758 Relationship Over Results - Luke 10:20

Do you often wish you could do something great for Jesus? Do you often feel disappointed when the results don't add up to what you expected? 

Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One Podcast. Today, I want to talk about Luke chapter 10, verse 20.

"Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." And that's from the English Standard Version. 

Today, our group is starting another Marketplace Mission Trip, and often on our mission trips, people come into them hoping to see God do some miracle in their daily workplace life.

It's a fun expectation. We want God to use us to make a difference and we want to hear him one day say, "well done, good and faithful servant." And we often compare our results against our own expectations to make that assessment. In this passage, Jesus is talking with the disciples. Seventy of them have been sent out across the country in pairs to preach about the kingdom of God being near.

They were like Jesus' advance guard. They basically announced that Jesus was coming to the entire nation. And they saw some great success. And in verse 19, Jesus celebrates that success with them. But he puts it all back in perspective in verse 20, when he says "don't rejoice in the results that you're experiencing; rejoice, instead that your names are written in heaven," that we have a relationship with God, that we are known by him. 

So we can enjoy our relationship, with God today. We can enjoy the kingdom of God today. And we're told to rejoice now, but every day isn't a miracle day. Many days are ordinary days. And measured by human standards, even Jesus's ministry was a failure. How much more will ours be measured as a failure too? How successful can we expect to be in this world?

I think our success comes in our relationship with God and often that's what happens to people on the Marketplace Mission Trip. We enter these efforts for God with high expectations, and then we get deflated because reality sets in. Our world is broken and we broke it. And we're surprised when it doesn't  line back up with what we understand about God. But he's working his plan. 

And all of this brings me back to trusting God and living in the moment. 

Today in our workplaces, we can find ways to pray. We can look for opportunities to be a blessing to the people around us. And you can always bless someone else by sincerely praying for them. As you're talking to anyone as you're looking at anyone, when you interact with anyone, say a prayer. Ask God to use you to bless them, or to do something else to bless them. He has this ability. 

That's our first daily activity in the Marketplace Mission Trip is to pray. And one of the great passages for that is the easy memory verse from 1 Thessalonians 5:17, "pray without ceasing." 

In every interaction that you have today, you can lift up a prayer. You can ask God to use you in their life. You can ask God to bless them any way that he deems necessary. He knows what's going on in the life of every person that we interact with today. And that's why we call what we do. marketplace ministry. "Ministry" is nothing but service and we can go into our workplace and serve others.

All we need to do is remember that good or bad, we can rejoice because our names are written in heaven from Luke chapter 10, verse 20. 

So today, thank you for being a marketplace minister. Let's go into our workplaces today and pray for others and ask God to use us to make a difference in the world. We can integrate our faith into everything we do simply by praying for the people that we interact with every day.

And we'll talk about the other four daily activities in the next few days, and in a way you'll be going through the marketplace mission trip with us, even if you haven't joined our online community. 

But if you haven't, what are you waiting for? Why not go to https://community.followerofone.org and sign up right now. Create a profile there and start hanging out with a group of Christians who want their faith to matter every day. 

Who we are around matters.

And it makes a difference in our lives when we can put ourselves around other people who want to follow God. Let's follow him today. Remember that we can rejoice because our names are written in heaven and do whatever he says. Thanks very much.