Church Planters Champion On-Going Transformation

 

Hello my brother, hello my sister, my name is Dean Davis and this is Multiply, a

podcast that provides a word of encouragement for village church planters.

As church planters, you and I have the wonderful privilege of proclaiming the

Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ. We confidently tell people that,

although the world we live in is broken, Jesus, by his death and resurrection,

has made a way for us to be restored to God. It is our privilege to help men

and women, boys and girls put their trust in Christ. When they do, they

experience forgiveness from sins and begin a new life.

I remember when leaders from my church shared this Good News with me. I

could hardly believe it. I could hardly believe that I could be forgiven and that

Jesus would take my guilt away. I was so hungry for God. I wanted to have

that peace and joy my new friends were telling me about. Soon I did trust

Christ and His peace flooded into my heart.

I am so thankful for my church. Though they rejoiced in my new birth in

Christ, they knew that I was just getting started on the path to a transformed

life. They knew that sinful ways of thinking and sinful ways of living that I had

learned before I came to Christ would need to be dealt with now that I was

born again. So they kept teaching me the word of God. They taught me that

the will of God for my life was always good and that I could trust Jesus and

obey him. In fact, they taught me that the only way to be happy in Jesus was

to trust him and obey him.

I can’t tell you how thankful I am for this patient, teaching that was both firm

and clear. I am so glad that after I was born again, they taught me, “Dean, you

have begun well, but there is so much that needs to happen for you to be

transformed. What about you? Who helped you understand that the Christian

life is more than the new birth, it is a life of putting off our earthly nature and

putting on a new way of living? If you have the chance, take a moment today

to thank those who helped you learn to walk with Christ in ways that honor

him.

Wise church planters understand this need to help new believers be

transformed. Wise church planters are faithful evangelists who proclaim the

Good News and call people to be born again. But wise church planters don’t

stop there. Their goal, like the Apostle Paul’s is to present people complete in

Christ.

When Paul wrote to the Colossians believers, they had just begun their new life

in Christ. He said to them in chapter 3, “Put to death, therefore, whatever

belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires

and greed, which is idolatry.  Because of these, the wrath of God is

coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.  But now

you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice,

slander, and filthy language from your lips.  Do not lie to each other, since you

have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new

self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 

As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with

compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each

other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone.

Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  And over all these virtues put on love, which

binds them all together in perfect unity.

As you follow this example of Paul, as you help new believers be transformed

by Christ, wonderful change will come to the communities where you plant

churches.

This is Multiply offering a word of encouragement to village church planters.

Be encouraged, God is with us!

#EncouragementforVillageChurchPlanters #Colossians #LifeTransformation

www.vcpoencouragement.org