As Dwight said, we we are having 2 actually, 4 mission teams go out in just a few weeks. 54 people heading out on short term mission trips. 35 of those will be going to Haiti. 19 will be going to Turkey. And I can't tell you just how thrilled I am as a pastor just seeing that happen, within our church.
Jeffrey Heine:My family and I, we're actually going to be going to Turkey together, and I'm really excited about that trip for a couple of reasons. First, it's gonna stretch us. Basically, the the premise of this trip is street evangelism. And so, from when we get up to when we go to bed, we'll be walking around as a family sharing the gospel with an interpreter. And so that's going to, it both excites and terrifies me, that that's what we'll be doing every day.
Jeffrey Heine:But another thing that really excites me about us going to Turkey is it lines up right where we are in Acts with the church of Antioch. Antioch exists in Turkey. The church of Antioch was there. It's it's the birthplace, if you will, of missions, because it was at the church of Antioch that Paul and Barnabas were sent out as missionaries. And, and so I'm excited to go back to that birthplace of missions, but it also is really sobering.
Jeffrey Heine:Because Antioch, after they sent out Paul and Barnabas, they became or I should say, they remained the largest church in the world for the next 1000 years. So 1000 years is the largest church in the world. Today, they are the most unreached people group on earth. Things changed so rapidly. In a country of about 80,000,000 people, there is only 4 to 6000 Christians.
Jeffrey Heine:That is point 0075%. That is about 1 Christian for every 14,000 people. And so it it breaks my heart that the place that used to send missionaries is now the country in most desperate need of missionaries. But I am encouraged encouraged by this, the Lord is still at work there. One of the things if you remember as we were going through Acts and and we got to read about the birth of the church in Antioch, it began with a vision or a dream given to Peter to go.
Jeffrey Heine:And so he went and at the same time, God was giving a dream and a vision to a man named Cornelius and saying, a man's gonna come to you and basically share the gospel came to Antioch, and Cornelius became saved, and the church was birthed. If you know anything about missions to the Muslim world, and how the gospel has been going there, one of the things that I'm sure you're aware of is that many Muslims come to Christ through dreams. Through visions. This is especially true. You see this in Turkey.
Jeffrey Heine:And the few Christians that are there, one of the ways that God has prepared them is often they have had dreams that somebody is going to come and share with them the news that they need to hear. And so they are ripe for when the missionaries come and share. And so it excites me to know that God is still doing today what He was doing 2000 years ago in the same region of Turkey, and that we get to be a part of this. And so I'm gonna ask for, the next few weeks as we're leading up to these spring break mission trips in March that you begin praying that God would prepare the hearts of the people, both in Haiti and in Turkey, to receive the gospel. Now if you would turn to Acts 13.
Jeffrey Heine:This has been an important weekend for the life of our church. We just wrapped up at midnight last night, 24 hours of continual prayer. Some of you are really hungry this morning because you took the call last week to fast in preparation for this very service, seriously, and you have fasted coming in. The reason I'm talking so loud is so you can hear my voice over my stomach. Actually, my fast was supposed to be over, after the first service, and there was one donut left in the welcome room, and I went to get it and some little kid just ran by and grabbed it.
Jeffrey Heine:And I can guarantee you that kid had not been fasting this morning. But but we we've come hungry, hungry for the Lord, seeking him, wanting to hear from him, wanting to adore him because we saw what happened last week when the church gathered together to fast and to worship and to adore Him. It was during that time, God called them to do something radical. And I feel that we are at a similar place as a church. We're having our own Antioch moment.
Jeffrey Heine:And so let's read together Acts 13. I'm only going to speak briefly about this, so we can spend time in prayer and worship. Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
Jeffrey Heine:So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there, they sailed to Cyprus. This is the word of the Lord. Lord, through the proclamation of your word, through our time of fasting and adoration and worship and prayer, May you call out many for your work. May you remind us all of our calling to share the good news of Christ with this lost and dying world. So speak, Lord.
Jeffrey Heine:We're listening. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but your powerful words would hit their mark. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. As I mentioned last week, this is a a special day for me because this is marks the 20 year anniversary of just me going into full time ministry.
Jeffrey Heine:And one of the things that I've I've noticed over 20 years of having conversations as a pastor, with people is over and over again, no matter how rich you are, poor you are, educated you are, no matter how old you are, where you are in life, you struggle with your calling in life. You struggle with what to do with your life. I've had conversations over and over with people just actually, I don't know what to do with my life. And seriously, it's not just college students who come and ask that. Actually, if you are a college student and you you tried to pick a major so you would know what to do with your life, know that whatever you chose your major in is likely not what you're going to do for your life.
Jeffrey Heine:You really don't have any idea. But seriously, I meet with young singles trying to figure out what to do with your their life. I meet with established families, people with careers trying to figure out what they're supposed to do with their life. People who are retired trying to figure out what they're supposed to do with their life. People in which the end is pretty near, and they are still.
Jeffrey Heine:And those remaining few years trying to figure out, what am I supposed to do with my life? This is a question that that never really goes away at least in regard of the particulars. However, we do know that God has always called us to be a part of making disciples. That's part of our life. The biggest help that I can give you, as you're trying to work out the particulars of what this calling looks like, is to remember this.
Jeffrey Heine:You are not the main character in your story. Everybody's trying to figure out how their story goes. What is their what is the story of their life supposed to look like? The biggest help that I could give you is for you to know that you are not the main character of your story. You are not the hero.
Jeffrey Heine:As a matter of fact, I would say it's not even your story. You are part of a much bigger grander story, the story of what God is doing in this world. And God is the main character. God is the hero. God is the lover.
Jeffrey Heine:God is the savior. And he has invited us to come in and to be a part of his story, what he is doing in this world, in which he is redeeming all things. He is preparing his kingdom to come to where he will reign forever. And no matter what you you think might be the particulars of your calling in life, know that your grand calling is to be part of that story of what God is doing here in the redeeming of this world. Now it's it's important for us to understand that when Jesus called us to Himself, He called us to His mission.
Jeffrey Heine:You cannot separate the 2 calls. The call to salvation and the call to missions are the exact same call. Not one of you was called to salvation and not also called to join Jesus in the mission of what he's doing in this world, which is to seek and to save the lost so that his glory might cover the earth just like the waters cover the sea. Your call to Jesus was a call to his mission. So being a Christian, you need to hear is about way more than your own personal salvation.
Jeffrey Heine:And of course, this is something that we see all throughout the Bible. When Jesus called Peter and Andrew, he said, come follow me and I'm gonna make you fishers of men. It wasn't just a call to himself, it was a call to his mission. And, of course, we we see this throughout scripture as well. Joy just alluded to that when she mentioned Genesis 12 and the call of Abram.
Jeffrey Heine:God calls Abram and He says, I'm going to bless you. But He doesn't say I'm gonna bless you, period. He says I'm gonna bless you so that you might then, in return, bless the entire world. And then he calls Moses and He introduces Himself to Moses at the burning bush, but it just wasn't to say, hey, He saves Moses in order that Moses will then turn and go and save the people of Israel. He calls Gideon to himself.
Jeffrey Heine:And it wasn't just to save Gideon. It was so that Gideon might and then turn go and be used to save the Israelites. This is the pattern that you find over and over in scripture. God calls you, He blesses you, and then He sends you to be a blessing to others. And this is the story that every Christian here finds themselves a part of.
Jeffrey Heine:And as we've been going through the book of acts, I mean, of course we have been looking at the great commission. How can you not look at the great commission as you go through acts? But please hear me. The Great Commission did not begin when Jesus was ascending. It wasn't when Jesus was ascending and he turned and he looked at his great commission.
Jeffrey Heine:Creation was the beginning of the great commission. If you wanna understand what it means to be human, what it means to be created in the image of God, you need to understand that the great commission is wrapped into the imago Dei. You being created in his image. Because after God created the male and female in Genesis 1, you read he created the male and female, then he blessed them, and then he commissioned them. Go.
Jeffrey Heine:Fill the earth. Multiply. Be fruitful. As image bearers of who I am, fill the earth with my glory. The great commission was there at the beginning.
Jeffrey Heine:It's what God's been doing all along, and he's inviting us and he's calling us to be a part of his story. Now no matter what particulars that this looks like in your life, know that this is the calling on your life. Make no mistake about it. Now one of the things that we have been looking at as we've gone through acts 13, especially last week, is that through times of fasting and prayer, God at times, He clarifies that calling for people. And we've been hoping, as we have spent time fasting and praying over these last few days, that's exactly what God would do in our midst.
Jeffrey Heine:For some of you, he would clarify his particular call in your life personally, and he would do that for us as a church corporately. Like I said earlier, we're at an Antioch moment. I mean, I'm looking in the welcome room, which is slam packed with chairs, our conference room, slam packed with chairs. I think we've set up about a 180 extra chairs today. And that was filled in the first service.
Jeffrey Heine:It's filled in this service. They're gonna be filled at the 4:30 service for the super Christians who don't go to the Super Bowl. That's the service you wanna be at because they fasted the longest and they're skipping the Super Bowl. They have proven their spirituality. But where do we go from here, church?
Jeffrey Heine:Where do we go? Do we keep planting? Do we keep sending? The answer is yes. Do we expand?
Jeffrey Heine:Do we keep adding services? What do we do? We're at a Antioch moment. And I think we're at that personally, and we're at that corporately as a church. And we are hoping through our times of fasting and worship and adoration that God will clarify that call for us.
Jeffrey Heine:And so, what I want us to do as we are spending time just worshiping the Lord, for the rest of this service, adoring him, I want you to be open to what God's spirit might be leading you to do. And perhaps, God is gonna call some of you, to full time missions. He's calling you to be a missionary. It's okay if you don't know all the details about that. You know, Paul had to wait 17 years after his initial calling from when he was sent.
Jeffrey Heine:17 years before God clarified that. But he knew he was called 17 years earlier. And perhaps, if God's calling you, I'd invite you to just come forward to the stage and just pray during this time. Or perhaps he's calling you to just full time ministry and you don't know what that looks like but you wanna come. Perhaps for some of you, it's just for some new work.
Jeffrey Heine:You don't even know, what it is, but you feel like the Lord has really calling you to do something new. And you just wanna say whatever, whenever, however, Lord, I'm yours. If that's you, just come forward and pray. And, and some of the elders are gonna be here, pastors are gonna be here, want to take time to just pray for people. Perhaps, He's calling some of you to go and be part of a new church plant.
Jeffrey Heine:Whether it's here in Birmingham or someplace else in the US or abroad. But we want to be open to what the Lord is doing at this time. So if you would join me in prayer. Lord Jesus, we pray that through your spirit, you would come, and you would have your way in us. We adore you.
Jeffrey Heine:There's no place we would rather be than to be here and just feast on you. May we never get over the fact that we were dead and you have raised us up to life. And now you have called us to be part of the most glorious story, what you're doing in this entire world, the redemption of all things. We ask that, as we adore you, if you would be so good as to show us our particular role in that. All for your glory, Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Amen.