#2 - Momentum Starts With You

#2 - Momentum Starts With You, Then Moves To Your Leaders.

Hi!

How is your prayer life going?

Last week we pressed the ignition switch on the momentum of your church (and, hopefully, your heart). We said that the Holy Spirit and you are the most powerful forces for generating momentum and fulfilling the Great Commission. I hope you and he have had some intimate conversations about where he wants to lead you and what he wants to do in your church and community. If so, you’ve started on a habit that will reap benefits all the way into eternity.

Pastor, the truth about you is, you are one of the most important people in your community – maybe the most important person. You are God’s messenger and direction-setter for the people of your church. And your church (along with others in your area) is the only hope for the peoples in your surrounding neighborhoods.

Your church will never be able to play its intended part in the Great Commission without having a heart for the lost, and you will never be able to lead them unless you have an oversized heart for the lost. If you want your people to bleed for the lost, you must hemorrhage for them. So this week I want to give you a tool for increasing your heart for the as-of-yet unsaved people around you, along with a passage to share with your congregation so they increase their burden for the people around them.

Please take a minute to pray, asking God to give you an undistracted ten minute window to speak to you just now, as you read.

Developing a Heart for the Unsaved
In 1989, a pastor I had never met before encouraged me to pray a prayer I’d never heard before. It was a simple prayer: Lord, I don’t ask you for much today. I just ask that you give me your heart for lost people.

Twenty words. Twenty-two syllables. Seventy letters. One request.

I prayed that prayer every day, slowly and fervently, for the next 90 days. It took me less than 30 seconds in total, each day.

At the end of the first week, I saw everyone around me differently. I saw the unsaved as objects of God’s affection and the saved as God’s means to reach them.

At the end of the first month, I broke down in a grocery store because it occurred to me that of the fifty people standing in lines around me, 30 to 35 of them were going to spend a Christless eternity if someone didn’t do something to communicate God’s love to them.

By the end of the second month I determined that I had to do something personally. I attended my first “Matthew party” (Luke 5:29) to rub shoulders with lost people and decided that I would learn to answer every question a pre-Christian might have before coming to Christ. To do this, I taught a Sunday School class called, “Answering Questions Pre-Christians Ask.” After doing a ton of research, I discovered there are eight questions which cover 95% of what pre-Christians ever ask before coming to faith.

By the end of the third month, I felt God leading me to plant a church in order to reach lost people. – So, beware! If you pray my prayer, you are in for a lot of changes in the next 90 days.

Assignment #1:
Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to pray these 20 words every day for the next 90 days: Lord, I don’t ask you for much today. I just ask that you give me your heart for lost people.

Helping Your Church Develop a Heart for the Unsaved
My little Sunday School class had a dozen students in it. Before beginning Questions Pre-Christians Ask, I spent the first lesson walking them through Matthew 4:18-22. It’s the passage where Jesus calls four fishermen to follow him, with the promise that he will in turn make them fishers of men.

In Matt. 4:18, Jesus is walking by the Sea of Galilee. It’s a tiny lake – eight miles wide, twelve miles long. The men he called were all professional fishermen. They’d grown up fishing that lake. They arose early every morning, thinking about fishing. On their way to the dock, they talked about fishing. On their way home, they talked about how they could catch more fish the next day.

Those men knew just about everything about that little lake, and just about everything about the fish in it. They knew the habits of each species, where and how they bit best. They knew the changes of the seasons and how those changes affected the catchability of each type of fish.

Most importantly, they knew the market-price of each fish. At the end of the day, they would sell most of their fish. The amount they received was what fed their families. These men fished as if their lives depended on it.

It was to these men that Jesus said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” – Not just recreational fishers-of-men, but professional fishers-of-men.

After I unpacked the lesson, our class started making applications: If these men knew everything there was to know about their lake, shouldn’t we? If they knew the best conditions to fish in, shouldn’t we? If they knew the best days of the year to catch the different types of fish, shouldn’t we? And if they knew the market-price of each fish, shouldn’t we as well?

I had just finished my 90 days of “Lord, I don’t ask you for much today. I just ask for your heart for lost people.” And I confess, as we were talking about what it might look like to work and pray like professional fishers-of-men, I broke down and wept. I gasped out one more question: “What’s the market-price of the fish God has called us to catch?”

Someone said, “It’s priceless.”

I asked, “How do you know that?”

“Because God set the price himself. It was the life of his one and only Son.”

No one in the class was ever the same again. We learned the answers to the questions pre-Christians asked. Every class member prayed my 90 day pray. We started living like fishers of men. Today, more than 7,000 people have come to Christ as a result of that prayer and that passage.

Answering Questions
Fifteen years after teaching the “Questions…” class, I wrote a book on them. It’s called, The God Questions. If you are going to build a heart for the unsaved into the DNA of your church, you’ve got to start with the leaders. That’s how momentum works. It starts with the leader, moves to the leadership, then to the church members, and finally to the community around them.

Assignment #2:
So here’s your second assignment: Make a list of the top leaders and staff in your church and ask them to join you for a six week Bible study so you can share your heart with them.

(I know, they’re busy people. But this is something special they get to do with you. So if they can make it, they will. Get this group study onto your calendar as soon as possible. Try to start within the next four weeks, if you can.)

By the way, you are on a course to change your heart, the hearts of your leaders, your church, and the eternities of a lot of people in your community. Expect some opposition. Overcome it with love, faith, and prayer.

Taking Action
#1 = Pray The 90 Day Prayer. Write it out on a 3 x 5 card and pray it now!

#2 = Invite your leaders to a six week God Questions Bible study as soon as practical. They’ll probably need 3-4 weeks advanced notice, so look at your calendar and figure out a good time to start. – Make it soon, because you’re building momentum in your own heart and you don’t want that to wear off. But don’t be panicked about it. Schedule it for as soon as practical.

# 3 = post your comments and thoughts to let me know that you’re still listening to God in prayer, that you’re beginning your 90 Day Prayer today, and the date you hope to begin your God Questions leaders study.



God bless you,