TEXT: Mark 10:35

35 And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come unto him, saying, Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire.

36 And he said unto them, What would ye that I should do for you?

37 They said unto him, Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory.

38 But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?

39 And they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized:

40 But to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared.

41 And when the ten heard it, they began to be much displeased with James and John.

42 But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them.

43 But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister:

44 And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.

________________

On February the 4th 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., preached his now famous sermon “The Drum Major Instinct” from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church. The sermon was preached two months before his assassination on April the 4th 1968. This sermon was probably one of the deepest sermons that Dr. King ever preached. King displayed great humility, transparency, and insight in this sermon that he preached for the good of everybody but he strongly included himself. In some parts of the sermon it seems that he may have known that his death was imminent.

________________

And not only does this thing go into the racial struggle, it goes into the struggle between nations. And I would submit to you this morning that what is wrong in the world today is that the nations of the world are engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy. And if something doesn’t happen to stop this trend, I’m sorely afraid that we won’t be here to talk about Jesus Christ and about God and about brotherhood too many more years. If somebody doesn’t bring an end to this suicidal thrust that we see in the world today, none of us are going to be around, because somebody’s going to make the mistake through our senseless blunderings of dropping a nuclear bomb somewhere. And then another one is going to drop. And don’t let anybody fool you, this can happen within a matter of seconds. They have twenty-megaton bombs in Russia right now that can destroy a city as big as New York in three seconds, with everybody wiped away, and every building. And we can do the same thing to Russia and China.

But this is why we are drifting. And we are drifting there because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. “I must be first.” “I must be supreme.” “Our nation must rule the world.” And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I’m going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.

But God has a way of even putting nations in their place. The God that I worship has a way of saying, “Don’t play with me.” He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, “Don’t play with me, Israel. Don’t play with me, Babylon. Be still and know that I’m God. And if you don’t stop your reckless course, I’ll rise up and break the backbone of your power.” And that can happen to America. Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening. And we have perverted the drum major instinct.

But let me rush on to my conclusion, because I want you to see what Jesus was really saying. What was the answer that Jesus gave these men? It’s very interesting. One would have thought that Jesus would have condemned them. One would have thought that Jesus would have said, “You are out of your place. You are selfish. Why would you raise such a question?”

But that isn’t what Jesus did; he did something altogether different. He said in substance, “Oh, I see, you want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be. If you’re going to be my disciple, you must be.” But he reordered priorities. And he said, “Yes, don’t give up this instinct. It’s a good instinct if you use it right. It’s a good instinct if you don’t distort it and pervert it. Don’t give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do.”

And he transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness. And you know how he said it? He said, “Now brethren, I can’t give you greatness. And really, I can’t make you first.” This is what Jesus said to James and John. “You must earn it. True greatness comes not by favoritism, but by fitness. And the right hand and the left are not mine to give, they belong to those who are prepared.”

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

I know a man—and I just want to talk about him a minute, and maybe you will discover who I’m talking about as I go down the way because he was a great one. And he just went about serving. He was born in an obscure village, the child of a poor peasant woman. And then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old. Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher. And he went about doing some things. He didn’t have much. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. One of his closest friends denied him. Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. When he was dead he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone and today he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history. All of the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life. His name may be a familiar one. But today I can hear them talking about him. Every now and then somebody says, “He’s King of Kings.” And again I can hear somebody saying, “He’s Lord of Lords.” Somewhere else I can hear somebody saying, “In Christ there is no East nor West.” And then they go on and talk about, “In Him there’s no North and South, but one great Fellowship of Love throughout the whole wide world.” He didn’t have anything. He just went around serving and doing good.

This morning, you can be on his right hand and his left hand if you serve. It’s the only way in.

Every now and then I guess we all think realistically about that day when we will be victimized with what is life’s final common denominator—that something that we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral. And I don’t think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself, “What is it that I would want said?” And I leave the word to you this morning.

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school.

I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others.

I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question.

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry.

And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked.

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison.

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that’s all I want to say.

If I can help somebody as I pass along,
If I can cheer somebody with a word or song,
If I can show somebody he’s traveling wrong,
Then my living will not be in vain.
If I can do my duty as a Christian ought,
If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,
If I can spread the message as the master taught,
Then my living will not be in vain.

Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition. But I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.

——-

Now, if you are with us today and you do not know Jesus Christ as your Savior, allow me to show you how you can place your faith and trust in Him for Salvation from sin and Hell.

First, accept the fact that you are a sinner, and that you have broken God’s law. The Bible says in Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

Second, accept the fact that there is a penalty for sin. The Bible states in Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death…”

Third, accept the fact that you are on the road to hell. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 18:8: “Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.” Also, the Bible states in Revelation 21:8: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”

Now that is bad news, but here’s the good news. Jesus Christ said in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Just believe in your heart that Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead by the power of God for you so that you can live eternally with Him. Pray and ask Him to come into your heart today, and He will.

Romans 10:9 & 13 says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved… For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

If you believe that Jesus Christ died on the Cross for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead, and you want to trust Him for your Salvation today, please pray with me this simple prayer: Holy Father God, I realize that I am a sinner and that I have done some bad things in my life. I am sorry for my sins, and today I choose to turn from my sins. For Jesus Christ sake, please forgive me of my sins. I believe with all of my heart that Jesus Christ died for me, was buried, and rose again. I trust Jesus Christ as my Savior and I choose to follow Him as Lord from this day forward. Lord Jesus, please come into my heart and save my soul and change my life today. Amen.

If you believed in your heart that Jesus Christ died on the Cross, was buried, and rose again, allow me to say, congratulations on doing the most important thing in life and that is accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour! For more information to help you grow in your newfound faith in Christ, go to Gospel Light Society.com and read “What To Do After You Enter Through the Door”. Jesus Christ said in John 10:9, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”

If you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior today, please email me at [email protected] and let us know. There is some free material that we want to send you. If you have a prayer request, please e-mail that to us as well, and we will pray for you until you tell us to stop.

God loves you. We love you. And may God bless you.

Daniel Whyte III has spoken in meetings across the United States and in over twenty-five foreign countries. He is the author of over forty books including the Essence Magazine, Dallas Morning News, and Amazon.com national bestseller, Letters to Young Black Men. He is also the president of Gospel Light Society International, a worldwide evangelistic ministry that reaches thousands with the Gospel each week, as well as president of Torch Ministries International, a Christian literature ministry.

He is heard by thousands each week on his radio broadcasts/podcasts, which include: The Prayer Motivator Devotional, The Prayer Motivator Minute, as well as Gospel Light Minute X, the Gospel Light Minute, the Sunday Evening Evangelistic Message, the Prophet Daniel’s Report, the Second Coming Watch Update and the Soul-Winning Motivator, among others.

He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Theology from Bethany Divinity College, a Bachelor’s degree in Religion from Texas Wesleyan University, a Master’s degree in Religion, a Master of Divinity degree, and a Master of Theology degree from Liberty University’s Rawlings School of Divinity (formerly Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary). He is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Ministry degree.

He has been married to the former Meriqua Althea Dixon, of Christiana, Jamaica since 1987. God has blessed their union with seven children.

Source

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

Bianca Juarez Olthoff has a big dream.

“Everyone knows Billy Graham, but Billy Graham had a mentor and a discipler that made him who he was,” she says. “I’m not trying to be Billy Graham. I’m trying to grow 20 Billy Grahams.”

Olthoff—who founded and co-pastors The Father’s House OC in Orange Country, California, with her husband—has a heart for mentoring the next generation, particularly young women entering ministry. She says she never intended to start a church, and even revealed on the most recent episode of the Charisma News podcast that she hopes someone else will be leading the church in 10 years. She’s not interested in building one single church building as much as building God’s global church and equipping the next generation to lead it. In this Q&A, Olthoff shares her testimony, her dreams for the church and her heart for the next generation of leaders.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Listen to the full interview in the embedded podcast.

Berglund: Can you share your testimony?

Olthoff: I grew up in the church. My dad is a church planter and has served the local church currently for 30 years in East Los Angeles, California. I love the church. I love the call on my dad’s life. But I always said I would never work in a church, and I would never marry a pastor, and I would never church plant. So the best way to make God laugh is just to tell Him your plans.

My faith journey, growing up in a faith-filled house, was so fun. I got to see my parents express their faith and their walk. But my dad always said, “One day, you will make a decision on whether or not my God is your God.”

I never understood that because I was like, “Well, of course your God is my God.”

Around the age of 22 or 23, I had come out of a devastating three-year relationship. My mom was diagnosed with two forms of cancer. One of them was brain cancer. And I’d lost my grandmother. It just felt like everything was up in flames in life. And in full candor and disclosure, I was really upset with God. We had loved God, we served God, we did all the right things; therefore, our life should be OK. I thought, My mom shouldn’t be diagnosed with brain cancer, she should get a yacht and a six-month vacation in Europe. Don’t give cancer to my mom.

I had professed my faith at a young age, and I made a cognizant decision at 13 that God was my God. But I think at the age of 23, it was a pivot point of faith, where I realized that I have to put my faith through the fire and let the impurities and the dross rise to the surface so that only the purest thing remains. That’s exactly what my mom’s battle with cancer did. It was just a really crazy season. I had to come to a realization where, like, either I believe God is who He says He is and can do what He said He can do, or this is all for naught. That was my “come to Jesus” moment. That was when my faith became very real to me, and my faith became my own.

Since then, it’s been this adventure of daily fighting to discover a little glimpse of God more and more each day. Even my faith journey of just walking in the fullness of His Spirit has been such an adventure that I don’t take lightly. And it’s an honor every single day to tell people and point people to Jesus.

Berglund: You mentioned that you never wanted to become a pastor—and here you are. So tell me about how you got that call to ministry, and about your church today.

Olthoff: I think I’m a lot like a spiritual Gideon or a spiritual Jonah. I really want to be Paul. I want to be Deborah. But I think I’m the kid who just loves to have fun and run away from God’s call. And I always come back, and God is so faithful, and He’s so patient. He’s so gracious. So I think in this season of my life, I’m running headfirst into the full gales of wind saying, “OK, I’m just going to do it the first time that God asks me to do it.”

But long story short, I was working for an anti-human trafficking organization called A21 under Christine Caine, and I had worked alongside her for 6 1/2 years. And I felt like this nudge and call to go into prison. It felt foreign. It felt weird. Why would I want to leave the covering of Nick and Christine? And it wasn’t like a lead; it was like I felt this holy hunch, this Holy Spirit nudge, that I had to go into prison. I had no idea what that looked like. But God used that as my stepping out and stepping into, because there was even a greater sense of freedom. I wanted to bring spiritual freedom to the incarcerated.

I realized, living in Orange County, California, that there are people who are not in physical prisons but are in spiritual oppression. My husband and I were just hosting Sunday night dinners at our house to whomever: my gym instructor, people he met at restaurants. We’d say, “Hey, do you need community? Come to our house.”

The ambition was never to start a church. In fact, it was the farthest thing from my heart and mind. I just love cooking. We love hosting and entertaining. And we would have people come and sit around the dinner table, and we’d have some of the most life-changing conversations around the dinner table. I began to look at the life of Jesus, specifically in the book of Luke. Jesus was either coming to a party, going to a party or at a party in the entire book of Luke. And I realized, “Wait a minute, throwing dinner parties is ministry.”

One night, as he crawled into bed, my husband said, “Hey, I think we’re starting a church.” And I said, “I think you’re crazy. We are not starting a church. We are starting dinner parties.” And slowly but surely, we started seeing God do some amazing things in the life of people just having honest, earnest, simple conversations around the dinner table. And slowly but surely, the Sunday night dinner crew just began to grow from 10 to 12 to 30 to 50. We realized we couldn’t meet in our house anymore.

I travel and teach at conferences and churches. I was up in Northern California, speaking at a women’s conference, and I stayed through the weekend to preach at this very big church up in Vacaville, California. I’d never heard of Vacaville. I’d never heard of this church. But I still connected with the senior pastor. And before I was set to preach for the first Sunday morning service—I’d preached the whole weekend to the women’s conference—the pastor gets in front of this huge congregation and says, “I want us to welcome Bianca Olthoff. She’s going to be preaching with us. She and her husband are church planters in Orange County, California.” And I remember sitting with my Bible and my notes and thinking, Hold up. Pump the brakes. This guy’s a heretic. I’m not a church planter.

I flew home that night, and I was laughing. I was talking to my husband about it. I said, laughing, “Can you believe it? He said we’re church planters.”

And as serious as a heart attack, he said, “Bianca, we are church planters, and we’re planting a church.”

And my response wasn’t elation. It wasn’t a holy praise party. You know what it was? I cried. I said, “I think you’re right. We are starting a church.” And that is how our church was birthed: through laughter, through crying and through a prophetic word. So it’s all the gamuts of a crazy Latina woman. You laugh, you cry, you don’t know what’s going on, but you love to have a good party.

And those are still the values of the house. We laugh, we cry, we worship God and we love to throw a good party. And God has been faithful.

We have had some of the most crazy, insane church planting stories, like discovering a homeless person living in our venue for four months. … Some churches can say that they’re a home for the homeless, but we literally are a home for the homeless. We rent a venue for our Sundays, but we can’t control who’s there on Saturday. And we’ve had magic shows, or some adult entertainment like the Thunder From Down Under. So we come in on those Sunday mornings, and we pray over the venue with anointing oil and bleach. We just take claim over our venue.

But we’ve had some amazing, life-transforming stories, and we feel privileged to join the ranks of other church planters, bringing the Gospel to literally the least of these. So it’s been fun.

Click here to read more.

SOURCE: Charisma News

Source

Reports of escalating persecution and a crackdown on religious believers in China have been filtering to the outside world for months. In recent years nearly 6,000 underground churches have been shut down by Communist authorities, some leveled to the ground, and pastors and church members arrested for crimes such as “inciting subversion of state power” and “illegal business operations.” 

For two years, Stephen (not his real name) attended one of those 6,000 now-shuttered underground churches. On the day authorities raided his church in 2018, he was flying back from an overseas trip so he was not there when his pastor and other church members were arrested. He told his story of harassment from authorities and efforts to flee to the Christian Post last week. 

Before Stephen could get home, authorities came to his apartment and knocked on the door. Frightened, his wife locked the door and turned off the lights. Oddly, the police did not knock down the door. But when he next spoke with his wife by phone, he learned the electricity had been turned off and that there was no heat in the place in the middle of a freezing winter. He called the property manager who was able to turn the power back on for a short while. But it was soon shut off again and he was told he had to meet with authorities to get it turned back on. He went to the local police station expecting to be arrested and thrown in prison. He described the experience to the Post:

“I wore a very heavy jacket and heavy pants,” he said. “I go there and told the police officer, ‘Why you turn off the power? You can just call me. You have my phone number.’ And he said, ‘If we do not do that, you won’t show up.'”

Stephen said he was ordered by a police officer to write his name and government identification number on a piece of paper in addition to the names and ID numbers of his wife and kids. 

At that point, the police official introduced Stephen to three “community officials” who wanted to discuss issues related to the closure of the church and a school affiliated with the church that his children attended. 

The officials offered his children free seats in a public school. Although some Chinese families desire the opportunity to send their children to a good public school, Stephen refused the offer. 

“I said ‘Oh, thank you so much. I know this is a very good opportunity but please give to other people,'” he recalled. “My wife and I are Christians. We want to educate our children with God’s Word.”

The officials didn’t seem happy with his refusal and left the room. 

He was then asked to sign a document saying he would no longer have any contact with church members. The document also contained a gag order, which would prohibit him from talking about church affairs or street preaching.

Stephen refused to sign, telling officials that “friends and family need our support.” 

“They were scared about why we visit each other. That’s human beings doing natural things,” Stephen told CP. “I want the freedom to visit my brothers and sisters. I want to contact them. So I could not sign.” 

Stephen then said something that is often heard in report after report of Christians facing persecution. “I understood they are doing their duties. They are under pressure,” he added of the government officials. “As Christians, we pray for them. They have to do whatever they do to earn money. So they kind of surprisingly let me go home.”

Stephen says to this day he doesn’t know why officials didn’t break down the door to his apartment that first day, or why he was let go after interrogation. He wanted to stay in China, but Christian leaders urged him to flee for fear authorities would again arrest him and force information from him about the church’s ministry in order to build a stronger case against the church’s pastor. He finally fled his home city, going from city to city for weeks, knowing police were monitoring his moves. A month later he and his family flew to America where they live with a relative. 

As CBN News has reported, attacks against Christians and other religious groups have been increasing in China in recent years, including bulldozing churches and mosques, barring Tibetan children from Buddhist religious studies, and incarcerating more than a million members of Islamic ethnic minorities in what are termed “re-education centers.” 

One of the most obvious attacks on Christians happened last October when Chinese government authorities tore down a mega church’s building in the Funan, Anhui region, starting the demolition while the congregation was still in the church worshipping. The church’s pastors were arrested and detained, according to the international non-profit Christian human rights organization China Aid. 

Government officials did not show any documents ordering the 3,000-seat church building’s demolition. But they did produce arrest warrants for leaders Geng Yimin and Sun Yongyao. Both pastors were detained on the charge of suspicion of “gathering a crowd to disturb social order.”

Despite all his smiles to the US and the West, President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping is behind the increasing persecution in China, and has ordered that all religions must “Sinicize” to ensure they are loyal to the officially atheistic party. According to Open Doors 2020 Persecution Watch List, this means they must make beliefs, including Christianity, “fall in line with [the government’s] interpretation of Communism…[and endure] a steady drip of pressure, where the government increases surveillance, control, and restrictions of believers.”

China ranks as the 23rd worst persecutor of Christians in the world, moving up from 27th last year, according to that 2020 Persecution Watch List.

As he released their newest report last week, Open Doors CEO David Curry warned that China, with its “social scoring” system where people get points for “good” behavior, and lose points for not strictly adhering to the government line, and with its increased facial recognition capability, it is creating a “system of persecution for the future” and is the “greatest threat” to human rights in the world today, according to CP. 

“I saw with my own eyes the surveillance on the street but also in the churches, watching their congregation,” Curry said. “Facial scans when you come in and then tracking you and generating reports with assumptions built into their artificial intelligence system that is tracking Christian behavior.”

Curry believes in the future China’s system could be exported to other persecuting rulers around the world.

As for Stephen, after more than a year in America, he wants to go back home to China. But Christian leaders there say it’s not advisable at this time. He continues to live in America where he and his family of six share a room in a sibling’s home. 

Source