I had an interesting conversation with a friend from a mega-church I have attended, and he shared some “illumination” about how the church is changing their ways with respect to reaching out to people. You might be old enough to remember that there was a time when we expected people to come into the church and hear God’s word and get saved. In those days, most people went to church, and so it was thought that God could speak to everyone there. My have things changed. Today he tells me the church needs to go out to where people are and reach out to them there. The church being the people of the church of course. So naturally I mentioned that CMA has been doing that all along, reaching out to the lost on the highways and byways bringing people to Christ one heart at a time by going to motorcycle rallies participating on many of their activities and having Sunday services. This is of course all very consistent with what my friend was saying the church needed to do now. As you can see our goals and now even our methodologies are the same. There was however one little point that I have not yet mentioned. That point is that my friend said that as people go out, they need to understand that they are going out to build connections and relationships with people, not to save them. What? you say, but saving people is the whole goal. Yes, it is the goal, but we the people don’t do the saving, God does. What we do is go out and provide the light as Jesus shines Himself through us. God has given us each skills and talents that He wants to use them to Glorify Himself as we make ourselves available to him for the work He has pre-ordained for us.

What we don’t want to do is run out ahead of Jesus to where we think He might be going when He hasn’t told us to go there. When we go out to be a light in the darkness, without His specific leading, we are just going to get burned out, and a burned out light doesn’t provide any light.

So, I just want to remind us that our “work” is to remain “connected” to the one that has the perfect plan, and then to speak, move and do whatever He give us as He gives it. God will do the saving, and as He does, He will use us to do it. Thats is the goal right, to be used by God and to experience His limitless power working through us as he reaches people for Himself one heart at a time?