The God Who Sends His Church

``When I preach to you, you need to understand this, you cannot pray for a harvest and refuse the field. You cannot pray for workers and never consider being one yourself. You can't do it. It's rhetorical. Jesus is saying, when you pray to God, hey, send workers, and God responds to this, well, who am I going to send? There's only one clear response in scripture. Here I am. Send me. [00:28:34] (39 seconds)  #HereIAmSendMe

When we really take prayer seriously, we take coming to the altar seriously, it reshapes our hearts so we develop compassion. And then something funny happens. There is a burden that grows. We become burdened for people. Because we want to see them change. We want to see them in heaven. And all of a sudden, there is this force that is on us like, I have to pray. It's no longer I want to. I have to because they need it. They need Christ. [00:14:29] (35 seconds)  #PrayerThatCompels

People are more ready to come to Christ than we realize. Those chairs, those chairs that are empty, they're not empty because someone isn't searching. They're empty because the workers are few. That's what Jesus is saying in this passage. And what's interesting is what Jesus tells us to do first. He doesn't say go right away. He says pray. [00:10:56] (34 seconds)  #PrayFirst

An empty chair represents a soul. We can't just leave a chair here and not talk about it and the impact that we should have and the responsibility we should take. I'll put it front and center so everybody can see it. A chair should be a burden on us. It's somebody's eternal destination. Right? It's an absence of a eternal brother or sister from the body of Christ. [00:24:38] (38 seconds)  #EmptyChairBurden

Every empty chair always tells a story. It tells a story of distance. It tells a story of absence. It tells a story of someone missing from the table. And when we look at an empty chair, hopefully hopefully, you feel it emotionally. There's a tug on the heart like I'm praying for my one. My one should be sitting there. So we feel it emotionally. But when Jesus sees empty chairs, he feels it spiritually. [00:00:47] (45 seconds)  #EmptyChairTellsAStory

Well, here's my promise to you. One day, those chairs won't be empty anymore because prayers are being prayed right now. And the church will be sent, and the harvest is gonna come home because the god who loves the lost sends his church to find them. And that is our mission now. So, church, I wanna do something with you this morning, and I want you to take this seriously. We need to develop heaven's heart. [00:30:00] (44 seconds)  #DevelopHeavensHeart

Now, maybe you're here this morning and you're not sure what to believe. You might feel like you're the empty chair in somebody else's story, if I'm gonna be honest. What I want you to know is you're not invisible to God. You're not forgotten by heaven, not in the slightest bit. Someone has been praying for you. Someone has carried your name to an altar, and that's why you're here with us this morning. [00:16:48] (33 seconds)  #YouAreNotInvisible

I need you to hear this. Our goal is not to fill the altars with names. This isn't about numbers. This isn't about performance. This is about obedience. We are trying to form a burden. God is not asking us for volume. He's asking us for sincerity. So when you bring a name up here, what you're doing is you're saying you're willing to commit to praying for all the ones that you put on these altars, and you need to hear that. [00:20:51] (39 seconds)  #SincerePrayer