God’s Grace Compels Church Planting

Main idea: God’s grace compels church planting.

Every church

Every Christian

1. Recognize God’s grace in planting your church.
2. Earnestly seek what’s next in church planting.
   
3. View what God is doing and rejoice.

• Automated Transcription
• 0:21
  Here's what I want to contend for today. We're in part two of a reset or refresh on our great commission. Great commission, we, we articulate it this way: we want to be a loving community, making disciples of Jesus Christ. So, we want to have a vibrant, Christ-centered relationship, and we want to make disciples. Last week we had Sean Cooper here, and he took us through a jet tour of the Old Testament and God's mission for the nations. We got some to the New Testament just to show us it's a, it's a foundational commitment. If you're newer with us, that helps you understand why we do what we do. Today, I want to see, I want you to see out of the book of Acts that it takes a specific form, and I might contend this is the big idea for this morning. God's grace compels church planting, and I want you to, if you look at your notes, I want to, want you to circle that word compel, and as I read these scriptures, you'll see what I mean. Stand with me for the reading of God's word. We're going to look at Acts 13, just a few verses in Acts 13, and then we're going to jump over to Acts 14, the end of this larger section of the Apostle Paul's first missionary journey. So, Acts 13, the end of Acts 14. Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manan, a lifelong friend of Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them, and after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off. So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to solution, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. Now, jump over to Acts 1424 the end of the missionary journey. Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia, and when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Italia. From there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. And when they arrived and gathered the church together. They declared all that God had done with them and how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. They remained no little time with the disciples. This is the word of the Lord. Oh, great Father, we thank you, we praise you. You are holy and high and exalted above all the earth, you love the world, in particular you love us, and we know it by sending Jesus. Lord Jesus, thank you for coming. Thank you for your ministry, your work, death, resurrection, the promise of new life, for sending us, for sending someone to us, we thank you. We thank you. You are the first missionary, so to speak, and you now send us into our city and our world. Father, we pray that you would help us understand these passages and get a reset and a refocus, just reignite our hearts with a passion for missions, discipleship. I do pray for the churches that we have planted in our city, and pray for Christ, our hope Bible Church. Some 2122 years ago, you helped us send out John Smith and Ken Johnson as elders in that congregation, and they are raising up men to train and send, and Zach Lipton just graduated a couple weeks ago, and is now able, qualified. What a joy it is to watch them. We pray for Christ, our righteousness, which with Christ our hope, we helped plant at a Slavic-speaking church, and I pray that you would help their leaders, help their congregation continue to be faithful. Pray for Alex, Pastor Alex, and his elders. We pray for Melap Bible Church, the Nepali-speaking church that meets here on Saturday nights, continue to help their leadership, B Mall, and the other elders who help lead, thank you for their growth and maturity. Pray for Trinity Bible Church in the valley, where Paul Funchess, Jeremy Kuhn, and Dan Ferguson are elders, and thank you for the new hire with Wagner Fioriani, who is their second pastor. Now they are growing and maturing and need the shepherding help. Pray that you would continue to encourage them. We pray for Community Bible Church. We sent a number of members with them at the beginning of the pandemic. Continue to encourage and strengthen them. They need a special intervention, as Angela has been dealing with esophageal cancer, which is really serious. It will take a miraculous intervention. There are things that are being done. I pray that they would work and be effective, so that they can follow you and faithfully lead your people. Now give us insight to your word. We want to see these truths in the book of Acts. We want to respond to the spirits leading, and we want to see his work as this section unfolds in front of us. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. I said, like, the main title is about God's grace and church planting, and I would contend for the big idea is something like this: God's grace compels church planting, and I want you to circle the word compel. I think maybe an example might help us. Does anybody know what kind of person a tuner is? A tuner is a, is a person obsessed with taking a car, like a Ford Focus or a Honda Civic, and upgrading them. I don't remember. I asked Travis Vihauser what his car was. It's a Subaru something. You could tell I'm not a tuner. They often start with the exhaust, with the air intake and the exhaust, like the first thing you want to do, if you want to upgrade your car for performance, is you want to make it sound loud and sound fast. May not be fast, but you might want to sound like that. And then, of course, you might upgrade from there to wheels, maybe even the suspension. And if you're not a tuner, I'm not a tuner. What is what does it look like? I was driving on the freeway to Woodcraft, where I do what boring men do, and buy wood and make crafts. I was driving out there, and I look in the rearview mirror, and I see these two cars in the rearview mirror. There's only three lanes, and they're using every lane, and they're just like popping ahead of the next car, they zoom up, they break hard, they get around you, and they break hard. I've seen them for years. You can hear these guys or gals three car lengths back because the mufflers are loud, they pass you. And I used to be really annoyed or scared or whatever, because I thought they were crazy, but really they're pretty good drivers. So I just say, stay in your lane, stay in your lane, let them get by, and in a few seconds they're by you. They rarely go over 10 miles, 10 miles over the speed limit. The goal is just to like beat each other. I want you to think of compel in church planting like a tuner is with his Honda Civic. I want you to think about how to maximize whatever God calls you, your performance in connecting with and participating in church planting. I might go so far as to make an acrostic out of my three point outline, my traditional three point outline, rev up your participation in church planting. If you had the same kind of passion that tuners have for their cars, for church planting, God will use you. Faith Bible Church is a community compelled by the grace of God to establish healthy church planting churches. Last week we saw a reference that Sean gave us to Luke 24 Luke 24 says this: Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations. That's Luke's version of the Great Commission. In Acts, we see how it happens. The Holy Spirit comes down upon the church on the day of Pentecost. The apostle Peter preaches the gospel. 3000 people get saved. There is a huge local church in Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem, local churches are planted in Samaria, in Judea, all the way to Antioch. Local churches send people out to evangelize those who come to Christ are gathered into local churches. Those local churches are equipped, they are strengthened, and they become church planting churches. That's what we looked at just a few minutes ago in the reading, every. Christian must play a part, most send, a few go, everybody prays, all participate, but there are two constant threats that choke out our compulsion for church planting, and you know, these - these are familiar enough problems and pleasures. What do I mean? All too often our problems eclipse Jesus, the thing, the heart becomes so big, Jesus is washed out, or Jesus is clouded over, and they become consuming fears, they become anxieties, they become relational conflict, they become bitterness. Pleasures can do the same thing, problems can do it, pleasures can do it. Good things that God gives us to enjoy become obsessions and distractions, and so we need God's grace to renew us, God's grace to rev us up for church planting. We're going to look at three ways this happens in these stories. We're going to pop back to Acts 11, we're going to recognize God's grace in planting your church. We're going to then look at the beginning of 13 to see the earnestness that the whole church had in seeking the next place to plant a church, and then we're going to look at the end of chapter 14, where they viewed what God was doing. Probably your best indicator of what God will do is what God has done, and so we're going to look at what has happened there, so let's take a look at this, let's take a look at these, these three, as we rev up our church's passion, as we reset it, revive it for church planting. Number one, recognize God's grace in planting your church. So on my paper Bible, it's just back a page at the end of chapter 11, we find this out, verse 19. Now, those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. If you're new to the Bible, this man, Stephen, was a servant in the church of Jerusalem. He was a particularly powerful preacher, who could ably teach Christ from the Old Testament. He got in a lot of trouble with the religious leaders, eventually went on trial, and was martyred. He was killed for proclaiming Christ, and the young man Saul, who was a Pharisee, was in charge of persecuting, killing, arresting Christians. So many had to scatter, and when they scattered, they did not stay in hiding. They kept speaking the word, the gospel, and as Jews they kept speaking to Jews, verse 20, but there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, on coming to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, the Greek-speaking idolaters of the city. Antioch was a massive city, third largest in the Roman Empire, behind Rome and Alexandria, multiracial, multiethnic, multi class, many, many different gods, they worshiped, and God did a work, the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord, there was preaching to them. What would that preaching have looked like? They would have preached something like this: you are rejecting the one and true God, and you are worshiping idols, and in that rejection, you're sinning against him, you're disobeying his moral laws, you are in sin. You are going to be judged for the crimes against God, for idolatry, and your disobedience. But there's good news: Jesus saves. He died to pay the penalty for your sin. He rose in victory. He will return to judge the living and the dead, you can only be restored to God through Jesus Christ. That's what we just highlighted in Luke. If you repent and believe, you can be restored to God. I mean, this is an extraordinary thing. And, friend, I would just say, if you're here and this is, you're new to Christianity, or you've not been in church a long time, and you're back, and you need to hear that message. If you're not a follower of Jesus, it's the same message for you. Your idolatry is sin, your disobedience to God is sin, that sin is going to be judged, but God has such grace, He is. Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for your sin, and if you turn to Him, you can be forgiven. This message you might think in a pluralistic city like Antioch would have been ignored, but the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord now. When Jerusalem heard about this, they were wondering what's going on. They were wanting to know if a faithful gospel was being preached. What was becoming of this little congregation? So they sent Barnabas, who was a great encourager and teacher. And verse 23 says, when he's, when he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purposes. So, circle that. That's where we get this whole idea. When we see God's grace in his work, there is a compulsion that others would experience God's grace. He rejoiced, he was glad, he exhorted them to remain faithful. Notice at the end of that little section, verse 26 something that's really significant for all of us. In Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians. This is when people were called Christians for the very first time, for them, initially it was, it was a taunt, it was a way of teasing, oh, you little Christs, and they were like, little Christs, I think we're going to take that and run with it. Do you think it's mocking to us? It's a great honor to be a Christ follower. Stop for a second, then, and think what the grace of God is like among us. I mean, I'm gonna look around, look around. We're, we were all sinners, we were looking to false saviors, headed for judgment. God sent gospel speakers to us. God opened our hearts to believe in Christ. We repented by God's grace, and Jesus' righteousness was credited to our account. God gathered us together. He gave us well-equipped pastors, teachers, leaders to establish us in the faith, to give us a family in the church. You could say it this way: because of the gospel, I have Jesus as my good shepherd. The heavenly Father has adopted me as His child, and the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, He lives in me and has given me a family of what grace I have. Present grace, I have future hope. Let's apply this a little bit. Let's think about this. Just like everybody else in Spokane, we experience hard relationships problems in the home, problems outside the home. Some have kids in class, tease them, some have learning disabilities, some have siblings who have sexually abused them, some can't get a girlfriend or boyfriend, much less a spouse, some can't even had some can't have kids, some end up divorced profoundly lonely with great hurts. All of us have loved ones who have died or will die. All are treated with contempt, contempt for the gospel at some time or another. Every one of us knows what interpersonal conflict is like. Everybody's got financial or political concerns. We all fail the Lord by sinning against Him. All of us hurt others we love, and that's going to be life until Jesus returns, isn't it? But we have the good shepherd who laid down his life. We have the Savior who has forgiven our sins and united us to the Father. We have the Holy Spirit, who gives life and transforms us, and He's given us an inspired, sufficient word to correct us, comfort us, instruct us, guide us. We all have a church family, and we can bear each other's burdens. You know, nobody has exactly my problems, nobody has exactly your problems, but we all have problems, and we all have each other to support each other, you know. The non-Christians in your neighborhood, the non-Christians in the West Plains, right, Ray? Even non-Christians in the West Plains, they have all those problems too, they. Have all of them, and they do not have the Good Shepherd. They do not have the help of the gospel. Just hours out of Madang Papua New Guinea, where we have Frank Ruscio supporting church planters, I there are villages who have all of those kinds of problems too, and they don't even have a church to go to if they thought it would help them, you know, one of the things I love about my local church, my problems and my pleasures can eclipse my sight of Jesus, but I come here and we refocus together, we rejoice in what God's doing, we bear each other's burdens out there. It feels like everything's constantly being eclipsed in here, Christ shines fully. Don't you want others to have that grace too? That's a simple way to put it. If you have that grace, don't you want them to have
  
  21:15
  it too?
  
  21:15
  God's grace revs us up for church planting number two, we need to see or recognize the grace of God among us. Number two, we need to earnestly seek the Lord for what's next. This is this is what's going on as this church grows and matures, they they feel this compulsion by the Great Commission by the Holy Spirit to figure out what's next. Verse one. Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Man Ian, a lifelong friend of Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. We don't know who the prophets were, who the teachers were. It just has this list. Prophets were people who would get revelation from God and preach it in a setting. Teachers would explain Old Testament scriptures, Jesus' gospel words, and they would apply it to people's lives. They had these, and these are an amazing assortment. Barnabas, who you might have known about earlier. Barnabas, his nickname is the Son of Encouragement. He's the one that came up to start equipping the church. He was the one that realized that he wasn't enough and went and got Saul, called Paul Simeon, who is called Niger. Some think because this word Niger means black, that maybe he was African, North African. Lucius of Cyrene was definitely North African, because Cyrene was modern-day Libya. Man, Ian was a lifelong friend of Herod the Tetrarch. Now that word is really interesting. It means he was childhood mates, he might have been educated, schooled in the household with he was almost certainly nobility. He was a lifelong friend, as the ESV translated of Herod the Tetrarch. Herod the Tetrarch, also called Herod Antipas, was the one who put John the Baptist to death. Boy, did they go different directions with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but he was certainly noble, probably from a high class, high social standing family, and Saul, who was the Pharisee, who was the persecutor of the church, who had been confronted on on the highway to Damascus and converted wonderful diverse collection of leaders. What were they doing? They were seeking the Lord, says, while they were worshiping, worshiping the Lord and fasting, the they is uncertain. Does it refer back to the five? Was this an elders meeting? The they could have been the congregational meeting, and these were the leaders of that congregation. But here's this key idea: they were worshiping the Lord, and they were fasting. The impetus for making disciples is wanting the nations to see and respond to the glory of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ, the very same things we sing together about that encourages us to be faithful tomorrow are the things that we want our neighbors to know, the things that we want the nations to know, while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting. Now, fasting is not commanded in the new. Testament, but you're going to see it three times in this section. It's a voluntary effort to earnestly seek the Lord. Sometimes it's earnestly seeking the Lord for forgiveness for sin, sometimes it's earnestly seeking the Lord for direction. That's what it looks like it is here. They're earnestly seeking the Lord. Jesus has already given a great commission there to go to the nations, and now they're wondering what's next. For a number of years, on my Prayer Mate app, I have a series of prayer requests. One of those is simply the question of the Lord, "Lord, what's next? And I had on that list PNG - is PNG next? Still have that on the list. We have sent the Rusios. There, we're sending a couple, we're sending another couple to another place in the world. We're like, we're asking that question, and they're earnestly seeking it with fasting. Fasting is when you give up a meal or several in order to seek God, the compuls, the feeling of hunger, the uncomfortable feeling that you get when you haven't eaten for a while, is to drive you to praying, God show us, God move in a special way. This was an earnest eldership, it was an earnest congregation who was filled up with the grace of God. In the middle of that, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them. There's a lot of times in the book of Acts where Luke highlights the work of the Holy Spirit, somehow either a prophet or somehow some kind of direct revelation came to them. Barnabas and Saul had a work laid out for them. When Paul was converted a few chapters earlier, God told him, "I'm going to show you how much you're going to suffer, because you're going to proclaim my name to the nations, to kings, and to other people. Now this is confirmed. It's arranged. I want you to notice this, though. This worship and earnest seeking was answered by calling the two most experienced men, Barnabas and Saul. This ended up being a very generous congregation through prayer, through finances, through sending of the people that helped establish their church. Verse three. Then, after fasting and praying, here's the second one. They laid their hands on them and sent them off. They commissioned them. Next week, we have a couple that we're going to send out, and the elders are going to gather around them. We're going to present the ordination certificate, a significant milestone. And next week, I want you to hold your hand like that when we pray,
  
  27:59
  because we are sending them.
  
  28:06
  Notice the characteristic of local churches that are passionate about the missionary enterprise. They have equipping five prophets and teachers. They're devoted to equipping their people. There's earnest prayer, the Holy Spirit responds in guidance. They release some of their favorites, some of their best, and they commission and pray and commit to them. You know, there's often a couple of barriers to church planting missions, and one is an unwillingness to send those who are valuable or deeply loved. People make all kinds of excuses, and in my world, I'll hear Calvinists pervert their theology, saying, "Well, if God wants them saved, if they're the elect, then He'll figure out how to do it. Why do we need to go? I'm a Calvinist, but we do it because the sovereign tells us to. He tells us to, of course. He doesn't need us, you know. When it's family, it's like I remember going into ministry, going off to seminary, and you know my mom, who loves me. It's like, aren't there unsaved people here? Don't they need the gospel here? Why do you have to go away from me? That's really what they're saying. I have an answer to that. I have an answer to that. It's my lilac illustration. Anybody looked in any lilacs? Any of you enjoyed lilacs? The first lilac, according to Karina Parkin, was introduced in Spokane in 1906 They're from Asia. Imagine whatever Asian country they come from, there's this big. Patch about as big as the first eight rows, because they grow, and that, like, the patch just continues to grow and grow and grow. If, if they said, you know, there's a lot more room for the lilacs to spread out, why would we take one anywhere else? Imagine if that had happened. Well, we'd never see the beauty or smell or the wonder of lilacs. If you did that with plants, they'd always stay, but because somebody's like that's beautiful, somebody else should see it too. That's why we call it church planting. Of course, there are more people to reach in the area, so you're all going to Faith in five next week or this week, right, because there's a lot of people still to reach, but you send some, so that another local church displaying the beauty and the fragrance of the glory of Christ can shine. These are why we send people to go. God commands it, and we want men and women from every tribe and tongue and nation to behold the glory of our Christ, that He would have his reward of our praise and adoration. Brothers and sisters, rev up your participation in church planting. Recognize the grace of God. Number one, number two, earnestly seek the Lord for what's next. Number three, view what He has done. View what He has done. God will likely do what he has done already. You want to know what God's likely to do. It's probably like he has done already. Regularly look at the reports from the churches and missionaries we support. You're going to be encouraged, weren't you encouraged by watching Andes and Gona story. Phil and Denise poured 40 years into the BombBomb village, and from that they have raised future current Bible translators, pastors. How encouraging. So, this happened here in chapter 14. Look at 1423 We'll see the finish of the church planting exercise for the Apostle Paul, and how do you know when a church is planted when it has qualified and gifted elders to lead the church? Verse 23 after Paul had visited and preached many cities, saw many people gathered together, experienced persecution in almost every church. He still goes back, and he wants to encourage them. Verse 22 he's strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, saying through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting. They committed them to the Lord, in whom they believed. That's that's when a church is planted. It still might need more establishing and more strengthening. We have missionaries out that do more establishing and more strengthening, so that they can get to the point where they themselves are planting. All this was happening. Verse 24 They passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. They make the journey back to the Antioch church. When they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Italia. From there, they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. They went back to the place that prayed and sent. When they arrived, they gathered the church together. They declared all that God had done with them, and how He opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. I imagine that was the coolest four hours the church has ever spent together. You imagine all the stories, all that he would have relayed to them. We need to see, we need to celebrate what God is doing in the city and the world. I mean, hearing from Ambe Sangona, thinking about his own conversion, his own efforts are astounding. They had had a door opened to them, the gospel takes root and flourishes. Interesting, lilacs survive in a certain climate, you know. What the gospel, wherever there are people, the gospel can survive in any human climate, because God is the one who awakens. God is the one. Who works? God is the one who establishes. Just a couple of weeks ago, Dave Belch, Nathan Thiry, a number of the leaders in the two church plants in Tenerife were recently gathered together, and they were talking through what, whatever Dave Belch normally does, plant more churches. They're talking about planting more churches. You need to view what God's doing. How do you cultivate? How do you rev up your participation in church planting? In the modern age, we have incredibly effective tools to view what God is doing. I mean, you can pick up prayer cards in the tribe room, you might get the email addresses. We have helped a number of churches in Spokane. You might have a friend at one of those churches. How do you cultivate that? How do you see it? Let me give you 510s 510s 510s Just a little way to remember this. Five things you can do that take 10 minutes. They don't take a long time, but they do take a little intentionality. Grab one, grab one of those prayer cards in the tribe room, if you don't have them, or take them off your bulletin board, or wherever you say that, and put them on your kitchen table, just for the week. Put them on your kitchen table, pick one up, read it, talk about it as a family. Have one person pray. 10 minutes, one of the things you could do. Second one, you could do is you could sign up for those missionaries' emails, because they send out emails from time to time. You can get one of those. The sign up takes a minute. You can get those emails, you can read them. You could number three, you could send an email back. Hey, we got your prayer card. We've got your update. Praise the Lord. Can we follow up on what happened there? Here's how you could pray for us. Our missionaries love to hear from what God is doing here. Just tell them a brief story about what's going on. Again, these are 10 minute things. Talk about missionaries, like talk about on base and gona with your coworkers tomorrow. I mean, they might not be Christians. It's your turn to be like a tuner. It's your turn to, you know, get the car out, rev it up, zoom really fast, and be loud and obnoxious. All you have to do is tell them, like, this was a crazy story. It's amazing, this guy that our church has been supporting for a long time was talking about his ministry. They might not be Christians. Tell them what God is doing, though. Take a couple of minutes. Locally, you might have a friend who went with one of those church plants. You haven't seen him for a while. Text him. Hey, I miss you. Haven't seen you for a long time. How's it going out there? How can I pray for you? Those are really simple things that you can do if you want to do something a little more significant. Charlie didn't know I was gonna do this, but talk to Charlie and Chris Kopp if you want to do something a little more significant, they go to our missions prayer every other Monday, isn't it? Yeah, so they give up a little bit of time in the afternoon on a Monday, and they come in and they get the missionary updates, and they pray. You could talk to them about joining that or getting information. I could tell them to go to Nathan, but everybody goes to Nathan for everything. So, give Nathan a little bit of a break. Can you just raise your hands if you see the guy with the glorious gray beard? When I think of gray beards, he is the prototype for me of godly gray beard, right there. They pray every other week with the missions prayer team, maybe you can get connected with what they get at the missions prayer team, that's a little bit bigger, but what a joy, and God answers your prayers. Like, aren't you thrilled about how God's answering the prayers? What a glorious thing. I have a little assignment for you guys, could you highlight some of the people who have gone and come back, so we can get an update in a couple weeks, like you guys pray for lots of people, like your son, you know, there are all kinds of things that people are doing around the world, and it would be great to hear about it, wouldn't it? But here's a number one thing that I think will help you rev up your participation, make a regular habit of opening a gospel and finding where Jesus showed compassion on a sufferer, there's. So many of those stories, the woman who had the bleeding issue, the dad whose daughter was dying, the dad whose son was demon possessed, the centurion who had a servant that was dying, the leper who was unclean and separated, the sinners that Jesus would go and hang out with He was a friend of sinners and tax collectors. He would show compassion on sinners. He would show compassion on the suffering, because I think compassion will probably be the most motivating thing for you to rev up your participation in church planting, because Jesus has had and does have compassion and care on you. See, Jesus coming in his saving work displays his grace, his mercy, his compassion, and he is driving us to continue on in that mission. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the example that we see in the church in Antioch. We, as a church, train up men and women to send them, and it's painful. It's going to be painful next week to see our dear couple be sent out, because we love them, and we're going to miss them, but we are glad and rejoice that the grace of God has compelled them to go to a place where there is no gospel witness, no church. I pray that you would help us see the wonder of the forgiveness that we've been given in Christ, and see how we can participate and give us very practical things. Some here are going to be called to go, so help us be the people that give them the money. Pray for them, and equip them. We ask that you would be glorified all over the world as you are already being glorified. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.

Dan Jarms

Dr. Dan Jarms is lead pastor at Faith Bible Church in Spokane Washington, as well as associate dean at The Master's Seminary in Spokane. He has been married for over 30 years to Linda, and has three adult children. He earned his B.A. in English at the Master’s College, B.Ed. at Eastern Washington University, M.Div and D.Min in Expository Preaching at The Master’s Seminary. His other interests include NCAA basketball, woodworking, and art.

View Resources by Dan Jarms