What better way to start off the New Year than with worship. Join us at THE WELL on Saturday, January 30th for a dynamic night of worship, teaching, sharing, fellowship and food.

• When: Saturday, January 30th 2010 @ 7pm
• Where: Phantom Lake Elementary School (1050 160th Ave SE Bellevue, WA)

Worship starts at 7pm sharp, so don’t be late! We’ll be kicking off a brand new three-part series called “FOLLOW ME: A CALL TO DISCIPLESHIP.”

For RSVP: Facebook Events, or Twitter Shout-out, or Just show up!

In the final message of our 3 part series, “The Jesus Retrolution: A Fresh look at The Man, The Message and The Mission,” Royce preached on The Mission of Jesus.  If you’ve missed this one, you can grab the message in either audio or video format from our podcast on the iTunes store.

How many of us here, who consider ourselves ‘Christians,’ never realized that we have a God given mission in this life?  Many of us perhaps thought that after praying the salvation prayer, we’re all good, and now we can coast through life.  We just try to live a good life, try not to cuss too much, try not to drink too much, come to church on Sundays, and every once in a while crack open the bible and pray before your meals, but other than that, life is pretty much the same.  We pretty much do what we did before we got ’saved’ and try our best to adhere to this religion of Do’s and Don’ts.  But is this really what Christianity is about?

Ever wonder what Jesus meant, when He said, I came so that you can have life, and have it to the fullest?

Let’s look at 2 Corithians 5:14-21:

¹⁴ For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. ¹⁵ And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

¹⁶ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹ God made him who had no sin to be sin ^[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The whole bible paints the redeeming story of God, all pointing to Jesus coming and paying the price for the sin of mankind, so that we can be reconciled back to God.  His Kingdom is a display of righteous people redeemed through the blood of the lamb.

God wasn’t satisfied with the current state in which man lived, he wasn’t satisfied with the current state of the world, so he sent Jesus.  Jesus came into a broken, messed up, fallen and sinful world to establish God’s Kingdom, and to bring hope, freedom, peace and healing.  Ultimately, He came to restore and to reconcile what was righteously God’s back to Him.  What did we do to deserve this? Nothing.  This is grace.

Through grace and faith, those who have been reconciled to God can now stand in the presence of God each day, and every day clothed with His righteousness, in an ongoing process of Him healing us of past wounds, restoring us back to Him so that we are not lacking anything.

Wouldn’t you want to share this good news with all the people you love and come in contact with?  There is still plenty of people today that have yet to be reconciled back to Jesus.  There is a lot of people out there that don’t even know that God has made this free gift available to them.

God is saying to us now that we have a purpose, and we have a mission. We were saved for a mission and our mission and Jesus’ mission are now one in the same; and in the same way that God used Jesus and his 12 disciples to change the world and reconcile the world back to himself, God wants to use each one of us to do the same.

We are called and sent by God. Would you believe it?

Is this overwhelming to you?  See, the good news is that not only did God entrust this extremely important mission to us but he doesn’t leave us by ourselves to accomplish this task.  He gave us the Holy Spirit.  Jesus lives in us now, empowering us, guiding us, strengthening us and protecting us.  This is big!  This means that not only as Christ’s ambassadors do we represent Jesus, but it also means that we have access to everything He has access to.

Will you accept this mission? God wants to use you, will you let him?

Get a copy of this powerful message from our podcast.  It will change your life.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Mike.  He writes frequently on the topics of faith and business.  See more of his writings here.  This post is re-post for 29:11 readers.

When Peter and John were standing before the Sanhedrin, filled with the Holy Spirit and made the speech. The responses were ‘…When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus..’

Being in the circle of highly educated and very capable people, it’s very easy to rely on our own knowledge and strengths. More often than not, our reaction to problems is to figure it out from our wit, our past experiences and our occupational know-how. Most of the time, it’s fine. Life goes on and people think you are smart.

Quite honestly, most of us can get by in this life without really having to rely on God. If you are truly honest, you’d agree. We are living in a comfortable bubble, well educated, at a high paying job and unless something terrifying happens, this is what we call – life.

Is that it? To me, it’s a painting of a wasted life.

I wonder how our lives will be different, if we lived on the edge, lived according the leading of the Holy Spirit. Will people then see that it’s not our strength or our experiences in life, but that it is God who is doing it through us, and such that His name be glorified, and not ours?

For everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. Just imagine how much more great things can come out of you, if you only allowed yourself to be led by the Spirit, stepped out of your comfort zone, had bit more faith than just what’s in your hand. For we are not given a spirit of timidity, but spirit of power, of love and of self-control.

Who is it that people see when they see you?