Hearing God: Longing for What Only God Can Do

Barn window, Monroe County

Several years ago Redeemer changed its Mission Statement to read:

The Mission of Redeemer Fellowship Church is:

To heal the sick

To deliver the oppressed

To raise the dead

To proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God

and that Jesus is Lord and King

I will never forget the Sunday morning I shared this with our people. Many applauded and cheered. In retrospect, I am so glad we did this. Our Mission still stands.

Here are two reasons I think this is the mission of every Jesus-follower.

#1 - This was the mission of Jesus while he was on earth.

#2 - As this mission becomes reality, it will be clear that God is doing it, and not ourselves. 

Less and less am I captivated by what humanity can do on its own strength and with its own intellect. Of course many of these things are good. But if Christianity and Church are only about what people can do without God, then I stand uninterested.

Dallas Willard writes:

"Life with results beyond the natural always depends on intimate interactions between us and God, who is therefore present. These results could never come from you alone." (Willard, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God, p. 66)

Needed in our world, now: results that could never come from us alone.