Audio Sermon - Title: Missions
by Francis Chan
Being focused on the mission is what brings your family together. Some of you may be thinking, "Man I'd love to serve God but first we gotta get our marriage together." So you focus on your family, you focus on your marriage, you focus on your kids because you're thinking, "We're not the model family, I shouldn't be leading, I shouldn't be teaching", and I'm saying if you try to do that it's never gonna work. What I want to say to you is being focused on the mission is actually what brings your family together. Otherwise it's like saying "I really want to get in shape so I can go jogging". Actually if you jog, you'll get in shape! Think, the whole idea of "Well I don't want to serve yet". Marriage has been from day one, "wow, were supposed to make disciples!" We were married a couple weeks when I said "I think were supposed to start a church." Okay but that's when the world say "Don't do that! That first year of marriage is supposed to be just for the two of you! Don't get into ministry! Focus on each other! It needs to be about yourselves. " Maybe you listen to that and then it is like, well once you have a kid its: "Well it's a new baby so you gotta really nurture those first couple of years!". Then what? "Well now their in school so until there 18 you really gotta just focus on your family". Well I am saying that's going to destroy your family and it creates a terrible model for your kids that says "Oh okay family comes first. Serving God?, we can wait until its convenient". That's going to destroy the very thing that bonds us together! The fact that are on a mission together! It's like Jesus said "If you seek the Kingdom first . .". If you seek first, number one, what is the most important thing? What did Jesus rise from the grave to tell me to do? Disciple! And as I seek Him first the other stuff will happen. That is why the passage of Matthew 6 tells the people (paraphrasing) "Don't be like everyone else in the world, the people who don't know God" He calls them the pagans. He says THEY think I have to get all this money so I can get food and their worried about clothing, their worried about this and that. But God says I don't want you to be that way. That's the way THEY do it. You seek first the Kingdom and all this other stuff will be given to you. You put me(Him) first. That's what I'm saying. When we put the family first and say "Okay we gotta protect this, we have to guard it, have to focus on our marriage", and you make of that your emphasis then you are just like everyone else out there that just wants a happy marriage. But God says for you to seek the Kingdom FIRST and watch what happens. You just watch what happens in your family. Watch what happens in your marriage. Watch what happens with your kids. I was scared when I left here. There was a fear, thinking this is what I know and this could mess up the family and everyone warning me saying " Oh but your kids you know and your tearing your kids away" saying this or that, "Their going to hate you". And I'm thinking this is the very thing that made us so tight as a family. I didn't realize that but do you know what it's like to be in India and hold hands as a family and say "God is this where you want us to stay? Is this it? ". Where we don't know anyone where we didn't have friends we didn't have family. I can't tell you the bond of that. Sure it's fun to go on a family focus vacation, but something about serving the God of the universe and the unity that takes place when your on a mission together, it just happens. How many of you have ever gone on a short term mission trip? Even just a couple weeks. Think about the people you went with on that mission trip. Now were those people you would normally hang out with? A lot of times no right? You get there and you think "Oh no, I'm gonna be with you for two weeks?" It could be most awkward with all of these different types of people! But what happens by the end of the trip?! You think "Wow, I actually miss that old lady" or maybe that little punk kid. You may think this is weird but you've become this family! But why? Did you get together and say "You guys lets try to be really tight"? No. You got on a mission together and by the end your thinking "No way I love these guys . . . I miss these guys". Why? because when you seek the Kingdom first, all the other things come TOGETHER! I'm not some marriage guru to say here's how you do this and this and this. All I know is I've tried to serve and tried to lead my family wherever the Spirit is leading us to go and as that happened I starting thinking "Man! Look at our family, this is ridiculous! our kids are holding hands!, hugging each other!, loving each other! Can't get enough of each other!". Crazy things start happening, and you may think "Wow, we weren't even pursuing that. We were pursuing the Kingdom and everything else fell into place". Let me tell you one story and then I will finish. I shared at a Forever Found Conference. It was beautiful, all about human trafficking. That, even that. If we could only learn. if you went there as a couple and you hear about kids that are raped for 14 hours a day everyday of their lives and you go there as a couple or as a family and suddenly you get your mind off of yourself and your little problems of "Oh I got a B-!" ya know? And you think "Are you kidding me? People live like that?" and suddenly your whole family goes, "Come on you guys we gotta do something about this, we've got to figure it out". THAT is the stuff that pulls your family together. That is the stuff that brings you as a couple off of yourselves and the "Oh you're not pleasing me!", "Well your not pleasing me either!", and you might actually step back and think oh my God, 70 million people are starving in the Ethiopia region right now with the famine going on? Like they are just starving and dieing, right now. Another one just died. You start focusing on that and decide "We've got to live for this, this is what God created us for". You talk about unity? That's how you bring yourselves together, its not by focusing on each other more and more and more and more.
- a missionary to India/Asia/ & America
- a missionary to India/Asia/ & America