It's Not Us, It's All Jesus

I read this today and it made me think of CCJ. Hopefully, this will give us all a bit of perspective.

Jesus (was) looking at less than 500 people after His resurrection and telling them that they are responsible to make disciples of every ethnic group; every tribe; every nation (Matt. 28:18-20).

At the time, the world population was an estimated 181 million. Jesus was addressing a microscopic speck of the population and telling them that it was up to them to go to the different people groups who didn’t live in the area, speak the language, and 99.4 percent who held to a different religious system other than Christianity (World Christian Encyclopedia).

Jesus made one last promise, however, that made the impossible, possible. He promised the church then and now that He would empower them with His Holy Spirit until He returned. That same Spirit is alive and empowering us ...

I was thinking about this yesterday quite a bit (specifically about how God's providence works in our lives to put us in places we wouldn't probably choose on our own). We moved to Indiana from Tennessee in Nov. 2000 because I got a job at the best small paper in America (though I didn't know it was the best at the time - it was a job I could use my degree in and it wasn't delivering pizzas anymore). Through this job, I acquired knowledge and skills I didn't previously have. We also found a church home that, in my admittedly limited thinking, is probably the reason God put us here in the first place. At CCJ, we have seen is grow from 20-something to nearly 700 in attendance each week in just under 9 years.

But, here's the beautiful part, even after I'm long gone, Jesus will still be at work through CCJ to change the world. Part of our motto is "change the world." That seems a bit audacious for a church of just under 700 people in a relatively small town in southern Indiana to claim to want to do. However, we have about the same number as Jesus looked at after the resurrection. And look what He did with them.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:23-26)