God’s Strategy for Successful Service Part 2

Pastor Mike will be speaking on God’s Strategy for Successful Service Part 2. He will be reading out of Acts 16:1-9.

It is our responsibility to come alongside our brothers and sisters and to strengthen them because when the devil is firing his darts, they are darts of discouragement that are designed to defeat us as believers and cause us to become so despondent that we want to quit and to give up.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders from The Open Door Church. Today we’re in Acts chapter 16 and we’re covering verses 1 through 9. And one of the things that I thought was interesting that we learned last week is how the early church was always mentoring and preparing the next generation, how important that is.

And I hope today that as we continue in the study of God’s strategy to successfully serve, that you and I can continue to see the value of investing in other believers. So let’s get into God’s word today in Acts chapter 16.

It just so happened to tie in the fact that I would be preaching on this text. But it was very reflective and affirming in my heart to know that there are others that have poured into me. But I just want to ask you, who are you pouring into?

I’ve said to you before, church, I’ve learned it from someone somewhere. I mean, you know nothing’s new under the sun. But I just want you to know that I want to encourage you that every one of us need a mentor.

We all need an Apostle Paul in our life. And you need to find those mentors. And sometimes those mentors take on different influences upon us, meaning that one mentor may be good in this area and another mentor may be good in another area, but they are pouring into our lives.

But not only do we need an Apostle Paul, we need a Timothy. We need to be pouring our lives into someone else. And we also need a Barnabas, an encourager. They’re just certain people who are gifted. It doesn’t matter.

Every time you are with them, everything’s wonderful. I mean, the whole world could be collapsing, but it’s wonderful. They’re just encouragers. It’s not that they’re lying, it’s just that the way they see the world, they’ve just been designed by God to be an encourager.

And if you need to be lifted up, you just need to hang around some of those Barnabas that are always coming alongside others and encouraging them. We need these people in our lives, and if we’re gonna see this happen, we must be intentional.

We must be intentional. It must be a goal that we would find these mentors in our life. But also, number two, we must take the initiative. And I’ve always, and in pursuing mentors, I have always taken the initiative.

Usually, mentors don’t come running to me and say, Mike, I wanna pour my life into you. But I go to them and say, hey, can I have 10 minutes? Can I take you to lunch? Hey, I got some questions and the relationship just evolves from there and God blesses.

Some doesn’t evolve, but some it does. And I love it when I get to meet with other young pastors and helping them. And I tomorrow have an appointment. I won’t be available from, well, I got the radio station, then I got to drive to…

I know you’re not going to believe this, but I have a breakfast meeting. That cracker barrel, I don’t know why these people always want to go to cracker barrel. But anyways, with a young pastor, first year pastoring, and he wants to sit down and we meet once a month and we talk about ministry and we talk about problem solving and different ways that can help him.

One of his deacons called me one time and said, thank you, Pastor Mike. Thank you for pouring into our pastor because every time he comes back, he has 100 new ideas. I promise you, I don’t give people a lot of ideas, I just try to give them principles.

But the thing is this, all of us need to do it. And I only share that with you because I want you to know I’m not standing up here telling you to do something I’m not doing. And we all need to find people that we can pour our lives into and that we can be a blessing to.

And that is part of God’s success strategy. We cannot wait, church. We cannot wait. Our church has dropped over 30 some volunteers. We just had a little staff get away and we walked through our numbers and the number of volunteers since before COVID into now has just dropped drastically.

Now, our attendance is coming back and it’s pretty exciting to see how God is pulling his people back into the fold. There’s a few that still haven’t come, but I’m not sure they’re ever coming back and there’s nothing I can do.

I’ve done everything I can to bring them back, but everybody has to seek the Lord and whatever they believe. is right, but here’s what I want you to understand is that when we think about how are we going to make up that gap I’ll tell you what it’s gonna be it’s gonna be each one of you not only volunteering and stepping up and I’m doing things that it’s not that I said hey I love this or I want to do this but it’s got to be done but also it’s us training the next generation it’s training the young people and the new believers and the new families coming into the church it’s training them and helping them to get engaged and you do that by this way never do ministry alone never do ministry alone whatever God has called you to do you pick up the phone and you call somebody or you text them and you say come alongside let’s do this together I want you to know that when I was a young man in my small church that I came to Christ to believe in that the pastor there Like,

we didn’t have this big mentoring program, and we didn’t have all these classes and all these Bible studies, and I’m not against any of that, okay? So don’t walk out of here upset and send me an email this afternoon, because I’ll be watching football and falling asleep, okay?

I’m just being honest with you, okay? But here’s the thing. The pastor just said, “‘Mike, I’m gonna go make some visits. “‘Would you like to come along?'” Sure. “‘Mike, I need to go run an errand. “‘Would you like to come along?'” Sure.

“‘Would you like to help me on this project? “‘I gotta do some things at the church. “‘Can you help me with this project?'” Sure. Glad to do it. Now, of course, I was a new believer, hungry, desiring, wanting, and growing, and wanting to learn more, and probably drove my pastor crazy and just asking him so many questions about what I read in the Bible and what in the world that that meant, and how that applied to my life.

But what I wanna say is this. Here was a pastor who never did ministry alone. And that’s your mindset’s gotta be, is that as you are training the next generation, is that you’re always thinking about who can we get.

It’s not just that we sit and drink coffee, that’s good, but we serve together, and we train these young people and these new believers and new families, and we get them engaged in training the next generation.

The second thing that I want you to see out of this passage is that we must strengthen the faith of existing Christians. Look at verse four and five. Again, we see as they went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep, which were determined by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem.

So the churches were what? You can do better. The churches were what? So the churches were strengthened in the faith. They were strengthened. This is our role, church. This is God’s success plan, is to strengthen other believers.

Now let’s back up a little bit, understand what’s going on in this. This text in verse four, we’re reminded that the apostles, they brought, they delivered a decree for them to keep or to obey or to follow.

The ruling that was given by the Jerusalem Council is what they were delivering. So let’s go back to chapter 15. Again, it’s good for you to see everything in context and understand what is happening and not just rush through the text and not fully grasp what God is trying to show us here.

We go back to verse 11, chapter 15. Remember, there was this debate. Did new believers, Gentile believers have to follow the customs of Judaism? Did they have to follow the rituals and the ceremonies of Judaism?

What was that conclusion? We look at verse 11 of chapter 15, but we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved in the same manner as they. Meaning, you don’t get saved differently in the kingdom of God.

that just as the Jews were saved by the grace of God, so shall the Gentiles be saved by the grace of God. Now jump down to verse 19 of chapter 15. Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, verse 20, but that we write to them to abstain from things that are polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, and from things that are strangled and from blood.

And what was the purpose in that last part? It was not to be offensive that the gospel may go farther and reach more people, that it was not to be offensive to the Jews in their dietary laws that they had and their customs that they had, but that they were to understand that the gospel was to go out and that they would believe in the true gospel of salvation by Christ alone.

That’s it. That’s it. The problem with legalism and liberalism is they’re always adding to the gospel. They’re always adding something to the gospel, and you and I gotta be careful about these lists that we make, these lists of dos and don’ts, because they do not define the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now all of us are called to be examples, and all of us are called to live a life that is honoring to God and not be a stumbling block to our brothers and sisters in Christ, but when it comes to salvation, it’s Christ and Christ alone.

Twice Luke uses the word here in chapter 15 and 16 that the brothers were strengthened, that the family of God was strengthened in the faith. It’s the idea of being made strong or established. Some translations have that word established.

They were made firm in the faith, and what is interesting is that when you come down to verse five, when the Bible says the churches were strengthened, it’s in the continuous action verb, it’s continually happening, it’s ongoing, it’s not just a one-time event, a big rally day, a big day, and the church was strengthened in the faith.

No, day by day, week by week, month by month, the task of strengthening God’s people in the Word, in their faith, helping them. So we see that there were three things that they were strengthened. They were strengthened and established in the truth of the salvation of the gospel by Christ alone.

If there’s anything you can do to communicate to our brothers and sisters in the fellowship and the family of God, not only locally, community-wide, regionally, internationally, there’s only one way to heaven.

And that is through Christ. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by me. This is critical church because in a pluralistic society where people believe there are many ways to heaven and that there may be many gods, but we’re all serving the same God, and all of this is the lies from the devil.

And therefore, we need to be that sounding voice to our children, to our grandchildren, to our brothers and sisters in Christ establishing Him in the truth of salvation. But number two, they were established or strengthened in being steadfast in their labor for the Lord.

To continue on, day after day, that they would continue to serve God, that they would stay faithful to Christ, that there will be problems, there will be challenges, but we cannot be weary in well-doing.

We cannot let people, problems, circumstances set us back to the point that we give up on advancing the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is our responsibility to come alongside our brothers and sisters and to strengthen them because when the devil was firing his darts towards our hearts and minds, they are darts of discouragement.

They are darts of trying to get us distracted. They are darts that are designed to defeat us as believers and cause us to become so despondent that we want to quit and to give up. And therefore, it’s our job to keep establishing and make strong our brothers and sisters to stay steadfast.

But the third thing we see is that they were to continue to be strengthened in reaching more and more people for the Lord. Did you see that? Did you see that in verse five? The Bible says they increased in number.

daily. They were strengthened. They were not just strengthened in anything, but they were strengthened in the faith, which is a journey that requires us to stay at it, to be steadfast. But they were established and made strong in reaching out.

The job of evangelism and reaching out to others never stops church. As long as you and I have breath, our methods may change. The styles may change. Our means to get the gospel to people. We may be in the old day, we knocked on a door, and we kind of just went right after the person to share the gospel.

That may have been effective one day, but today we use shoeboxes. I don’t care. Don’t get caught up in styles, don’t get caught up in methods. Just be the kind of person that wants everybody to come to Christ and you’re open to all available means to reach all available people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I remember, many of you may remember, Dr. Herbert Fitzpatrick. He preached here for us and for Dr. Bedrone and Dr. Fitzpatrick, pastored in upper Marlboro, just outside of Baltimore. And he would say, Pastor Mike, and I pastored the church in Indiana that he had started.

And he would say, I came to town and I didn’t even have a license. And people would sit out on their porches and I would just walk up and down the streets, sit down and talk to them and tell them about Jesus, lead them to Christ, they’d get saved.

I said, buddy, if I showed up on somebody’s porch, they might just pull out a gun and start shooting at me. What’s wrong with you? He said, it’s so different, Mike. It is different. But the need of spreading the gospel is not.

And we must find different ways that we can do that church. And so we must be in the business of strengthening the faith of existing Christians. Unfortunately, in the vocabulary of Christians, that the terms build up, strengthen and edify are vacant or void.

But we must make them a part of our understanding. And we must strengthen our fellow believers. Remember what Paul said in Romans 16, 25, now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ.

You see, as we proclaim his truth, whether it’s one on one, small groups, Bible studies, or large groups, teaching and preaching Jesus, it is establishing people in. the faith and what is the result of strengthening people in the faith did you see that in verse 5 they increased in number daily it is God who adds to the church when the church is vulnerable and anemic in its faith when the church is shallow in its faith it cannot make an impact but when the church is rooted and it is established God adds to that church and God can say I can trust that church to teach the true gospel I can increase their number I can bring more people into that fellowship now it’s not gonna be that you and I just sit on the couch and eat potato chips it’s that we’re out there we’re engaged we’re sharing the gospel and God is using our lives to reach others now my final point we’re talking about a strategy for success it begins in training others the next generation it is to strengthen the faith of existing Christians but it is finally to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Look at verse six through eight. Now when they had gone through Phrygia, sorry, and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia, and they had come to Mysia.

They tried to go to Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them. Would you underscore that in your Bible? The Spirit did not permit them. So passing to Mysia, they came down to Troas, and a vision appeared to Paul.

In the night, a man, a Macedonian, stood and pleaded with him, saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.

Paul was divinely prohibited from carrying out his plan to minister in Asia Minor. The Bible tells us man plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps. When I was growing up many times, my children would say to me, dad, you promised, and I always remind them, no, I didn’t promise.

I told you a plan, God willing. If it comes together right, this is what we’re gonna do. And sometimes my staff will say to me, well, pastor, you promised. And I say, no, I don’t make promises, I make plans.

Plan is to do this. And so last week, my plan was that on Monday, I might catch a little sleeping in because I had been putting in a lot of time. And I might rest a little bit in the morning, but then one of our bus drivers had a heart attack.

And so they called Pastor Mike and said, we need you to drive a bus. I had a plan. but God changed those plans and what I’m trying to tell you is believers that there are times we have plans the way we want our lives to go and sometimes people say to well that’s not the way I planned it pastor well I just want you to know man has a plan but the Lord directs his steps we have plans in our lives on how we do things but it is the Lord that directs our steps we see in Acts chapter 13 and Acts chapter 16 that the Spirit of God is the director of God’s work it is the Spirit of God that leads us and directs us in the way that he wants us to go and what we witness here is that God is sovereignly redirecting the Apostle in a way that would bring salvation to the people at Thessalonica This was what God wanted.

It’s not that he would not come back later and reach the people at Ephesus. It’s just that in God’s timing, and God’s way, and in God’s perfect plan were to follow. And what I admire most here about the Apostle is that he was willing to lay aside his own plans so that he could do the will of the Lord.

God uses circumstances to get our attention. He communicates with us in unique ways. And sometimes God will say to you, No, that’s not what I want you to do. That’s not the direction I want you to go.

He will direct your paths to the place where he wants you to serve him. Romans 8.14 says, For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the children of God. We need to be more sensitive to God’s leading in both the prohibiting and directing of our lives.

There are times God closes doors in your life, and you need to be sensitive to that. Let me share with you four things. How do I know the leadership of the Spirit, Pastor? How do I know? How do I follow that leadership of the Spirit?

Real quickly, it’s real easy. It always begins with prayer, Church. Write that word down, prayer. When Terry and I have prayed and said, Lord, what is your will? We’ve always asked him that if it’s not his will, please close the door.

Every opportunity is not God’s will in your life. Every time something comes along and you might think it’s bigger, it’s better, you know, you’ve got all these wonderful things. That doesn’t mean it’s God’s will in your life.

It’s not what God wants. So we would always pray, God, if it’s not your will, At your will, please close the door. I remember that in my early days, as I had concluded my time at Bible College, that there was a church up in Michigan that wanted me to come up and candidate.

So Terry and I tracked up there, just outside of Detroit. A very nice church, a very wealthy church, a very formal church. And I got up there. If you guys think I’m crazy now, you should have seen me when I was 20.

You should have seen me in my 20s. If you think, man, I mean, you’re lucky. You got the refined mic. And that isn’t too refined. But you should have seen me back then. And I was up and down the stage all over the auditorium, and those people were horrified at what they had just witnessed.

I really appreciate it. I feel sorry for the chairman of the pulpit committee. He came by to see me and said, Pastor Mike, you’re a good preacher. But it’s not gonna work here. And you know, actually, I’m praising God because all that snow up there, hello.

But anyways, I want you to know, God shut that door. It’s okay, it’s okay. God opens doors, God closes doors. How do I know the leadership? How do I follow it? Number one, prayer. Number two, peace. You see, God is not the author of confusion, but a peace, the Bible says.

Now the Bible tells us that God will give us a peace that passes all understanding. I can’t scientifically measure it for you. I can’t tangibly explain it to you. I can just tell you that when you pray and you’re seeking the will of God and you’re trying to understand the leadership of the Spirit that He will give you a peace that passes all understanding.

And if you don’t have that peace, don’t move. Don’t make a change. Don’t go in that direction. That you need the peace of God in your life. It’s not just that we need to make peace with God and that we need to be saved and we need to surrender our lives to God, but we need to have the peace of God as His people.

You need to have the peace of God in your life believing that this is what God has for you. And the Spirit of God will give you that peace if you seek for that peace. God is not the author of confusion.

If you’re confused, it’s not from God. If you’re confused, it’s either from the world, the devil, or your own flesh. And people say, Pastor, I’ll just follow my heart. No, please don’t do that. The heart is deceitful, who can know it?

And there’s been many people who have followed their hearts and made bad decisions in their life. The third is principles. I wanna tell you that the leadership of the Spirit of God will never, it will never be in contradiction to the principles of God’s word, okay?

It’ll never be in contradiction. So, you might say, I’d say, well, God wants me to rob a bank. The Spirit of God, and I’m being extreme just to make a point, okay? But the Spirit of God has led me to rob a bank, pastor.

No, he hasn’t. Okay? He is not, because the Spirit doesn’t lead you to do something that violates the word of God. Well, please remember that. And then finally, it’s people. The Bible says that there is wisdom and there is safety in a multitude of counsel.

God’s people, not the people who will agree with whatever you say. But I’m talking about godly people that you can come to. It could be elders, pastors. It could be your parents. It could be people that are spiritual mentors in your life and just bounce things off of them.

And if they’re saying, ah, I’m not seeing it, I think that’s, you know, listen, God uses people. Now, sometimes we don’t like what people say. We want the people to say what we want them to say. And many times I feel like people come to see me and they just want me to affirm whatever they wanna do.

You know, and I’m just like, hey, if you just wanted me to affirm, man, just send me a text message. And I’ll say that a boy. Hang in there, keep going. We can move forward. But if you really want how I see it objectively from God’s word, then this is what I think.

But here’s the thing, is that God uses people in your life, sometimes like a warning sign. And sometimes those people might say to you, the bridge is out if you go down that path. That’s a bad direction.

And you might say, well, I don’t agree with that. It makes me feel excited and it makes me this and that. But you know what, they have wisdom. They see things that you don’t see. And so I want to encourage you, never make a move, never make a change, never make a major decision in your life without seeking the counsel of godly people in your life.

God aligns all this together to help you to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit in your life and to help you to know what God’s will is. God is calling all of us to be successful. There’s gonna be opposition church, there’s gonna be disagreements.

But God can override it all to accomplish his great purpose. And the key for us, don’t stop. Just keep training that next generation. And keep investing and strengthening other believers. And keep following the leadership of the Spirit in your life and what you’ll see is God will use your life uniquely and he’ll use your life specifically to bring the gospel to many hearts.

God has called us to strengthen our fellow believers, and we do that by not only giving them the word of God, but to coach them, to mentor them, to encourage them, to support them, and to help them to work through some of maybe the obstacles and challenges that are in their life.

And that’s what you see going on in the early church consistently over and over and over. So, I hope that today’s message has continued to kind of give you a pattern or a template that you can use as you’re trying to encourage and mentor others in the family of God.

Well, I want to remind you that Hope Worth Having is a ministry that has a newsletter we put out on a regular basis, and if you’re interested in signing up to receive our newsletter, you can go to HopeWorthHaving.com, hit the newsletter button, and sign up for that newsletter, it’ll come right to your house, or if you just want to email it, we can do that as well.

We can email it straight to your inbox. So take advantage of that opportunity as you continue to learn more and grow in your faith and let the Lord encourage you. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.