Ecuador Report

Good evening, everyone. It was such a great trip, just looking at the pictures, having good memories. And everybody who has a white shirt like this went to the trip. So I think we're missing only one, Val Futzlander, who is in Michigan right now, taking care of her seven grandchild. So it was a great trip, full of emotions, looking at the pictures. If you didn't notice, there was a picture with my whole family there, my two brothers and my dad.

They're all pastors over there, so it was a unique opportunity just to go there and have not just the church relationship, but the family relationship too. And I think I speak on behalf of the whole team that we felt very loved by the church over there in Ecuador. It was such a great time. But we have the conviction right here at Christ Community Church that this cannot happen without the work of God's word. And we know that's important, because everybody that went over there, it was prepared. It was prepared not by us, not by Bruce or Tom or Roger or Lance.

It was prepared by God's word. So this meeting is designed to give you a report and to thank God for sending us. But it is the meeting to encourage you to go next year to Argentina, because we have an upcoming trip to Argentina. And we want to encourage you to go. We want you to go. But we want you to go, and before you go, we want you to be prepared, prepared to go. And the most important thing that you can be prepared on is to be spiritually strong, to be faithful throughout the year. So when you go on a missions trip, it's just the reflection of what's going on within our church, because we cannot go overseas and ask other church in other country to do something that we are not doing.

We cannot go to other church and tell them you need to be faithful in evangelism if we are not being faithful in it. We cannot go to other church and encourage them to be kind to each other, to be loving to each other, to have the bond of the spirit within the church. If we don't have that within our church, we cannot go to another church and tell them to pray if we are not faithful in praying. So I want to encourage you tonight through 2 Timothy chapter two, verses one through seven, to be a faithful servant, to be a faithful servant.

We need faithful servants to go to Argentina. We need faithful servants to serve in Christ Community Church. We need faithful servants to do the work of the ministry. And in 2 Timothy chapter two, verses one through seven, I believe it's a great text that speaks of the necessity to be faithful in ministry, to be faithful to God, to be able to perform the work of the ministry. In 2 Timothy chapter two, verses one through seven says the following, you therefore, my son, be as strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust this to faithful people who will be able to teach others also. Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life so that he may please the one who enlisted him. And if someone likewise competes as an athlete, he is not crowned as victor unless he competes according to the rules. The hardworking farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops.

Consider what I said, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Father, we pray today that you give us wisdom, that you give us understanding. Please open our minds to the scripture. We need it. We need to be fed by your word, so we pray for wisdom, Father. We pray that our eyes will be attentive, our minds wouldn't be wandering around. But help us please, Lord, to be focused on your word tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. In 2 Timothy, let me give you some context, okay?

I'm gonna be very quick, I don't wanna be long. I know that all preachers said that. I don't wanna be long and they are long, but I wanna be, I wanna talk about 2 Timothy 2 in the next 20 minutes, okay? So just to give you a quick context of what's happening in 2 Timothy, we have this charge from the Apostle Paul to Timothy in the context of urgency, okay? There is an urgency in Paul towards Timothy, but there is as well a close relationship between Paul and Timothy, okay? There is this relationship between a spiritual father and a child.

And this child is referred to someone who is dear and close to Paul's heart, and Paul sees himself as somebody who has a spiritual responsibility over Timothy. There is a spiritual matter right here that needs to be addressed. And Paul is the one who loves his spiritual son, Timothy, sees important to write this letter. And secondly, Paul is about to be sacrificed because of the gospel.

He's about to die. And he knows that whatever he writes in this letter is gonna be the legacy that he leaves for Timothy. And the legacy that he wants to leave for Timothy is the importance of faithfulness in the ministry, faithfulness in the ministry. And they are four imperatives right here in the text that will teach us how to be faithful in the ministry. Four commands, okay? Four commands that will teach us how to be faithful in the ministry. And the first one is gonna be found in 2 Timothy chapter two, verse one.

And this is the command to be strengthened by God's grace. If you see in verse one, you see, you therefore, my son, be strong, be strong. And this is interesting because he's not telling Timothy to be strong in himself. He's telling Timothy, be strengthened by someone else. And who is that someone else? It's God himself. So Paul is telling Timothy, everything starts in God doing a work in you first.

So if you wanna be faithful in ministry, you gotta understand this. You cannot do ministry in your own strength. You cannot, you shouldn't do it. You shouldn't try to do it. Ministry is done in God's power. And you could see that confirmed when he says, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. That means that as we are saved by grace through faith, how we persevere in our Christian life. We persevere in our Christian life by grace as well. Our Christian life is never about our own strength.

Our Christian life is all about God doing a work in us first. First Timothy chapter one, verse 12, the Apostle Paul says the following.

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has strengthened me because he considered me faithful, putting me into service. Second Timothy chapter four, verse 17.

But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth. Second Timothy chapter four, verse 17.

Therefore, to be strengthened in the grace of God, we need God himself to make us capable of functioning in Christ Jesus. We do ministry by grace. We don't deserve ministry. We are not the best at ministry. We shouldn't think that way when doing ministry. Sometimes we think in these terms, I wanna do something for God. But what Paul is telling Timothy is, you gotta think this way. What is God doing in me first?

How am I being strengthened by God's grace? We cannot function outside of God's plans to preach the gospel and to do ministry. Philip Towner said it that way. The grace that is in Christ Jesus encompasses all that God freely gives to those who are in Christ. Listen to this. To be strong in his grace is to rely on the strength that comes from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Everything that God requires of us, he himself plans to accomplish through us. It's God's plans. So that's why the first command that Paul gives to Timothy is, be strengthened by God in his grace in Christ Jesus.

Ministry is not what I can do for God. Ministry is what God is going to do in me and through me to preach the gospel and to edify Christ's church. That's very important to understand because sometimes ministry fails. All the time ministry fails when we try to do it on our own understanding, our own strength. That takes us to the second command.

The second command we can see in verse two. The second command is, be faithful to entrust to others. We need to understand that we are just instruments in God's hands and we need to invest our lives in others to faithfully pass down the responsibility that we have. We need to understand this if we're gonna do ministry in Christ's church. Listen to what he says in verse two. And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit this or entrust this, pass down this to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

So there's that command to be faithful, to entrust others, to pass down the responsibility to others. And that requires that we are involved in ministry. That means that we are involved with other people. And you gotta ask yourself, who am I, in what life am I involved in that we are passing down the things that I have heard from scripture? Who am I teaching? Who am I influencing in the church? Because sometimes we wanna do ministry, but we don't wanna get involved in people's lives. And that's opposite of what God wants for us.

Look what he says over here. He says that be faithful to commit these things. What things? The things that Timothy have heard from who? From Paul. What are those things that Timothy needs to pass down to others? And it's very important because listen to what 2 Timothy 1 verse 5 says. 2 Timothy 1 verse 5. Look what Paul tells to Timothy. When I called to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother, Louis, and your mother, Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.

2 Timothy 1 verse 13 says, hold fast to the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me in faith and love, which is in Jesus Christ. 2 Timothy 3 verse 14 and 15. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from who you learn it and how from childhood you have known the sacred writing. Things. What are the things that Timothy heard from Paul? It's the gospel. It's God's word. Timothy had the responsibility to pass down God's word to other people, to entrust God's word, to entrust the gospel to other people.

And he needed to be faithful to entrust these to others. What Timothy have heard relates to the standard of pure sound doctrine. That's very important for us. We have to pass down sound doctrine. We have to pass down God's word. So it's very important and we need to be faithful to this. That's why Paul tells him, hold fast, safeguard, remember the doctrine without error. As we see, Timothy didn't receive a charge to change the gospel. He received the charge to keep the gospel pure, to be faithful to sound doctrine and to pass down this to other people who are gonna be trained by Timothy.

The purity of the gospel needs to be held high by the ones who are passing it down. The gospel is unchanging, yet it is dynamic. It produces life. That's why it's so important that we need to be faithful to pass it down. And that's what we were doing in Ecuador. That's why our desire was to pass down sound doctrine, to pass down genuine faith so they can see in us that we are being faithful and we are entrusting this to others. And if you wanna go on a missions trip, this needs to be your mindset.

You're not going there just to travel, to go to another country, to know another country. You are going there to be faithful, to pass down something that's very important to you, that's dear to you. And the question that we need to answer in this passage is pass it down to who? And it's interesting that it says over here, pass it down to who? To faithful men. To faithful people. That's very interesting because faithful means to somebody that is trustworthy. Somebody that you can trust. Somebody that you can say, that person is faithful, so I'm passing this sound doctrine, this pure gospel to somebody who I know that is faithful to God in the ministry.

First Corinthians chapter four, verse two says, Moreover, it is required in the stewards that one be found faithful.

First Corinthians chapter four, verse 17. For this reason I have sent Timothy to you who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord. And we need to understand this, ministry is done by faithful people. Ministry is done by faithful people. Otherwise it doesn't accomplish the purpose that God put ministry for. And we need to think in terms of faithfulness. Faithfulness is necessary for someone who wants to pass down this, but faithfulness is necessary for the people who are receiving this pure gospel.

And it says that the second characteristic is not that they are faithful, but that they are able to teach others also.

That they are competent to pass it down to others. The faithful understands that their competence comes from the Lord. What Paul is saying here is this. If you are faithful, if you are faithful to the Lord, if you are strengthened in the Lord, you wanna pass down this to people who are strengthened by the Lord too. That understand their competence doesn't come from themselves. It comes from the Lord. People who have the same mindset, who are faithful to teach others, faithful that their characteristics as believers is people who have the marks of a true faith in Jesus Christ.

And brothers and sisters tonight, it's very important that we're faithful to God in the ministry before we are even thinking on going on a missions trip. Because we're going to spiritual battle. The enemy doesn't want us there. He doesn't want us there because people are gonna hear the gospel. The church is gonna be strengthened. This church is gonna be strengthened. So it's a spiritual battle that is fought way before we go to a missions trip. And we need to be strengthened in God before we go. We need to be faithful to entrust other people what we have learned from scripture to keep it pure, to not change it.

We don't need to change anything in the gospel. We just need to pass it down. But to pass it down, we need to learn it from someone else. And from someone else who's gonna teach us and then we can pass it down as pure as we got it. And that's very important. Because we shouldn't be worried about somebody who's going on a missions trip and not sure what he's gonna preach. If he's gonna preach the gospel or not. If he's gonna be the weakest link or not. We gotta be faithful to God in the ministry in Christ Community Church.

Because what we do on a missions trip must be the reflection of what we do at home. That's very important. We need to be that church first.

The faithful church. To be able to go down to another country, whether it be Argentina, Uganda, Ecuador, Russia. If we wanna go there, we need to be faithful. We cannot ask others to be faithful in something that we are not being faithful at home. If we want to pass it down to others, we need to be competent about it at home first.

If we want to pass it down, we need to be competent about it at home first. And that's why there is always an encouragement for you to serve in the church. Because we need that. We need the service to the Lord. We need to be faithful servants in the church first if we wanna go to another place.

And I know that we want to encourage you to go to other places to share the gospel. But first, we want you to serve in Christ Community Church.

We want you to evangelize in Christ Community Church. We want to encourage Christ Community Church first before we go and tell others what to do.

And that's why we need to ask ourselves, right? Are we being faithful servants right now at Christ Community Church? And that's a question that you need to do before the Lord. How faithful I am being in Christ Community Church? Am I evangelizing in Christ Community Church? Am I a strong believer in Christ Community Church? So I'm able to go down and pass down that responsibility. That's an encouragement for you. That's my exhortation to you. Be faithful, be faithful to be strengthened in the Lord.

Be faithful to keep the gospel pure so we can pass it down to others. And be faithful to serve in this church. Be faithful. There are many opportunities to serve in Christ Community Church. But we need to be found faithful by our God first before we can go to another place and preach the gospel in another place.

So I wanna encourage you. I wanna encourage you to be faithful to that, to be found faithful before the Lord and before the church. We're gonna pray. Father in heaven, thank you, Lord. Tonight we thank you for the wonderful time that we had in Ecuador, Lord. And we thank you, Father, for your grace and mercy to our lives. We know, Lord, that it was your work being done in Ecuador. We know, Father, that you are the one who strengthened us. You are the one who gave us wisdom to talk to people. You are the one who put the words in our tongues to preach the gospel faithfully, Lord.

And we thank you for that. We thank you for sending us to Ecuador. We thank you, Father, for all the work that you're doing over there after we left. We thank you, Lord, because we trust that you are the one who does the work, that we are just instruments in your hands. So please, Father, we pray that you help us to be faithful, to be found faithful in the things that we're doing at home. Please, Father, we ask for wisdom to be able to serve in Christ Community Church because we love you and because we love your church, Jesus Christ.

We pray, Father, for the testimonies that we're gonna hear in a few minutes. We pray, Father, that you'll use that to encourage our hearts, to think about going to a missions trip, to think about saving the money that we need to save for the missions trip. But most importantly, Lord, to be strong in you, to grow and mature as a Christian so when we go, Father, we're able to be a blessing to the church that we are being sent to. In Jesus' name, amen.