Heaven's Heart: Becoming a Soul-Winning, Prayerful Church

``You are sent as a people who pray before you speak, as people who love before you persuade, as people who carry names, not agendas. You were sent into homes, into workplaces, your schools, your neighborhoods, not as judges, not as fixers, but as faithful witnesses shaped by the compassion of Christ. May the same heart that moved Jesus when he saw the crowds now move us when we see the people around us. [00:44:26] (42 seconds)  #PrayBeforeYouSpeak

In all of this, here's what's important. The reason I shared the gospel conversations with you, the baptisms, the testimonies, I need you to hear this. This has never been about numbers. This is about people. Right? 16 people saying, I believe in Jesus Christ. Salvation's happening. Testimonies to show you where people are standing in their face so you believe it. This is about people. It always has been, and it always will be. [00:08:39] (32 seconds)  #PeopleNotNumbers

You see, soul winning didn't start with a strategy. Soul winning started with compassion. He had compassion. That's where it starts. Church started to ask you, do you have it? Do you have compassion for the lost around us? Evangelism is not something that we do once in a while. It's someone we are every day. That's who we are called to be. [00:20:42] (38 seconds)  #CompassionFirst

This is the slow trickle that fills the heart of Jesus, That we will do the hard work of becoming the church that we're called to be consistently, faithfully, obediently over time. This year, we're gonna learn to carry names before God. We're going to intercede for those far from Christ. We pray before we speak, And we trust that the Holy Spirit is gonna open up doors long before we see it happen. [00:27:00] (46 seconds)  #IntercedeBeforeYouSpeak

When Matthew is recording what Jesus is saying here that he that Jesus had compassion, what he's really saying is Jesus, when Jesus looked out at all the lost people, He didn't just have compassion. It was tearing them up inside. They are lost without me. This hurts me because I know their attorney, I know where they're gonna go, and I I struggle, I wrestle with this. [00:14:36] (36 seconds)  #HeartbrokenForTheLost

You see, when you see people and you see their struggles, you see the addictions, you see the conflicts, you see all the hardships, all of that stuff, you see it, and then you take it before God and you speak it out. You develop a burden for those people. The disciples knew that. You see, prayer doesn't replace mission. Prayer fuels mission. [00:25:24] (29 seconds)  #PrayerFuelsMission

And I prayed over it last year. And one question kept coming back to me. Are we only doing evangelism, or are we becoming an evangelistic church? Those are two totally different things. One is action. The other one is heart. Here's the the burden, the reality of all this. You see what I've come to know being a leader for many, many years. Programs can succeed. Programs can succeed all day long without hearts ever being changed. [00:16:46] (53 seconds)  #EvangelismIsHeart

I believe God is calling us as a church to turn our hearts outward in a fresh way this year. And I wanna begin with a question. What if? What if the thing that God did through us last year is meant to do something in us this year? What if all the preparation, what if all the labs, what if all the gospel conversations that we had last year were actually meant to do something in us this year? [00:01:25] (35 seconds)  #TransformationThroughMission