Faith Promise Results:

What a wonderful month we had with

• Brother Tom Wallace the first week of March
• Pastor Caleb McKenzie and Brothers Dan Nelson and Lance Hohenstreet the second week
• Pastor Benjamin Park week three of March
• Pastor Bob Phillips (Way of the Cross Indian Baptist Church) week four and
• Evangelist Larry Clayton the first week of April

Our Faith Promise for the year 2011 is $76,351.

Here is a summary of the messages I put together for Sunday School April 10.

A SUNDAY SCHOOL SUMMARY

This morning's Sunday School Lesson is going to be an unusual one as I want to try to recap and summarize some of the high points of the five weeks of guest preachers, all dealing with the subject of missions.

I have been revisiting the messages that were given through the month.

What I have done is looked through the messages and come up with what I caught as an over riding theme for each day.

I have changed the order a little to fit a progression.

First of all we received a message that missions ministry comes from

I. A BROKEN HEART

Brother Park, said again and again

"So many souls"

If we are ever to break away from being only casually involved in missions, it will come when we have broken hearts for the souls of men and women.

The fact of the matter is that we are way more concerned with our own concerns than we are for lost souls.

Isn't that true?

Wouldn't you say that your priority really is personal?

You and me - our first concern would be

• Our family
• Our work and
• Our home

When we have sufficiently provided for those; plus some for just kicks, then we might have something to do - in time, talent and treasure, with souls.

A missionary thinks differently than that.

A missionary finds himself or herself broken hearted for souls.

That becomes a priority in their lives.

It might manifest itself in different ways:

• Perhaps they train and go to serve in a mission field
• Perhaps they become more involved in evangelistic outreach in their church
• Perhaps they begin to reach out to needy people around them

My friend in Anchorage, Alaska has a burden to win the native people of Alaska to the Lord.

• Part of his efforts involves establishing a church
• Part of his efforts involves visiting at the native hospital
• Part of his efforts involves taking his barbeque grill to an alley where homeless people hang out and fixing them a hotdog

One of the things a person does whose heart is broken for so many souls, is figure out a way to give to those who are doing something about those souls.

The whole point of missions conference time is to see if we can't work together as a local church to do something about those who need to be saved!

A broken heart will motivate our missions ministry.

We received secondly during the month a message concerning

II. A BURDENED WITNESS

Brother Caleb

A broken heart naturally leads to a burden to action.

And that is exactly what Elijah was.

He saw the people of Israel halting between two opinions.

• They were the children of God but
• They were worshiping Baal

And he could not let it go unanswered.

• There were so many who were lost
• There were so many who were deceived
• There were so many who were wrong

But they were not going to find out the truth unless somebody spoke up.

Thank God for those Christians whose faith in Christ compels them to be witnesses!

The best missionary plan begins right here at home.

We can do a great deal if we will all give to missions

We can compound the effectiveness of that if we will personally go out and witness to people all around us.

• When they get saved
• When they get into church and
• When they begin to give to missions too

Our own gifts just became compounded.

Talk about looking for ways to give more….

Do you wish you could give more to missions?

Just think, everyone you win to the Saviour who begins to give to missions has increased what you personally do for missions!

A broken heart will lead to

A burden to witness

We received thirdly a message about

III. A BELIEVING EYE

Bob Phillips

Rev 3:18

Anoint thy eye with ....that thou mayest see

If we could only see as God sees, what a change would be made in us!

• See the souls
• See the Saviour's love for them
• See the power of our obedience to Him

Brother Phillips pointed out that the whole principle of Faith Promise is that "Everybody has a part."

And that is true in giving to Faith Promise.

If everyone will promise something, our promises combined will make a wonderful difference.

But that is also true in the ministry of the church.

Our desire is to see every member have some part in the ministry of the church.

The fourth message we received gave us

IV. A BARTERING TOOL

Larry Clayton

Brother Clayton is one of my favorite people to be around.

• Brother Clayton is happy
• Brother Clayton is honest - I can see his concern for his kids and for the course of our world and
• Brother Clayton is practical.

He made this statement: "Money is meant to be given away."

Its whole purpose is as a medium of trade. It is useless when stacked away in a bank account.

It only has value when it is circulated.

From there we received our final message (which was really our first one)

V. A BIBLICAL STRATEGY

Brother Wallace

Faith Promise is really Faith Purpose.

And I want to use some of his lesson again right now….

Brother Wallace

I want to review some of Brother Wallace's lesson for this morning:

A. Faith Promise is really Faith Purpose.

2 Corinthians 9:6-7

There are dozens of definitions of faith, but this simple one really helps

Faith requires God

From 2 Corinthians 8:1-5 we learned

B. Three ways to give to God

1. Budget giving,

We allocate a portion of our discretionary spending to the things of God.

This is where most Christians live. We seldom graduate past this.

2. Faith giving

We give "beyond our power."

We don't have it. It is not in our budget.

But we trust God for it.

3. Total giving

We give ourselves.

No one ever really practices faith giving who has not first and in some measure given themselves to God.

C. The common mistake in Faith Giving

Is to pay bills first and trust God to make sure there is money left over to give to God's work.

The proper way would be to give to God first and trust God to make sure we can then pay our bills.

And if you think about it, that is the only way we could ever prove our faith.

D. Faith promise is….

• Laying up treasures in heaven and
• An amount God lays on our heart to strengthen our faith

To God be the glory!

For further information contact Pastor Marvin McKenzie at marvinmckenzie@bbcpuyallup.org