In this sermon, Andy Bradrick discusses the Great Commission and how it applies to our lives as individuals, families, and members of the church. He emphasizes that each believer is called to be a missionary witness of the Lord Jesus Christ and view their own communities as their mission field. Bradrick shares his own experiences in growing in obedience to the Great Commission and highlights the importance of relying on the power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to fulfill this command. He asserts that the responsibility to share the gospel and bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ extends beyond the apostles and church leaders to every believer. Bradrick encourages believers to begin witnessing right where they are and to actively participate in fulfilling the Great Commission, rather than just passively supporting missions.

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Andy Bradrick with the following message entitled, Mission Field Main Street. Well, good morning. Well, good morning. I hope you all are not on mental overload, that by God's grace, He would enlarge our hearts and our minds to continue to look into his word and continue to receive instruction and encouragement. And I thank you for being here this morning.

I'm standing up here with a little bit of fear and trepidation to share on the Great Commission, largely because I feel like I need to be sitting in the seat of the learner. And my only encouragement, my only hope from standing up here and sharing is that I might be able to encourage some of you. I feel like a child that's just taken the training wheels off of his bicycle and my hope is that I might, by my wobbling, wavering obedience to what God has commanded here, might in some way encourage you in starting to apply the great commission to your life and to walk in obedience to it. I'm going to set right out in front what my goal, my intent this morning is to kind of focus our minds. I know we've been absorbing many things and I want to just put right at the beginning What I hope to accomplish in our time together My my goal and My intent is to question to ask the question.

How does the Great Commission? Apply to our lives individually as believers, as families, as members of the church? How can we practically live out the Great Commission? And my intent is to persuade you that we're each called to be missionary witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that we have to view our own communities as our mission field. I'm also going to be sharing just personally from our own growth, things we've learned as a family as we seek to grow in obedience to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Just as a backdrop, today in Christianity, modern Christianity, I think we've lost sight of the obligation that is upon every one of us as believers to fulfill the Great Commission. We've been content to assume that our role in obeying the Great Commission is satisfied by maybe just giving to missions or praying for missionaries. We tend to heap the responsibility of discharging this instruction of the Lord Jesus upon the shoulders of those noble few called to the mission field, those who are gifted to be evangelists, while the vast body of the church contents itself by merely supporting and playing a supporting role to those who are gifted and who are called. And my intent this morning is not to in any way question or to take away from the gifting or the calling of individuals to the foreign mission field but is to stir us up as the body of the Lord Jesus Christ to see that we all have a duty We all have a responsibility in this area. I'd like to take you to look at a text this morning but before we do that would you pray with me and would you stand and Pray with me.

Heavenly Father God, we come before you Lord this morning. And my prayer, oh Lord, is that you would enlarge your hearts and our minds to receive more of you, Lord God, more from your word. Lord, that you would give us hearts and minds like a sponge to soak up, Father, all the things that we have been learning. Father, that we would not become complacent, Father, and gloss over, Father, these lessons, but Father, that we might be faithful hearers and doers of the Word. Pray, Lord, that you would speak through me this morning, that you would give me courage and grace to glorify your name and the calling that you put upon each of our lives.

I pray this in the name of Jesus, amen. You may be seated. If you take your Bibles and turn to Acts, this is a familiar passage, Acts 1, 6. We read, so when they had come together, they were asking him, saying, Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom of Israel? He said to them, it's not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by his own authority.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest parts of the earth. And after he had said these things, he was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received him out of their sight. There's a lot of things we could look at in this passage and I know there's others that have broken apart this passage but my focus this morning is to ask two questions. Number one, who is being spoken to particularly in verse 8 here with this rephrasing or this this account given by Luke of the Great Commission, who is being spoken to and what is it that is being commanded of those spoken to?

Well if we look at the context here it's pretty obvious that Jesus is speaking to the 11 disciples. That this command, this commissioning of them that they are to be witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ is a commission that he is giving to them as ministers of the church as those who will go forth and witness, be eye account witnesses to the life, the death, the burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. But I want to suggest to you, and as has been suggested before, that This instruction doesn't stop with the eleven disciples, the apostles, but by extension extends to every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to just show you a couple of hints of this. If you would turn to the next chapter, Acts chapter 2, we see the initial fulfillment of this promise that the Holy Spirit would come upon them and that they would testify and be witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we see in Acts chapter 2 the apostles standing and preaching and bearing witness on the day of Pentecost. We see the clear presentation of the gospel. We see the result, immediate result as the adding to and the building of the church and the building up of the believers. Three thousand new believers testifying to the grace of God. We see earnest devotion in the church, devotion to the word of God, devotion to fellowship of the brethren, devotion to the breaking of bread, devotion to prayer and dependence upon God and awe at the mighty works of God in their midst.

And if you go down to verses 46 and 47, we see a beautiful thing happening here. Verse 46, it says, day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. What's going on here? We have the ministry of the 11 apostles preaching, teaching, testifying to the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, declaring the gospel.

And then we see the natural outworking of that, the transmigration of the apostles' doctrine from the church, from the teaching to the home. And I believe you see right here it continuing right out through the homes being disseminated into the communities that the believers live in to the non-believers around them. We have believers digesting on the word of God in their homes, fellowshipping with other believers around the table, discussing what was taught by the apostles and the doctrine that is taught here. We have praising God for his gracious work in their lives. Just testifying to one another and rejoicing, a heart of rejoicing in what God is doing in their midst.

But then you have this phrase here that says, and having favor with all the people. What does having favor with all the people mean? Does it mean that everybody around them was just in awe of them because they were such a godly upright group of people and that everybody treated them with favor and respect. I want to suggest to you, based on the context of the last half of this verse, that I believe that God was giving them favor because of the work that he was doing in their lives that they were then in turn having opportunities to give an account of the hope that was within them. They were having favor with their neighbors to be able to speak of the mighty things of God and to declare the gospel.

And this verse finishes, and the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. And So we see the church growing and the great commission being fulfilled not only by the preaching of the 11, not only by the ministry of the church, but as that ministry fleshes itself out and carries itself out into the homes and into the lives of the individual believers as they engage with the non-believers around them. That they are glorifying God. That they are testifying to what God has done in their life and they are having opportunity to witness for the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to take you really quickly to to one other passage in Acts chapter 8 verse 4.

We read this, therefore those who had been scattered went about preaching the word. I should back up and give the verse before because it sets the context. But Saul began ravaging the church entering house after house and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison. Therefore those who had been scattered went about preaching the word." Again who is being scattered here? Is it the church leaders?

Is it the 11 that are being scattered and going about? If we go down to verse 14 we read that the apostles are still in Jerusalem. So This is not the apostles. This is not the leadership of the church in Jerusalem. This is the believers that are being scattered.

This is individuals. This is families being scattered and going out and about and they are carrying with them this great commission calling, they are preaching the word of God. And to give an example, the next verse follows of one believer who we've already met previously in the book of Acts. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and began proclaiming Christ to them. I don't want to belabor this, but I want to show you this jump.

It's easy to sit with great men of God and hear them preach about the Great Commission and think, oh, if I could just be one of them, I could do this. Oh, if they would just come and evangelize my neighbors, oh, if they could just come and speak in my community, speak to my relatives, speak to my family members, then they might know and they might believe. They might hear the word of God, but I want you to see here, brothers and sisters, that God is calling Each and every one of us is under obligation to fulfill this command given by the Lord Jesus Christ to bear witness to Him, to give glory to Him. In the everyday circumstances that we live in, with the everyday ordinary people that we bump into or we come in contact with, whatever the situation we have, that we give glory to God and we glorify God by declaring to them the great things that God has done. I want to go back to Acts 1-8 and just look briefly at what is being instructed there what is being instructed there and see how that might apply to us.

First of all, we see here in Acts 1-8, Jesus' instruction. He says, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. It is so easy to think of our duty to proclaim the gospel, to bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and immediately try to go out and start doing something or to put into play a plan of action of how I am going to accomplish or how I am going to act upon this command. But the instruction of the Lord Jesus, first of all, is that we are to follow in the footsteps of the Holy Spirit. Without the consecrating and empowering work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, all our labors, all our testimony is an exercise in futility.

So we need the power of the Holy Spirit. We need the power of God working in our own life. We need the consecrating work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and our life. We need him to bring to our mind the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is an activity of the Holy Spirit.

Have you ever had an opportunity, an opportunity has opened up before you to speak or to say something to someone? And you know you have that nudge in the ribs from the Holy Spirit, okay, here's your opportunity. I've given you this opportunity. And you completely freeze up. You know, your hands get kind of cold and clammy.

And what do I say, where do I begin? What if I mess up? We need to realize that when God commands us to do something, He also gives us the grace to do it. He doesn't expect us to do it in our own power and that we have the responsibility to rely upon the grace of God, the work of the Holy Spirit in our heart and our life, and we need to trust that He will give us the words to say. This isn't an excuse for not preparing beforehand and arming ourselves with the scripture, but we need to rely upon the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and realize that every opportunity we have, that God is speaking through us, and God is declaring the gospel through us, and it's his power that saves men and women.

It's not our own power. And as we rely upon that, we rely upon His grace working through us. The Spirit empowers us and we speak forth in His power, not in our own power. We speak in His wisdom and not in our own wisdom. The second thing here enjoined upon us is that you shall be witnesses.

Notice first of all that there's no exceptions. There's no excuses. That this is for everyone. You shall be witnesses. It's non-optional.

It's not if you feel like it, if you're having a good day, if you don't have a headache, if you're not in a hurry. You shall be my witnesses. You shall be my witnesses. Witness is one who testifies to that which they know and have experienced. You can't testify.

You can't share about the work of God in the heart of a believer. Bringing life, new life. Bringing cleansing and release from sin. You can't speak about that if you haven't experienced that in your own heart and life. And So first of all, we need to understand the Gospel and have been saved ourselves, believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, called out to God to save us from our sins.

And then, If we have truly been saved by God, if God has indeed revealed his son to us, we therefore have a platform, a basis to share and to testify to the grace of God in our own lives. And we can witness. We can bear witness to that. This word witness signifies one not only who bears witness with their words but seals it with their life. Backs it up.

It's also translated scripturally as a martyr. And so we need to not only testify with our words, but also with our actions in our life. Thirdly, we see a progression here in the last part of the verse. You shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the outermost parts of the earth. I want to encourage you, I love this, the way that the Lord starts with us each simply, right where we are, right now.

He doesn't save us and then say to us, okay, pack your bags, you're headed to the mission field in Africa. Now there may be some situations in which he does that, But God is a God who delights in taking his children from the first step to the second step to the third step. He is a faithful father and he trains us to begin right where we are. Look at this. It says, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem.

That is exactly where the disciples were when the the instruction came. They were to start right here, right now, in the place that was familiar to them, in the place where they were at. And then it is not a restricted mission field or calling, but it is one that is ever expanding. And as doors of opportunity come and as God opens doors for the gospel it is one that continues to lead us on in faithfulness and obedience to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ to bear witness to him. And so we have the instruction here to begin right here right now to be faithful in the moment to be faithful in the present.

I want to just share from our own growth as a family in the understanding and application of this. My wife and I were blessed by the grace of God to be raised in homeschooling families, Christian families, brought up in the teaching and instruction of the Lord. Our parents were diligent to shelter us from many of the destructive influences and the destructive nature of the culture around us. Our closest relationships growing up were nurtured with our family members, our parents, our siblings, and with other believers of like mind. We had a blessed upbringing and a godly heritage that was passed on to us.

But one thing that my wife and I noticed as we were newly married was that we felt completely unprepared and inadequate to share the gospel with the world around us. And as we read scripture and as we studied and prayed together, the words of Acts 1-8 here seem to keep ringing in our ears, you shall be my witnesses. And the question came to us, where do we begin? Where do we begin? After all, we were seeking to be, seeking to raise our family, to protect our family from the culture.

We, like many homeschoolers, lived in a rural setting, and our closest neighbors were a quarter mile away. We were pursuing an agricultural lifestyle and we had limited contact with the world around us. We didn't have relationships with which to really evangelize other than meetings at the grocery store or when we went into town. We didn't really have very many opportunities to begin to be witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ and so we struggled with this question how do we even begin to to fulfill what God has called us to do here. The other thing that we yearn for was to have examples, other believers to learn from in this area.

We yearn for a church that was concerned about the lost and had an urgency of fulfilling the Great Commission. And so to overcome all this, we began studying God's Word and we began praying, God, teach us. We want to learn. We want to learn. Where do we begin?

And so we began looking for opportunities to grow, to get outside of our comfort field. We began looking for those believers in our local area that had been gifted in the area of evangelism to go and follow them about and learn from them. One gentleman that we knew of was an older gentleman who God had gifted in the area of evangelism. He was not a very learned man in a lot of other areas. He had a very simple childlike faith and this man was known in our community for being somewhat eccentric for the Lord Jesus Christ.

This man would walk down the street and he would pass out gospel tracts to everyone he passed. And if he saw someone he knew he would stop, he would talk with them, and if there was a need right there on the on the street as he's walking down the street he would put his hand upon them and he would pray for that need right there. And the Lord pointed this man out to me and I saw that though this man was very poor and very poorly educated, yet in the things of God he was extremely rich. And so I befriended this man and went with him, asked if I could just follow him around sometime when He's going out and I went with him and I went to places I would never have gone or even knew that existed in our community. Gone into trailer parks and into dilapidated homes and sat with people who had the liquor containers on their counter and talked with them and he would speak to them about their spiritual condition and where they were with the Lord Jesus Christ.

And these people would open up to him and they would share their struggles and he would encourage them and he would pray for them and I was just in awe here I a young man who was homeschooled A young man who was taught the scriptures from childhood feeling completely inadequate, completely unprepared to do what this man was doing. And I share this because I think we can all find those. If we will humble ourselves, if we will seek God and ask him for those who will teach us, we can find those who will teach us, who will give us examples in how we can communicate the gospel in our own neighborhoods. And so from this gentleman's example I began going out in the trailer park and go out and play some basketball with the young men there and then stop and talk with them about what was going on in their life and what were the struggles that they were facing and pray with them and encourage them. I'm getting a little ahead of myself but one of the things that we began with was seeking to facilitate the local church and opportunities to reach out to the community, trying to organize church services out in the local park where we would preach and we would sing and with the hope and the intent that people would hear and be drawn in.

We assisted others that were having evangelistic type meetings and seeking to draw in the unsaved to hear the Gospel. And we were frustrated with this not only because there was a perhaps not the clearest focus, biblical focus in the design and the structure of those meetings but also because there was not a response and we began being convicted by Scripture. Acts 5 20 There's an account of the apostles when they are put into prison And an angel of the Lord comes and he releases them and the angel says to them go Stand and speak of all these things go stand and speak and we realized our call to the unbelievers in our community was to come sit and listen. And we were putting the obligation upon them to come and hear the gospel when God had placed upon us the duty to go and to speak. We wanted them to leave their comfort zone.

We wanted them to come to us when we were unwilling to leave our comfort zone, when we were unwilling to go to them, into their neighborhoods, into their homes, and go to them and speak to them. About this time too, I had the opportunity to work with another man who was going door to door in our community and this was a tremendous opportunity for me to get over the fear of man. We were going door to door, not so much to present the gospel, but as to begin or engage in relationship with people. And we would ask this question to them. We would ask them, can you know for certain that when you die you will go to heaven?

And it was amazing the kind of responses that we got. People who were church, we knew, attended church, how muddled their understanding was of the Gospel and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the overwhelming emphasis upon works for attaining salvation. And it opened the door for us then to begin to speak to these people about who the Lord Jesus Christ was, who God is, the holiness and the righteousness of God, the perfect work of the Lord Jesus Christ, how great a sinner that we are and how greatly we need salvation and we would open up scripture to them and show them what the word of God said. This exercise for me provided a couple of things First of all it forced me to face my fear of man It forced me to face my fear of man and To acknowledge it before God to pray God give me grace and give me the strength and then as we would go up to the doors we would have no other choice but then to rely upon God's grace to trust him. I've been challenged by a little instruction that Paul gives Timothy in 2 Timothy 4-5.

He tells Timothy to do the work of an evangelist. And I like the word work there because it's not something that we naturally want to do. And oftentimes as Christians in our churches we become very comfortable and unless we make a habit, we make a schedule, we make an intentional purpose to go out and do the work of an evangelist, it doesn't get done. We are always putting it off. And so this going door to door in our community, we do this every Tuesday night during the summer.

And I would know Tuesday night, it didn't matter whether I felt like it, whether I wanted to, that's what we were doing. We were doing the work of an evangelist and I would encourage you if we don't make a priority if we aren't intentional about reaching out to our neighborhood, reaching out to the unsaved around us. If we aren't intentional, if we don't make a priority of it, we'll continually put it off. We'll continually let it slide to the back burner. So what I would encourage you is, as I would encourage myself to make a priority of this, to be intentional about this.

We sought to reach out in our community and to develop relationships with people and have them over to our home. Several of the people that we developed relationships with were from other countries, immigrants to the community. And this provided a wonderful opportunity for us to get to know them, to have them into our home, to be in their home, and to build a relationship with them, and to not only communicate with our words but our lives the power and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amazing opportunity too just as homeschooling families to learn about people and other cultures. One thing we did learn in developing evangelistic relationships is that from the very outset we have to be very careful about what the focus and intent of this relationship is.

It's very easy in a relationship, especially with needy people, to be sucked in to being the answer to every question in their life. To have them run to you for for every need. And it's not that we don't want to help other people and it's not that we don't want to encourage them and assist them in any way we can, but we must maintain clarity of what our purpose and our intent is. In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul talks about his focus and his intent when he was in the church at Corinth. He talks about the singleness of purpose that he had.

And in 1 Corinthians 2, 2 he says, for I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And we learned this lesson late in many relationships when we began getting calls, can you come over and help me with my plumbing? Can you come over and help me with my finances?" And these relationships began to be more and more time consuming that we had to say, yes, I'll come over and help you with your plumbing, but I'm going to speak to you about Jesus Christ when I do it. Yes I'll come over and help you with your finances, but I'm going to speak about Jesus Christ while we're together. And we need to maintain a clarity of purpose.

It's easy to set ourselves up as the answer to every question when our purpose, our intent is to point everyone to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so in developing evangelistic relationships, this is one area in which we are growing and in seeking to to maintain a clarity of purpose Well in just living out and applying the call of the gospel upon us, the call of the Great Commission upon our lives as a family. We began to see how our dream of having our little farmstead and having our chickens and our cows to milk and our sheep and spinning our own wool and making our own cheese, how our time was being stretched and upon that we had an ever increasing number of children to disciple and to nurture and something had to go. And as much as our agrarian lifestyle was close to our heart, we began to see that God commands us to raise our children for the Lord Jesus Christ. God commands us to be faithful witnesses, but God doesn't necessarily command us to live in the country, to make our own cheese, to raise our own chickens.

And so we began cutting back on all the things that entangled us. And God called us as a family to actually move from the country back in to the little town that we live by and he located us right on the main street running through town. And we have seen God's providential hand in that because we have become a living epistle seen and read by all men. Everybody that drives down through our little town of 2, 500 people stops and takes note of what's going on at the Bradrick household. And the Lord has used this to allow us to focus and to see this community is our mission field.

We are living on the mission field. And it's given us a mission field mindset. Some of the areas that we're seeking to cultivate faithfulness here in the community that God has given us is by learning the power of hospitality, learning the evangelistic effect of hospitality and bringing people into our home. I remember a testimony of a missionary who was on the mission field in Portugal, had been there a number of years, and not seen one person come to Christ as a result of their missionary efforts. But there was a housekeeper who came into their home and was with them as a family.

And as a result of being in their home, even though she wasn't technically on the front line of their their mission efforts she gave her heart to the Lord Jesus Christ and she was impacted she was influenced and I want Each of us to recognize how powerful it is for us to open up our homes, how powerful it is to bring others, not to display how wonderful we are, but to display how good and gracious our Lord and Savior is and to give glory and praise to him. Having discipleship in your home, having Bible studies, bringing others, believers, new believers into your home. We have with our church a Bible study that meets in homes and the Lord has blessed our fellowship with a couple who are new believers and it is so invigorating to be around those who are hearing the truths of Scripture for the very first time and who have a hunger and a yearning to learn more and more. And these people have been part of a home bible study that we've had in our home as part of our church and they have soaked up just being with us and studying the word of God and studying it not in a, studying it in the context of being in the hospitality of the home.

And I would encourage you to look for those opportunities, to disciple others, bring them into your home, speak of the things of the Lord. We see that in Acts chapter 2, the New Testament church, bringing the teaching of the church and discussing it as a family bringing others believers in bringing neighbors and unbelievers in and speaking and passing on the truths of the Word of God in their home and this home-based discipleship. Another extremely important aspect of being a gospel witness in our community is our faithfulness to our local church. Being faithful parts of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus told the disciples in the book of John that all men will know that you are my disciples by the love that you have for one another.

And by being a faithful part of the body of Christ in our local community, we testify to the truth of the word of God, the power of the word of God. And Faithfulness in building up the body of Christ is essential for our testimony and our witness to the watching world and to the community around us. Well, I want to draw this to a close and just give some concluding thoughts here. First of all, I want you to see that the Great Commission applies to each and every one of us. That not one of us is excluded, exempted.

That God's requirement upon us is more than just giving to missionaries on the mission field. He wants us to do this. He wants us to support those who are called. But he wants more from us. He wants more from us than just praying for those who are lost.

We need to do that as well. We need to seek the Lord and petition the Lord. But he wants us to go and to be witnesses, to testify to him, to testify of his own work in our own lives, to testify to the gospel. Secondly, I want you to see that God calls us to be witnesses for him wherever we are. It's so easy for us to think the missions is something that has to be done on a foreign mission field.

When the Lord started to lay these things upon our hearts. That's what we assumed, that a call to be a witness meant God's calling us to the mission field and we had a burden for reaching Muslims and we had one wise, godly older person in our church who took us aside and said that's great I'm glad you have a zeal for reaching the loss I'm glad you have a calling for reaching Muslims she said start here in our own community There are so many Muslims in our own little community who need to hear the gospel. Start right here. We have to realize that not only has God called us to start in our own communities, but in the day and age that we live in, the world is coming to us. We have tremendous opportunities for impacting the world right in our own communities if we will look for those opportunities to engage others, immigrants and people of other nationalities.

We have the world coming to our doorstep and God graciously tells us we start right where we are and then we continue to be faithful in following him and pursuing those open doors that he opens for the Gospel. Seek opportunities to intentionally engage your community. Be regular. Be consistent about it. Discipline yourselves for the purpose of godliness.

Make the evangelism of your neighbors, your community, a priority in your schedule. Put it on your schedule. Find time, carve out time, make time to do it. If we don't, it's so easy to put it off. As bodies of believers, as churches, we need to seek ways to engage as churches and to seek for opportunities to encourage people to get out into their community and to be witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ.

In your evangelistic relationships, keep your purpose clear. Keep your purpose clear for your own sake, for the sake of those that you are engaging with. Keep the Lord Jesus Christ central to everything and glorify God in your daily life. I want to look in closing at 2 Corinthians 2, 14 through 16. I've been encouraged by this passage.

2 Corinthians 2 14 through 16. Paul is rejoicing in the gospel commission that he has been given. He says, but thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing to one an aroma from death to death and the other an aroma from life to life and who is adequate for these things. First of all, I'm encouraged by that last question, who is adequate for these things?

If the apostle Paul is saying who is adequate for these things and he is feeling himself inadequate, my sense of inadequacy at the opportunities I have, those open doors, those nudges from the Holy Spirit, okay, this is your opportunity. My sense of inadequacy is a proper feeling. If I felt adequate I would trust in myself, but my sense of inadequacy is a protection for me that I will trust in the power of God. Paul testifies here. He says, but thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ.

And the picture here is that of a triumphing conquering general entering into the Roman city leading his troops in triumph and those who are conquered and those who are vanquished and those who were subject to the general following before them and Paul is picturing himself as one of those men who were following in the train behind the conquering King Jesus Christ. And in communicating the gospel we need to realize and we need to recognize that Jesus Christ is the conquering King. The battle has already been won and our duty is just to follow behind and testify of his victory and his battle. It says secondly here that God is manifesting through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of him in every place. That means that you and I are emitting an aroma.

What kind of an aroma, not a smell, but what kind of scent is coming from our life? Is it the scent of a life that is given to the Lord Jesus Christ? That is surrendered to his Lordship? That is daily living out the power of the gospel in our life, that is daily confessing our sin and turning to God for his grace and his work in our hearts. We have the opportunity to glorify God, to manifest his grace, his goodness, and to declare his work.

It's not our work, it's his work. And this is to be our joy, it's to be our confidence, it's to be our power as we rest in the power of God working through us and in us, opening the doors, testifying through us of his great work. Would you close with me in prayer? Father God, we thank you, Lord, for your word. We thank you, O Lord, for your faithfulness to lead us as little children.

We thank you, O Lord, for giving us grace, Father, to follow every command that you give us. And I pray, O Lord, that you would sanctify to us the communities that we live in, that you would see the holy calling that we have to be witnesses, to testify of your great goodness, your powerful work through the gospel. To point our neighbors, The people that we bump into at the gas station and the grocery store, our co-workers, those we have contact with, may we point them to the Lord Jesus Christ. May we be emboldened Father by your Spirit. Father, may we not fear, but may we put our confidence in the power and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

For this I pray in the name of Jesus. The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life and to the establishment of biblically ordered churches. For more information, resources, and products, please visit our website at www.ncfic.org. You