November 13, 2022 ~ Homecoming Sunday ~ Sermon & Zoom Worship Video Link

This is the Link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/OazAC5bBpBFGvGj3ph7D_rvNAm1jWhqQXf_9grJfg6K08k5rhGM1vHLHVhOuW644.tciY37uW6VIDOjod

Homecoming/Commitment Sunday                                                   11/13/22—Highland—Meute

“Be Energized”

Pearl: We are empowered to follow Jesus and to bring others along.

Function: As disciples/followers we are empowered by Jesus’ words and the Spirit of God to bear the love of God and to enlist others to join in the joyful journey.

We have a message to share, of God’s love and good intent for the world.

1. The good Lord loves you.
   1. God is doing good things in the world.
   1. God is doing new things in the world.
   1. There is hope for the hopeless.
   1. There is peace and forgiveness.
   1. Things will get better.
   1. There is beauty in the world.
2. The descriptions of God’s love and good intent for the world go on and on.
   1. It is good to be able to put into words descriptions of God’s love and good intent for this world.
   1. Not only is it good to be able to describe it but also to embody God’s love and good intent for the world.
      1. As we describe it and as we display it, others can pick up on it.
      1. Indeed, how else will others catch it if we do not speak of it and if we do not show it in our living?
3. It is vitally important as followers of Jesus that we realize our role in bringing others along with us.
   1. One former teacher came up with the “with me” principle. This is simply that in the practice of ministry we should bring someone along with us to experience the actions of ministry.
      1. For example, I am visiting someone in the hospital. I decide to practice the “with me” principle.
         1. So, I invite someone to come along with me who I think could be gifted for that kind of ministry.
         1. I bring them with me and they observe me in action.
         1. I bring them with me a second time and I invite them to conduct the visit while I watch.
            1. Afterwards, we together reflect on the visit.
         1. Next, I send them out on their own to visit and they bring someone with them.
            1. Do you see how it goes on and on. Followers keep on being added to the work of ministry.
            1. This is the “with me” principle.

We become followers of Jesus by being apprentices, another word for disciples, and then we enlist our own apprentices to continue the expansion of the corps of disciples.

Think of it, for you to be a follower of Jesus someone or some people invited you to “come and see,” to come and see the love of God in Jesus Christ.

1. We thought about that earlier in this series at the beginning when we were talking about the simple fact that there is something to see. That is, God is up to something and you’ve got to see what it is!
   1. Someone embodied Jesus and they invited you to come and see, to follow him.
2. Someone or some others who knew of God’s love and good intent for the world shared it with us. They showed it to us. It led to ways of live and living.
   1. God bless those dear ones who did this for us!
   1. God bless you who do it for others now!
3. Followers of Jesus, we were apprenticed and we take on apprentices.
   1. Some of you have heard that over the last month I took on the job of tiling a shower in our home. I have not done this before.
      1. I watched some YouTube videos. But it came down to me asking a young man, a childhood friend of one of our sons, who now works with his father in construction, to come over and help me get started and to give me a lesson in tiling.
         1. I became his apprentice. He knows what he is doing. He advised me by explaining things and answering my many, many questions. Then he showed me. Then he had me do it. Then he turned me loose to do the job.
         1. He learned his skills and know-how from his dad. He is the apprentice with his dad.
   1. To learn something, it is best to become an apprentice.
      1. This past week I attended the Cory Meela “Dialogue for Peaceful Change” conflict mediation training. It was excellent. It was led by seasoned trainers in international conflict mediation—most well-known is their work in Northern Ireland during the time of all of the terror between Protestants and Catholics.
         1. The way they taught us was ingenious in its design.
            1. They told us about the skills and techniques.
               1. They gave us a textbook.
            1. Then they had us practice techniques with each other.
            1. Then they told us some more.
            1. Then they had us take on roles in actual mediation cases that they managed, and we practiced the techniques that they were teaching us.
               1. They took us on as apprentices, disciples, and finally to go and to use our new skills or lose them. “Use it or lose it,” goes the saying.
               1. They encouraged us. They guided us. They shaped our technique.
         1. This is God’s design for sharing his love and sharing his intent for his world.
            1. Just before he ascended into heaven Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey every that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28: 19, 20).
            1. Before Jesus gave this last instruction and encouragement, he spent his public ministry of three years teaching, modeling, and encouraging his disciple/apprentices to prepare them for this very day and all the days that followed down to our day.
         1. Jesus showed God’s love and modeled God’s kingdom to his apprentices so that they could absorb it all, to marinate in God’s love and realm.
            1. He did this so that they could then bring others along into what they experienced.

Jesus invites us to be apprentices and so that we can bring others along with us.

Jesus urges us, his followers, empowered by the energy of God’s Spirit, which is unlimited energy, to go and make apprentices of all nations.

1. We embody the gospel.
   1. That is, we show the love of God in our way of living. We live out love of God and love of neighbor.
2. We invite others to see what we see.
   1. This includes sharing the thoughts and philosophies we are learning.
   1. This includes sharing our hopes and our fears…being real with each other.
   1. This includes sharing our dreams and visions.
   1. This includes sharing our experience of God’s love that we find through Jesus Christ.
3. Embodying the gospel ourselves, we invite and we enlist others to see what we see;
   1. We invite them to do what we do.
   1. We invite them to experience what we experience.
      1. Followers of Jesus Christ are apprentices through our entire lives and we build the church by bringing other apprentices along.

We can do it! One time as I wandered around Lowes an employee asked me what I was working on. I told him I was tiling a shower, with a big gulp and sigh. He said, “You can do it.” He didn’t know me. But I appreciated his encouragement, nonetheless. It gave me a little more confidence.

1. Jesus encouraged his apprentices giving them the Great Commission.
   1. Following Jesus means taking on apprentices.
2. But there is something special about Jesus’ Great Commission.
   1. It emerges from a source of love. It is love itself.
      1. God is in this.
      1. When you act from love and when you are motivated by peace, and when you live in wonder over the beauty that exists, and when you see what God sees, and when your heart breaks for the things that break the heart of God, YOU ARE IN CHRIST!
   1. CHRIST IS IN YOU!
3. And so, you are energized by the living God!

When I am encouraged to go and do something, it is helpful to have my teacher with me, at least at the beginning of my work.

1. On my shower tiling job my teacher got me started.
   1. Then for the grouting phase he stayed with me and helped me.
2. In our Conflict Mediation Training several guides watched us and shaped us and advised us. They did not leave us alone.
   1. They watched us closely and guided us with care and encouraging us throughout.
3. Our Lord did not leave us alone, nor did he forsake us.
   1. It was helpful and comforting to know that we were not left alone.

We can be apprentices and we can bring others along.

Our confidence in life is the very thing that God gives us.

1. Jesus not only said to go and make apprentices, he said:
   1. “…remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28, v. 19).
   1. Our Lord and our Teacher, Jesus Christ, is with us to the end of the age.
2. We are not alone, by any means.
   1. Jesus is with us.
   1. We are empowered by a teacher among teachers, a teacher with no peers.
      1. Our Lord Jesus Christ is with us always, to the end of the age.
      1. What better teacher is there? We are apprentices making apprentices, baptizing in the name of the Lord, teaching others to obey what Jesus commanded, but always with our teacher, Jesus Christ…to the end of the age.