Prepare Your Heart to be Blessed – 3

Subject: Five Steps In Fulfilling The Great Commission

by Rick Welborne

Isaiah 64:112 (NKJV) 

1 Oh, that You would rend the heavens! That You would come down! That the mountains might shake at Your presence 

2 As fire burns brushwood, As fire causes water to boil To make Your name known to Your adversaries, That the nations may tremble at Your presence! 

3 When You did awesome things for which we did not look, You came down, The mountains shook at Your presence. 

4 For since the beginning of the world Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, Nor has the eye seen any God besides You, Who acts for the one who waits for Him. 

5 You meet him who rejoices and does righteousness, Who remembers You in Your ways. You are indeed angry, for we have sinned In these ways we continue; And we need to be saved. 

6 But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away. 

7 And there is no one who calls on Your name, Who stirs himself up to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us, And have consumed us because of our iniquities. 

8 But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand. 

9 Do not be furious, O LORD, Nor remember iniquity forever; Indeed, please lookwe all are Your people! 

10 Your holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. 

11 Our holy and beautiful temple, Where our fathers praised You, Is burned up with fire; And all our pleasant things are laid waste. 

12 Will You restrain Yourself because of these things, O LORD? Will You hold Your peace, and afflict us very severely? 

1. Life Church, to fulfill the Great Commission you must come to a place of personal crisis. 

Isaiah 64:6 (NKJV) 

6 But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away. 

--Before you can truly have a heart for missions you must realize that at one time you were the mission field. When we forget how Jesus came and saved us, we have lost motivation to reach others.

--Often when I am trying to draw the net in during an altar call, I once again feel that personal crisis of being lost…when I feel my lost-ness, I can identify with those I am trying to reach!

--We must realize that we are all like an unclean thing and our righteousness is a filthy rag:

Romans 3:23-24 (NKJV)
²³  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
²⁴  being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

2. Life Church, to fulfill the Great Commission you must come to a place of personal contact. 

Isaiah 64:7 (NKJV) 

7 And there is no one who calls on Your name, Who stirs himself up to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us, And have consumed us because of our iniquities. 

--Let’s truly face it, until we have an awesome encounter with God, we will not have the compassion for the lost or for missions as we should.

--As we draw near to God and He draws near to us, we find ourselves loving those Whom Jesus died for…I experienced this personally when I had my personal contact (my salvation) with Jesus.

--You have heard my testimony of having an adversarial relationship with my father and how I could not wait to get him out of my life…why I left home at 17 years of age.

--Also, being raised in Louisiana, we were beyond prejudice…we were taught to hate anyone of a different race or color…at age 4-5 my dad taught me how to wave at them with one finger…my mom knocked me kooky!

--Once I received Christ, my personal contact with Jesus changed my life in two ways that were unmistakable to me. All of a sudden I had an incredible love for my dad and those who looked different than me. 

--My dad’s own testimony was that it was my love for him that changed his heart and caused him to turn toward God.

John 13:34-35 (NKJV)
³⁴  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
³⁵  By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."  

3. Life Church, to fulfill the Great Commission you must come to a place of powerful confrontation.

Isaiah 64:1 and 8 (NKJV) 

1 Oh, that You would rend the heavens! That You would come down! That the mountains might shake at Your presence 

8 But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand. 

--Can I please say it? What we need more than we need anything else is for the Lord, for Holy Spirit to come down (to rend the heavens), to shake us and to shape us into what He wants us to be.

Hebrews 12:25-29 (NKJV)
²⁵  See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven,
²⁶  whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, "Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven."
²⁷  Now this, "Yet once more," indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.
²⁸  Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.
²⁹  For our God is a consuming fire.

--I am definitely not an advocate for alcohol and I do not necessarily like beer commercials. One commercial that has caught my ear is the one where the man says…Stay Thirsty My Friend!

John 7:37-39 (NKJV)
³⁷  On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.
³⁸  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."
³⁹  But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

--Jesus was crying out to the people on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles “If anyone thirsts”. How crazy is that because they had been eating and drinking for seven days straight. How could they be thirsty?

--Do you just suppose Jesus could see that they had been drinking from all the wrong fountains…maybe the mud paddles of life…He was inviting them and us to a place of powerful confrontation with Holy Spirit!

4. Life Church, to fulfill the Great Commission you must come to a place of persistent commitment. 

Isaiah 64:7 (NKJV) 

7 And there is no one who calls on Your name, Who stirs himself up to take hold of You; 

Let’s face it, if we will have personal contact and a powerful confrontation with the Lord, it will be because we are persistently committed to the Lord! We must stir up ourselves and we must take hold of the Lord!

2 Timothy 1:612 (NKJV) 

6 Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 

7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 

8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God, 

9 who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, 

10 but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, 

11 to which I was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles. 

12 For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed 

and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day. 

Helen Keller - What’s worse than being blind? Having eye sight but no vision.

Vision:  1.the ability to see. 2. The faith to believe. 3. The courage to do. 4. The hope to endure.   

–Life Church, can you see it? Do you have faith to believe it? Do you have the courage to do it? Do you have a willingness to endure what God commands?

--When we are persistently committed, when we stir ourselves up by Holy Spirit, and when we decide to take hold of God, we prove we have vision for God!

Isaiah 64:4 (NKJV) 

4 For since the beginning of the world Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, Nor has the eye seen any God besides You, Who acts for the one who waits for Him. 

--As we truly wait for Him and as we truly wait on Him…His Holy Spirit pours in His love and we are committed because of His great love for us. 

Romans 5:510 (NIV) 

5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. 

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 

7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 

8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 

9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! 

10 For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 

5. Life Church, to fulfill the Great Commission you must come to a place of passionate communion.

Isaiah 64:1 (NIV) 

1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! 

--Vision produces or results in passion. Passion is being empowered by what we see. If you see people with no passion - you know they have no vision. Exp. Pastor - waiting.

Webster - passion is the intense, compelling emotion evidenced in decisive, courageous action.  

Carl Barth - “Passion is fear that said its prayers”.

Sir Walter Moberly addressing Christians in an academic environment: You, Christians, if one tenth of what you believe is true you ought to be ten times more excited than you are. But evidently it is not true. I take one look at your face and rest my case.  

Oliver Wendell Holmes - I may have entered the ministry if certain clergy I knew had not looked and acted like undertakers.  

Robert Lewis Stephenson in his diary said with great amazement - I have been to church today and I 

am not depressed. What an indictment of no passion.

--Listen to the Apostle Paul speak of his passionate communion with Jesus:

Philippians 3:811 (MSG) 

8 Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ 

9 and be embraced by Him. I didn't want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God's righteousness. 

10 I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience His resurrection power, be a partner in His suffering, and go all the way with Him to death itself. 

11 If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it. 

1. Paul said, “My love for Christ and His love for me is worth me eliminating things in my life that aren’t good.”  You fill in that blank.

2. Paul said, “My love for Christ and His love for me is worth me changing my priorities.”  Maybe 2018 is when you make Missions a priority and not just a token.

3. Paul said, “Nothing is more important than knowing Christ and partnering with Him in reaching the world.”

4. Paul said, “Nothing is more important than making sure others experience the same resurrection power that I have experienced!