the team members has a personal relationship with Jesus, and for each of them, the desire to go to Ghana started with God whispering in their ears. So what ended as a very visible, widely followed mission trip started out as private word whispered in their hearts individually by God. Along with the desire to go to Ghana, God also gave each person an idea of what they had to offer to the people in Ghana. Their “offerings” in Ghana were as unique and as individual as their relationships with their God. But each was needful and vital to the team’s work as a whole.
Courtney: God Gives Us Our Own Identities
Courtney’s testimony on Sunday began with an explanation of how she had been approaching the trip to Ghana prior to leaving. She explained to us that when she went to Ghana a year ago, she was one of three teenagers on a team mostly made up of adults. On this trip, however, God made sure that she saw herself not as a teenager, but as an adult. For some time before the trip, Courtney said, God had been teaching her about having her own walk with Him. She was a little nervous about this trip because she would be the only younger person going, and, in her own words, she couldn’t “go there and be a teenager.” She went on to explain some of her prior apprehensions: “John and Rich and Kathy had been walking with the Lord for much longer than I had, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to measure up.” On this trip, God made Courtney understand that she has a special relationship with Him, one that is as valuable as the ones He has with those adults she looks up to. God encouraged Courtney to recognize that she hears from Him, and He also showed her that her individual relationship with Him benefits others: “When it came time to pray, [God] was giving me his words, the things he wanted me to pray. . . I didn’t have to worry about what Ruth needed because [God] knew what she needed and he knew what I needed to say.” Courtney came back to the U.S. with a number of things, but perhaps the most important is the knowledge that God does not see her as just a teenager. As she concluded her testimony, she explained that she came away from the trip understanding this: “I shouldn’t feel like my walk with God should look like Heather’s or Kathy’s or Rich’s because it’s not theirs; it’s mine and God’s and it’s good for it to be that way.”
Kathy: God Changed my Life
If Courtney’s testimony spoke of God’s ability to define a relationship with Him, Kathy’s testimony spoke of His power to redefine a relationship with Him. On Sunday morning, Kathy testified of the great work that God did in her leading up to the Ghana trip. She explained that before she began preparing for Ghana, she was a Christian, but she didn’t have a close, personal walk with the Lord like she does now. In order to draw her closer to Him and show her the big plans he had for her, God had to take her through a “wilderness” of sorts by allowing her to suffer some losses, such as the loss of her job. While it may have looked like a horrible situation at the time, losing her job was pivotal in Kathy’s relationship with God. In dealing with her fearful situation, she was forced to relate to Him without the security of her own self-sufficiency to fall back on. “To prepare me for the good things that God was about to do in my life, I had to leave behind the familiar, the comfort of past successes, and bag of tricks that got me through anything. I had to surrender everything. I surrendered my life,” Kathy told us. As an encouragement to us, she concluded by saying, “My God is faithful. He will do what he says He will do. And when he wants to take you into the wilderness to get the Egypt out of your heart, surrender and let Him. You will never regret it.”
Heather: Passionate Devotion to Christ
As Heather prepared for the Ghana trip, she began asking the Lord what she was to do in Ghana. Where would she serve? Whom would she serve? What would her service be? As she continued asking these questions, Rich told her that one of the focuses of their ministry to the pastors in Ghana was defining discipleship – explaining what it means to follow Christ. Taking this topic into consideration, Heather began to search and ask the Lord to speak to her about what discipleship meant, all the while asking Him for direction on what to “do” while in Ghana. One day, while reading a daily devotional, God whispered into her ear: “Heather, it’s not what you do; it’s who you are. It’s who you are in Christ. It’s not what you do for Him”
These whispered words became the basis of what Heather proclaimed to the Ghanaian pastors and what she testified to us. She explained to us that following God lies not in our actions but in our heart’s devotion. If we are devoted to the person of Jesus, she explained, the actions and the service of a disciple will naturally follow. Our “doings” will be an overflow of our love and passionate devotion to Jesus. “To me,” Heather said, “THAT is what makes a disciple – a REAL relationship with Christ, and He wants that for each of his children. No matter where you are, He wants to speak to you; He wants to pour His life into you.”
Conclusion: Is It Worth It?
Jesus’ explanation of discipleship in Matthew 10:27-37 contains some difficult statements: following Jesus will bring us trouble with those around us, following Jesus will bring suffering, and following Jesus means we have to surrender all that is dearest to us. These promises can be hard to accept. Giving our lives to Christ will cost us something, and we shouldn’t be naive about that. But for anyone who has ever looked into Jesus’ eyes and seen His love there, for anyone who has experienced the thrill of hearing God’s voice call his or her name, the rewards far outweigh the costs. Walking with Jesus Christ and having a REAL relationship with Him changes a person and works wonders in his life that are inexplicable to those looking on. We saw a little of the “wonder” that God works in the returning Ghana team. In her statement below, Nancy describes that inexplicable touch of Christ that she saw on the faces of Courtney, Heather, Kathy, and Rich when they arrived home from West Africa:
Let’s talk about how exciting and glamorous a mission trip to Ghana is – 10 hour trips in a hot crowded truck on slow roads with many delays and no fast food along the way. Food and water that might make you sick. Poverty that will break your heart to see. Losing sleep. Working hard. Serving many people with few resources. Little privacy. Sacrificing pleasure, vacation time, money, and recreation to do it. But this team has this reality: God’s rewards are better than earthly pleasures. Experiencing His power and His presence and watching Him in real, tangible ways. That is a great reward!
How else can someone spend thousands of dollars and two weeks time to be hot, sick, uncomfortable, tired, and used, and then come home with a glow on their faces, excitement in their hearts, a strong peace, increased faith, a sense of wonder, and great satisfaction in what they have done?
Scriptures Referenced in the Sermon and Testimonies
Matthew 10: 27-39
Psalm 32:7-8
Habakkuk 3:17-18
John 21:16
John 12:24
If you have been reading this blog from week to week, you have probably detected a little repetition, a little recurrence, a little reiteration of a fundamental truth: Any endeavor that you undertake in your Christian walk depends entirely on your having a dynamic, personal, and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Each week’s message has hinged on this foundation. As the weeks of the summer have gone by and as messages and ideas have accumulated in this blog, those messages have continued to tie back to Jesus and our relationships with Him. For our church, last week represented a culmination of sorts. With the return of the Ghana mission team, we were able to see the result of something we had long prayed for and expected. The team of missionaries that went to Ghana had spent hours, weeks, and even months praying and preparing for the trip. Likewise, those of us at Mountain East who did not go to Ghana had invested much time into the team’s preparation. Sunday’s service, which included a report from three of the missionaries, represented a culmination and a product of this summer’s labor. And, it should be no big surprise that their testimonies echoed the same theme that this summer’s sermons have been speaking all along: the single most important thing in this life is having a real relationship with Jesus.
Before Kathy, Courtney, and Heather spoke about their most recent West African experience, Nancy read from Matthew 10:27-39, a passage in which Jesus instructs his followers on how serve Him in the world. This passage gives us an idea of what we can expect in our own relationships with Jesus today.
A Relationship with Jesus: What is it like?
It involves communication
The scripture gives many indications that the Lord speaks to those people who belong to Him. Before sending his disciples out to serve people, Jesus said to them, “What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops” (Matthew 10:27). We can expect Jesus to tell us things too. Moreover, we can expect for Him to tell us things that are meant for us individually. When someone whispers in your ear, he or she is sharing something with you that no one else is hearing. Likewise, Jesus has specific things to share with us as individuals, things to whisper into our ears. A relationship with Jesus is one involving communication.
It is life-preserving
Matthew 10:28 indicates that Jesus saves us from the destruction of our soul. We should therefore hold our relationship with Him in high regard and cherish it as much as we cling to our lives themselves. He brings life to our soul and rescues us from certain destruction.
It means you are cared for and regarded as important
From some of Jesus’ words, we understand that in His time, sparrows were not worth very much to men. In fact, in the marketplace, a person could buy two sparrows for a cent. “And yet,” Jesus said about these sparrows, “not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (10:29). Sparrows are so numerous and worthless to men that they are worth a half of a cent, but God values each one of them. He is so concerned about them that if something happens to alter their life, He is aware of it and cares. Jesus uses this example to make the point that our Heavenly Father cares even more about us and will protect us. “Therefore, do not fear,” Jesus reassured his followers, “you are of more value than many sparrows” (10:31).
It is a relationship with One who knows you better than you know yourself
Not only does God protect and care for us; He knows us intimately. In verse 30, Jesus says to his followers that in contrast to the sparrows that are sold for half a cent, “the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” In other words, if God pays enough attention to us to know how many hairs are on our head at any given moment, He certainly knows what is going on in our lives and is looking out for our well being. How lucky are we to have a relationship in which we are so highly regarded!
It requires things of us
A relationship with Jesus cannot be taken lightly. Jesus does require things of us if we follow Him. Jesus explains, “Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven” (10:32-33). In order for Jesus to claim us as His own before God, we must be willing to claim Him as our Lord before people. Our relationship with Him cannot be a secret that we keep from others. We must be willing to openly express how we feel about the Lord. If we are ashamed to acknowledge that we know Him, He will not acknowledge that He knows us when we are brought before God in judgment.
It divides people
In verse 34, Jesus states, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” This statement can be hard to reconcile in our minds, since so many other passages in scripture talk about Jesus bringing peace. The truth is that Jesus brings peace and division. Before we are in a relationship with Jesus, we are divided from God and belong to the world. Once we give our lives to Jesus, we have peace with our Heavenly Father and are no longer separated from Him by sin. This means that we shift our allegiance from the world and its systems to God and His kingdom. Our hearts change, our values shift, and everything is different because we have a new owner to whom we are devoted. This upsets family members sometimes, especially if they are not devoted to God themselves. So within a household of people who love one another, you could have two very different allegiances represented – one to the world and one to God. This is a type of division. Jesus doesn’t want us to be unaware of this. When we have a relationship with Him, it sometimes separates us from other people because we no longer have some fundamental things in common.
We must value it above all other relationships
Jesus goes on to explain that if we truly desire to have a relationship with Him, we cannot be afraid of the division that this relationship may cause. Ultimately, we must trust Him and know that He loves us enough to work out all of those things that concern us, even family relationships. If we would follow Him, we have to love Him and be devoted to him even more than we are to our own family members: “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me” (10:37). In her message, Nancy said that Jesus was trying to make a point about the devotion that we should have for Him. We all understand being devoted to our family members. For the most part, they are the people we hold dearest. In this passage, Jesus is saying that we should love Him even more than this.
It requires us to pick up our own cross
Having a relationship with Jesus will cause us to suffer sometimes, but it is not without reward. Jesus explained to his disciples, “He who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me” (10:38). Just as Jesus suffered in doing His Father’s will, we will sometimes be required to suffer in order to do what is right. But Jesus Himself did not suffer without purpose. His death on the cross brought all of us eternal life, and He was resurrected after He died in obedience to God’s will. Likewise, we will experience new life after our suffering, and it will bring good to other people. At the end of this passage, Jesus promises new life to those who lay down their lives to follow Him: “He who has found his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake shall find it” (10:39). Jesus’ resurrected life is a promise to us that when we suffer in order to follow Him, the suffering will not last forever, and it will be followed by renewed hope and life.
Ghana Team: Fruit from a Real Relationship with Jesus
As she introduced the Ghana missionaries on Sunday, Nancy returned once again to Matthew 10:27, in which Jesus tells his disciples to shout and “proclaim on the housetops” what they “heard whispered in secret.” Each one of the team members has a personal relationship with Jesus, and for each of them, the desire to go to Ghana started with God whispering in their ears. So what ended as a very visible, widely followed mission trip started out as private word whispered in their hearts individually by God. Along with the desire to go to Ghana, God also gave each person an idea of what they had to offer to the people in Ghana. Their “offerings” in Ghana were as unique and as individual as their relationships with their God. But each was needful and vital to the team’s work as a whole.
Courtney: God Gives Us Our Own Identities
Courtney’s testimony on Sunday began with an explanation of how she had been approaching the trip to Ghana prior to leaving. She explained to us that when she went to Ghana a year ago, she was one of three teenagers on a team mostly made up of adults. On this trip, however, God made sure that she saw herself not as a teenager, but as an adult. For some time before the trip, Courtney said, God had been teaching her about having her own walk with Him. She was a little nervous about this trip because she would be the only younger person going, and, in her own words, she couldn’t “go there and be a teenager.” She went on to explain some of her prior apprehensions: “John and Rich and Kathy had been walking with the Lord for much longer than I had, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to measure up.” On this trip, God made Courtney understand that she has a special relationship with Him, one that is as valuable as the ones He has with those adults she looks up to. God encouraged Courtney to recognize that she hears from Him, and He also showed her that her individual relationship with Him benefits others: “When it came time to pray, [God] was giving me his words, the things he wanted me to pray. . . I didn’t have to worry about what Ruth needed because [God] knew what she needed and he knew what I needed to say.” Courtney came back to the U.S. with a number of things, but perhaps the most important is the knowledge that God does not see her as just a teenager. As she concluded her testimony, she explained that she came away from the trip understanding this: “I shouldn’t feel like my walk with God should look like Heather’s or Kathy’s or Rich’s because it’s not theirs; it’s mine and God’s and it’s good for it to be that way.”
Kathy: God Changed my Life
If Courtney’s testimony spoke of God’s ability to define a relationship with Him, Kathy’s testimony spoke of His power to redefine a relationship with Him. On Sunday morning, Kathy testified of the great work that God did in her leading up to the Ghana trip. She explained that before she began preparing for Ghana, she was a Christian, but she didn’t have a close, personal walk with the Lord like she does now. In order to draw her closer to Him and show her the big plans he had for her, God had to take her through a “wilderness” of sorts by allowing her to suffer some losses, such as the loss of her job. While it may have looked like a horrible situation at the time, losing her job was pivotal in Kathy’s relationship with God. In dealing with her fearful situation, she was forced to relate to Him without the security of her own self-sufficiency to fall back on. “To prepare me for the good things that God was about to do in my life, I had to leave behind the familiar, the comfort of past successes, and bag of tricks that got me through anything. I had to surrender everything. I surrendered my life,” Kathy told us. As an encouragement to us, she concluded by saying, “My God is faithful. He will do what he says He will do. And when he wants to take you into the wilderness to get the Egypt out of your heart, surrender and let Him. You will never regret it.”
Heather: Passionate Devotion to Christ
As Heather prepared for the Ghana trip, she began asking the Lord what she was to do in Ghana. Where would she serve? Whom would she serve? What would her service be? As she continued asking these questions, Rich told her that one of the focuses of their ministry to the pastors in Ghana was defining discipleship – explaining what it means to follow Christ. Taking this topic into consideration, Heather began to search and ask the Lord to speak to her about what discipleship meant, all the while asking Him for direction on what to “do” while in Ghana. One day, while reading a daily devotional, God whispered into her ear: “Heather, it’s not what you do; it’s who you are. It’s who you are in Christ. It’s not what you do for Him”
These whispered words became the basis of what Heather proclaimed to the Ghanaian pastors and what she testified to us. She explained to us that following God lies not in our actions but in our heart’s devotion. If we are devoted to the person of Jesus, she explained, the actions and the service of a disciple will naturally follow. Our “doings” will be an overflow of our love and passionate devotion to Jesus. “To me,” Heather said, “THAT is what makes a disciple – a REAL relationship with Christ, and He wants that for each of his children. No matter where you are, He wants to speak to you; He wants to pour His life into you.”
Conclusion: Is It Worth It?
Jesus’ explanation of discipleship in Matthew 10:27-37 contains some difficult statements: following Jesus will bring us trouble with those around us, following Jesus will bring suffering, and following Jesus means we have to surrender all that is dearest to us. These promises can be hard to accept. Giving our lives to Christ will cost us something, and we shouldn’t be naive about that. But for anyone who has ever looked into Jesus’ eyes and seen His love there, for anyone who has experienced the thrill of hearing God’s voice call his or her name, the rewards far outweigh the costs. Walking with Jesus Christ and having a REAL relationship with Him changes a person and works wonders in his life that are inexplicable to those looking on. We saw a little of the “wonder” that God works in the returning Ghana team. In her statement below, Nancy describes that inexplicable touch of Christ that she saw on the faces of Courtney, Heather, Kathy, and Rich when they arrived home from West Africa:
Let’s talk about how exciting and glamorous a mission trip to Ghana is – 10 hour trips in a hot crowded truck on slow roads with many delays and no fast food along the way. Food and water that might make you sick. Poverty that will break your heart to see. Losing sleep. Working hard. Serving many people with few resources. Little privacy. Sacrificing pleasure, vacation time, money, and recreation to do it. But this team has this reality: God’s rewards are better than earthly pleasures. Experiencing His power and His presence and watching Him in real, tangible ways. That is a great reward!
How else can someone spend thousands of dollars and two weeks time to be hot, sick, uncomfortable, tired, and used, and then come home with a glow on their faces, excitement in their hearts, a strong peace, increased faith, a sense of wonder, and great satisfaction in what they have done?
Scriptures Referenced in the Sermon and Testimonies
Matthew 10: 27-39
Psalm 32:7-8
Habakkuk 3:17-18
John 21:16
John 12:24
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