Pastor Gail – Scripture Reading, Opening Prayer
1. Father, we thank You for today, You alone deserve all of our praise, Lord. So, today, Lord, as we gather together, we want You to be pleased with all that we do. Would you like to take your Bible. If you don’t have one. We’re encouraging people to use paper Bibles. We’re finding that if people don’t use paper Bibles, that they kind of don’t know what’s going on. They’re forgetting where books in the Bible are.
2. Psalm 121. Oh, I love this Psalm, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains — where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip — he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you — the Lord is your shield at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm —
he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.”
3. As we begin this morning, I want to ask you, let’s join our voices, just for the situation in Israel and Gaza, Russia and the Ukraine, Sudan. We are the children of God, here all gathered together, and our heart needs to break for these situations. That God, would somehow help those people. Let’s all pray in our own way, let’s pray together. Father right now, oh, Lord, I thank You God, oh Lord, that You see and understand beyond anything that we possibly can. You’re Sovereign and I Lord, that we live in a fallen world. I know the heart of man is dark. I know that man wants power, God and control God, but I also know that You have a plan Lord, that we want to look beyond the heart of man into the heart of You oh God, and pray up to Your Heart, oh God. Oh, Lord, help the children God, be with the mothers and the fathers, we pray oh God, that if it be Your will to cause this war to stop. Each one of them oh Lord. And I pray that the witness of who you are, oh God, that Lord, you are preparing a Kingdom, God, where there will be no more tears or sorrow, no more death or dying, no more pain or suffering God. I pray that somehow God, all might know, that though in this life we may have trouble, oh God, but You are there, Lord. I pray that somehow, Lord, that the voices of those in those places, will always rise. They will cry out to You, God and we believe that You in some way, as only You can, You will help. In the name of the Lord, we give You blessing and honor, in the name of Jesus Amen.
Pastor Brian – Main message.
1. Father, we just thank You for Your Spirit today. We thank You that You have met with us already. Thank You for the opportunity to share in Your Word. Lord to be challenged, and in those areas, You see fit, to be changed, by Your Holy Spirit working in us. We pray that You open our hearts today. Let us hear what the Spirit says to the Church today, and let us rejoice in You, and let us be glad. In Jesus’ name, and everybody said Amen.
2. Well get your Bibles out. We’re going to use three Scriptures today. The First one is going to come from Romans 12, and then we’ll move on from there. I am sharing a Word this morning that I’m calling, ‘Running the Race, Sharing the Prize.’ You may have noticed that the Olympics have begun. I actually enjoy the Olympics. I watch sporting events that I don’t normally watch. You won’t often see me watching people diving off of a diving board. I don’t go out of my way to watch people fire at little targets out in a field somewhere. Or when the Olympics were here, I went out to the far away track, and watched the horses do all their fun little stuff. The sporting events interest me.
3. One of my favorite however, is actually track and field, not normally. I never watch it except in the Olympics. But I got to thinking, yes, it happens sometimes. There’s a thought I’ve been having a lately, and it’s simply, ‘What comes next?’ Not because I’m old, I’m not. But it’s been on my mind a lot because I‘ve just finished 33 years of ministry here in Greece, on July 24th. Which means that for at least 33 years, I’ve been involved in full time ministry. In a lot of our cultures, that’s an entire career. And I’m still at it.
4. But I’ve had this thought, ‘Am I developing? Am I building for the future to the extent that I should be?’ And believe or not, these are questions that weigh on me. Because it cannot be 33 years of same old, same old. And I don’t feel that it has been. But I feel more than ever the weight of the future in front of us. But as I have thought about it for myself, that’s caused me to think about it for you. And I thought, this should actually be a driving force for all of us. The what comes next question, should be motivating each one of us.
5. So, before I go to the Scripture on this, let me paint a little bit of a picture from the Olympics, and one of my favorite events, track and field. The fastest athletes on the earth, compete in this event. And often times, they are not just the fastest, but they have to be the fastest with the most stamina. And they’re facing off as individuals, even in the events where they have more than one person, like a relay race. You line up at the beginning and there’s that person beside you, and they are your competition. Even if it’s four-by-four, it’s person by person in competition.
6. I think you have to have a lot of mental strength to put yourself out there like these athletes do. It’s just straight up competition. But then I think about one of my favorite events, or you could call it two events, but it’s the four-by-four. I love the four by one-hundred-meter race. Where you have four different people running one hundred meters as a team to complete the race. I love that because you have four people who have to push themselves beyond belief. Then there’s the four-by-four hundred. I used to run the four hundred. And if I ran the race properly, by the end of that race, I wanted to do nothing but collapse. But in the four-by-four hundred, all four have to do this. And these teams are built in a very purposeful way. Not just because all four are just the fastest on the team, but because each one has to play a particular part in that race. And in order to win that race, all four of them must do their part perfectly. One after the other, after the other. They have to run the right way; they have to make the exchange of the baton just the right way. One slight misstep loses the race.
7. So, they have to work one after the other to achieve their ultimate goal. The first one, what we call the first leg, this person is someone who can get out fast and run hard. There might be other people faster, but this person can get out fast and can go. And their goal is to have a good lead by the time they finish their leg, because they got ahead of the competition. The second person in the race, has to be the steady one. Probably not the fastest; certainly not the slowest. But this person has consistent times; you know what you’re going to get from him. It’s not going to fast and slow, or slow and fast, it’s going to be straight through. Then the third person takes the baton. And it’s this person’s job to build the momentum toward the end. This person, probably couldn’t get out of the gate as fast as number one, but probably runs faster than number one. So, by the end of that third leg, this person is building momentum. And then they would hand it off to number four, and it’s this person’s job to be a blur. This person is supposed to run so fast, so hard, that like the runner at marathon, they get to the end and die. All four have to play their part to win that race.
8. Now, imagine this, imagine that you’re on one of these Olympic teams, and you have trained from probably five or six years old for this race. Just about every day of your life, has been spent working towards this goal. And you finally get into that race. And number one takes off and does his job perfectly; he’s out and has a big lead. Comes in and makes the perfect baton switch. Number two has that big lead and just keeps it out there steady. The team has a good lead still. And he comes and makes the perfect hand off to the third person. And number three runs around the first corner, and then around the second corner and then number three just stops and sits down. Just sits down on the track.
9. If you are a part of that team, what is your response going to be? My first response would be, ‘Oh, no, he’s injured! Something happened. Let’s go see what happened.’ But what we get out there, we find there’s no injury, no catastrophe, and we ask the third guy, ‘Then why did you stop running?’ And he says, ‘Because I didn’t want to run today.’ What does the rest of the team do? What does the Olympic team for that nation do? In fact, what would the nation itself do? Warn you to never come home, that’s what they would do.
10. You might not like the way, this lands today. I’m just going to get you ready for this. Luckily, pastor Gail is going to come and mop it all up and save the day at the end. But I’m going to start and end with a very challenging point. And that’s that I think the plight, the struggle of the Christian Church, us, is that it can well be imagined this way. And I say the Church, because that’s the easy way of putting the weight out there somewhere. You might often hear me say things like that. I may not be talking to anybody in here. But out there it might be like this.
11. But today, I want to be a little bit personal. I want us to imagine us. I want me to imagine me. You see, none of us is born in isolation, not naturally. We’re a part of a heritage; we’re a part of a chain. It moves history and civilization forward. It moves our families forward. In whatever part we play, mothers, fathers, uncles, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, we move our families a certain way. Whatever part we play, we are connected to others, who are inevitably, unavoidably affected by the part that we play.
12. And the same is true with our spiritual birth. The Bible says that we are born into a new family. And we’re given a new part to play in moving that family forward. Everybody naturally wants their family on earth to be better than they were. And every believer on earth wants the Church to be better at the end of their time than it was when they got there.
13. Romans 12:5, “so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” We are a single team. We are running a single race. And each of us depends on some degree, on the performance of the other. I cannot outperform you, in this race, and you cannot outperform me. Because, ‘we, though many, form one body and each member belongs to all the others.’
14. So, back to my original analogy to the race. We’ll just put this up. I won’t make you turn there. 2 Timothy 2:2. This is where I really started thinking about my sermon. It’s where Paul writes to Timothy and says, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.” Now a lot of people are going to jump in really quickly and say, ‘Well, Paul was talking about leaders.’ To some degree he was. But beyond that, he was speaking to all of the body. God gave this to us in His Word so that we could learn from it. And I want you to think about this. Paul knew he was facing the end of his days very soon. And of course, he was concerned with the question, of who would continue his missionary activity. Who would lead the Church after Paul left? So, he continued to outline for Timothy this simple pattern. How to have succession and sustainability.
15. Paul wanted there to be succession in the body. He wanted to be sustained in the body. And so, he says for that to happen, there has to be a passing of this on to reliable people. But the question becomes, who are supposed to be the reliable people. The command itself, looks beyond Timothy, to other people that he would train, and it gives a strategy for raising up generation after generation, after generation of the Church. Both leaders and disciples.
16. That baton that was passed from Paul to Timothy, would ultimately be handed off to another generation of people, who would take it and run, and pass it to another generation, and to another, and to another. So, here we are. Here you are and here I am. In order to be faithful stewards, please listen to my heart this morning, in order for us, everyone, young, old, older, in order for each one of us to be faithful to what we have received, each one of us must be passing on to others what we have been taught. In other words, every believer should be a teacher. No matter who you are, you can find someone who knows less than you and help them.
17. We talk in the church, a lot about evangelism, reaching other people which we must do. If we are going to have a future beyond this generation, we must reach new people. So, I’ll put that at number one. I’m fine. But along with evangelism, every believer must be preparing themselves and practicing to teach. That’s what was in the Lord’s commission, when He said, “Go into all the world and…”, He never said, “Go and make converts.” That’s the beginning point. He said, “Each one of you, go and make disciples.” (Matthew 28:19-20). “Teach them, everything that I have taught you.”
18. If Paul were here today, he would say to each one of us, ‘Teach them what I have passed on to you.’ I think he would use the same words he used when he talked about the communion, “These things that I heard from the Lord, you take them and you make it a point of your life, to share them with other people.” (Philippians 4:9). And I think the more we help others become disciples, the more the house will be prepared to receive new converts. I won’t go too deeply into that. I’ll just say this, ‘It’s hard to store grain in a barn that is not prepared for it.’ And if we don’t see new people coming to Christ, one of my first questions is, ‘Are we prepared to receive them.’
19. The writer to the Hebrews, this is the part that you might not like how this lands; but I’m taking this personally, so you can just share in it with me. Hebrews 5:12, “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s Word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!” Because of their failure to become disciple makers and not just disciples, they needed to start learning from the beginning again.
20. Anybody who has ever taught, knows this principle, ‘What you teach, you retain. What you do not teach, you lose.’ Thank you, teachers. Passing on what you have learned, not only helps that person, but it also strengthens the teacher. It almost sounds like too much to ask, but each Christian has a personal responsibility, to both keep the faith and pass it on to others. That’s required of those who win the prize.
21. My final thought. I think too many believers, are caught just concentrating on their own position, trying to get the sin out of my life; trying to get the doubt out of my mind, my spirit. Trying to get delivered of something. You know one of the best ways to break yourself out of anything? Teach someone else. And I don’t care, be bold enough to say, ‘Listen, do as I say not as I do. You can help me get there. We can get there together.’ That’s why the Bible says, “Confess your sins one to another, that you may be healed.” (James 5:16). None of us is perfect and not one of us needs to be perfect to teach another person, because the Word of God speaks for itself, and it will heal both the one learning and the one teaching. And anyone who breaks this chain, is like the runner who sat down on the track, abandons the race before finishing.
22. But what’s at stake in this race, is far more important than any gold medal that’s going to be presented in these Olympics. My failure to run well, and with endurance, to me, is inexcusable to the Lord. It’s an offense to those who have taught me and it’s a disappointment to those who have trained alongside me. And it’s a terrible thing to do to the person you’re supposed to hand the baton to. Again, this is not perfection. God knows, I cannot preach perfection. But I can preach, run and keep running; run and keep running. Run hard. Run fast, so that you can take that baton and you can leave it in the hands of those who come after you.
23. Is that, OK? Run the race, share the prize. Amen.
Pastor Gail about the Ministry Training center.
1. We had a meeting this week with Anton, and we were going to do a little skit, but instead I think, because Brian hasn’t felt good, we came up with a different idea. Many of you may not know this, but on September 29th, we’ll be leaving, to launch, a ministry training center, here in this building.
2. Right before Covid, the Lord almost violently dropped it in my spirit. We are strategically located at one of the most important places in the world. We are right on the refugee highway. We are right across from Israel and where it’s all going to wind up. We are near many countries that are biblically, you know in the end they’re going to make a lot of war. And I believe that’s why the Lord picked this place. It’s not that we’re special, but we’re in a special end-time place.
3. Now, let me tell you a story really quickly. A pastor of a church, they also had a Christian school. So, he went one day to visit all those students. So, he asked the kids in first grade, ‘Who caused the fall of the Jericho wall?’ And a little boy raised his arm, ‘Pastor, I didn’t do it, I promise.’ The teacher stood up, ‘I know he didn’t do it. He’s a good boy. He never destroys anything.’
4. So, the story went on and on, to the adults. Everybody is trying to figure out, who tore down the walls of Jericho. And that stuck with me, because this generation we’re living in right now, a lot of people don’t have any idea what the walls of Jericho were. But people want to do something more for the Lord. Anton, Brian and I are believing that this is of God. But we cannot make it work unless you run with us.
5. Do you know someone, somewhere in the world or maybe here in Greece, that would give three months of their life, to come and be here, to be taught powerful subjects. But also, every week, they have to do actual ministry. Like go down and work with ‘Helping Hands,’ or go work with Cecilia. This is a really big burden in our hearts, because around the world, we’re finding people that want to do something for God, but when they go to the field, to a different place to serve, they fail because they don’t know what it really means.
6. We believe that the Lord has enlarged the vision of this that it’s even going to go beyond the first 3 months, that you’ll come back and do more and we’re excited about this. Marilena, you know people in Germany that could come here, and go to school for 3 months. Anton knows people, all of us would maybe know someone, and I’m a great example, because I knew that I wanted to do something for Jesus. I didn’t know what for sure. But at 18, I went to Bible college, because I wanted to be ready to be used by God.
7. Three months isn’t very long. You’ll find out, if you want to work in the Middle East or North Africa, or you’ll find if you want to work in Southern Europe. You’ll find out what it means to work really hard for the Lord, but be full of joy. Maybe some of these people will find out, ‘I’m a prayer warrior. I may not go, but I’m going to pray the rest of my life, for the walls of Jericho.’
8. Today, we’re believing that God will wet your appetite, that He’ll stir your heart, to reach out to your friends and family. Did you ever want to do something great for God? Come to Greece for 3 months. You don’t know, but we believe that in this house, and among our different ministry directors that are here, you have people where this would be the place for you.
9. Anton, would you like to share with us. We’ll let Anton share the format. Because, listen, people want to do something for God, but they don’t know how, and this is a great way. So, share the format.
Anton – Sharing the format
1. So, the content of the theoretical teaching, will fall into 3 areas.
a. The first area, is how to understand the Bible. How to apply the Bible, and how to communicate the Biblical text.
b. The second part, is how to communicate clearly, cross culturally. How to share your faith, how to evangelize, how to disciple and how to plant a church.
c. Then the third area, we look at leadership, and what it means to live as a cross-cultural worker.
2. Then we’ll place you with an organization, where you will serve for one day a week, and then one day a week, you’ll be a part of a local church, here in Athens, while also daily, you’ll start to learn a new language. You’ll not learn everything, but it is the beginning.
3. And so, we want to form people who are focusing on reaching out to anybody, in any context, using the gifts that the Lord has given them, while also training others.
Pastor Gail
1. It can even be people like brother Gol. He’s not a preacher, and he’s not a formal bible teacher, but he’s a believer and a businessman. So, we believe there are business people in the world that want to do more for God. And it’s an opportunity for them to be trained in these areas.
2. I say this as a preacher, I sometimes tell the Lord, ‘Why couldn’t I have been a doctor? I could have done so much more.’ But you see, that’s looking with my mind. Sometimes I think like you, ‘Aww, you’re so sweet, Lukia-Maria.’ Did you know that we have two doctors in our midst? Lukia Maria and Vassilis. Vassilis today is serving the Lord. Not just here, but at the hospital too. But the Lord told me, ‘Nope, Gail, you’ve got to be a preacher.’ OK, so, I’m a preacher. I love to preach.
3. But I think that we have to esteem people. It’s not just about us that preach. God is looking for people in every walk of life, that will say to the Lord, ‘Here am I. Send me.’ ‘Here am I. Send me.’ Can I tell you another story, because I believe so much in this. Leto knows this. I think Stavros too. Do you know that I have begged people to go and visit my son. Nobody’s gone. For all the years he’s been in New York.
4. But I believe that God, through this ministry training center, He’s going to touch some of us that lead in offices, some of us that lead in real estate, some of us that lead in the air industry, in music, in translation. So many areas, you’ll say, ‘I want to be trained,’ that at any moment, I can say to Jesus, ‘I’m ready, I’m ready. Use me, Lord.’ No, you won’t be perfect, but you will have done your best, to be ready for Jesus to use you.
5. ‘Lord, we thank You today, because I know for sure, if You can use anyone, You can use me. Lord, we want to be in the race; we may not all be the fastest, but we have a place in the race and You will use us, God, to be Your hands and Your eyes, and Your voice. Oh Lord, Your message of Your great, great love Lord. Lord we’re praying an anointing on this Ministry Training Center, that Lord, You will use it right here in Greece, oh Lord, to reach the lost, because we followed hard after You. Because we know, if You can use anyone, You can use us. We’re available Lord. Lord, as we close today, if there’s anyone here that doesn’t know You Lord, Lord today, they would know of Your love that never ends. They would know of Your presence that is always there. And Lord, today they would invite You into their life, ‘Lord I want to be Yours. Forgive me of anything that separates us. Come into my life. Lord, I pray for many that maybe have grown a little cold today, that today, oh Lord, You’ll restore the fire in their life to run after You. We thank You Lord, because when we pray, we will hear from heaven. In the name of Jesus. Amen.’
6. We’re so glad you’re here today. This past week was pastor Brian’s birthday, so bravo, ‘Happy Birthday’. So, we have a little cake upstairs, so you can have a little piece. But I have to tell you a little secret about him and his cake, it has only a little bit of icing on top, because he doesn’t like icing. He doesn’t love all that gooey stuff which I love. So, remember when you make me a birthday cake, remember that I like lots of goo. God bless you; you’re dismissed.