Earthly things for Eternal gain

At church the sermon was on how we spend our money.
It was really challenging to me to think 'do I use my money for earthly purposes, or eternal purposes?' I hadn't ever thought that I could use money to help others learn about God, but really it seems silly that I hadn't.
Matt (the preacher) showed that while earthly possessions aren't bad, they have been given to us from God and we should use everything He has given us to further His Kingdom.

It's amazing to think that my little donation to Bible Society or to a missionary can lead to someone hearing the gospel and then we will see each other in heaven!

So this is my challenge to other young, unmarried women, to use this time God has given us (without much financial responsibility) to use what He has given us to further the work of the gospel.

Everything we need

Our church is small, and unfortunately is getting smaller as a few people leave. They are moving from the area or 'moving on with their life'. We do have a committed group of key people but the things they are able to do is getting less as they get older, not physically able to do as much as they use too, or they have having families and understandably their children are taking up a lot of their time.

At the same time as this is happening we have decided to reach out more purposefully to the people in our community. Many of us feel that we just don't have the resources to keep doing all that we are doing and then do more.

I was reading Luke 9:1-9 ; in verse 3 Jesus sends out his disciples out with deliberately restricted resources. This restriction makes them focus on God instead of their own strengths and trust Him for everything.

Even though we are a small church, if we are doing God's work then he will provide everything we need; be it people, time, money, knowledge, resources. We need to just trust him and not worry about things from a earthly perspective.


His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 2 Peter 1:3

Missionary?

Dear Sister

Yesterday at church I heard one of the most thought provoking and challenging/encouraging sermons in a long time.
We don't have a minister at the moment so we have had a few visiting ministers. Today was a guy who's family use to come to our church but they are now church planting in an area of Sydney where there is a large Muslim community. It's so great to hear about all that God is doing through them, but that's a story for another post :).

Anyway he was talking about how the early church had an attitude of mission. Even though they sent out 'missionaries' they were very mission minded in their own churches, communities and homes. It got me thinking. Do I act just as mission minded at home as I do on mission? Short answer; no.
I grew up in a missionary family overseas, I've been on a short term mission and I've helped out with family missions at our church. When on mission I am consciously thinking about how I can lead the conversations toward gospel things, I talk about what God has done into everything I do. I pray constantly about the people I will meet that I can share with them about God. I don't always say as much as I should, but at least I'm trying and praying and I believe God can use even a broken person like me.

But at 'home' I'm not like that. I don't even think about leading conversations I have towards the gospel, even though I pray about my non-christian friends, I don't expect things to happen. It was a huge rebuke to me.

Why don't people become Christians? Because we don't tell them how.