...Open the Doors; See all the people!

Continued from Yesterday!

Now go to the last book of the Bible – the book of Revelation. I’ve also written out this passage below. Look at chapter 20…Revelation chapter 20 as John describes a horrific scene that will one day become reality. Start reading in verse 11. John says,

“Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, (now please underline the rest of the verse) he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

This is why I am so passionate about seeing Grace Church meet as many people as possible. It is because hell is a very real place and each person in our community is someone’s mom, someone’s dad, someone’s son, someone’s daughter, someone’s grandchild, someone’s brother, someone’s sister, someone’s friend, who will spend eternity there if the church doesn’t reach them with the Good News of Jesus.

Let me challenge you to do something. This Sunday buy the Sunday edition of the Lancaster Newspaper. Once you do – pull out the obituary section. I encourage you to take a serious look at this section. Read every name. Look at every picture. All of these people will have died right around us this past week. Now Jesus said that there are two roads. There is a broad road that leads to destruction (meaning to hell) and many are on that road. Then there is a narrow road that leads to eternal life (speaking of heaven) and few find it.

So according to Jesus illustration, are more people going to hell or to heaven? More people are going to hell. Many are on the broad road that leads to destruction but few find the narrow road that leads to eternal life. Now if that is true than some of the people in this section of Sunday’s newspaper will be in heaven. Praise the Lord. But most of them will most likely be in hell at that very moment. That is why I am so passionate about seeing God use the church to meet as many people as possible and help move them to where He wants them to be.That’s why I am excited about the growth we have seen over the past 6 years as a church. That’s why my prayer every day is that this growth would continue as God blesses us with more fruit.

That is my passion. I don’t just love being in the church. I love seeing God use the church to reach as many people as possible. I pray that’s your passion as well.

I love the church. In fact, I still love the little kid’s game we did with our hands. “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.” And that is my prayer for Grace Church that we will always be passionate about opening the doors of our church and seeing the people that we are meeting and moving for Jesus.