Pray, Meet People, Tell Them About Christ

I just heard a sermon today from a man who is passionate about missions. He has been in Albania since the country rid itself of communist rule and has been faithfully and prayerfully spreading the gospel of the grace of God. He preached from John 4 encouraging us as believers to be passionate about missions. John 4 is a passage that is used a lot in missions conferences across America. It is the story of the meeting that Christ had with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. The portion we all know so well is at the close of that account when Christ tells his disciples that "the fields are white for harvest" (vs. 35) indicating that the time was upon them that they should be fervently sharing the gospel. However, this was not the focus of the sermon we heard today. The speaker chose to focus on vs.31-34. When Christ, passing through Samaria with his disciples, chose to sit and rest by Jacob's well his disciples went down into the city to buy food. While they were gone, Christ had his encounter with the Samaritan woman. It was just as the disciples were returning that Christ had ended his conversation with the woman and she went back to the city. The disciples then brought the food that they had purchased to Christ and entreated him to eat. At that point Christ told them that he had food that they did not know of and that food was "to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work." The main point of the message today was focussed on this phrase. Is our passion to do the will of God? Is our passion to accomplish his work? This was the attitude of Christ. He was so passionate about doing the will of his father that he considered it to be his food. The preacher today encouraged us to build that passion within us so that we are not dutifully driven into missions, but rather passionately driven into missions.

This is not at all to imply that everyone is called into foreign missions. The speaker defined missions as "doing globally what all Christians should be doing locally." Simply put, it is praying, meeting people, and telling them about Christ (the title of the post). May we all have the same passion that Christ had in doing the will of the father.