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I rarely write about sermons I preach, but today I want to make an exception. I want to write about what I preached about this past Sunday, “How the Apostles responded to adversities”, and apply it to how we should respond to what is happening in the world with Coronavirus. I really believe that because of the level of fear that many people are experiencing, we need to hear what God says about situations just like this one. 

In Acts 4, the Apostles are being persecuted, they have been threatened, intimidated and jailed for openly preaching the Gospel of Christ. Even though the adversity was different from what we are facing today, they way they responded to the threats they were facing speaks exactly on how we should respond. 

1.- The recognized the the Sovereignty of God (Acts 4:24-28)

They realized it was God the creator, and who is orchestrating everything that was happening and that He was totally in control of the situation. A post-modern perspective of Christianity thinks that only good things should happen to  Christians.

But here we see that the Apostles were being threatened, jailed, beaten (later they actually killed some of them) for preaching the Gospel. How do we reconcile the fact that sometimes Christians suffer, they are persecuted, they even die for the sake of the Gospel? The Sovereignty of God. God is in control, and He knows what He is doing, even when we do not. When Job lost everything he owned, even the life of his children, he worshipped God (Job 1:20-21). True worship is recognizing that God is Sovereign and good, even when our circumstance’s are not. 

2.- The joined in with what God
was already doing (Acts 4: 29-30)

In chapter 3 a man that had been that was “lame” since he was born, was miraculously healed be Peter and John, after he was healed he went into the Temple praising God. Because of that, and other “signs and wonders” that God was doing, many were coming to faith in Christ. They did not view the persecution as different, God was working. That is the reason that instead of asking God for Protection, they asked Him for Boldness to continue to preach the Gospel They joined in on what God as already doing!

In China where the Coronavirus started, Chinese believers are handing out face masks, and also handing out Gospel tracts and using this as an opportunity to show Christ’s love and preach the Gospel to a very fearful population.

In the second century of Rome there was a horrible plague that was killing over 5,000 people every day.

The Christians under the leadership of Cyprian began to attend to the sick and dying and even became exposed to the plague themselves. As a result of their caring for the sick and dying, almost all of Rome was evangelized! They realized this was an opportunity that God Himself was providing for them. 

3.-They prayed and were filled with
the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:31)

The natural reaction would have been to pray for protection from the danger. That is not what they prayed, they asked God to fill them with His Spirit and give them boldness to continue preaching the Gospel. The only one that can give us that kind of an attitude and perspective is the Holy Spirit of God! He empowers us to fulfill His mission, even when we are powerless! 

So how should we respond? 

1. We need to remain calm, because God is Sovereign and in control of this situation, even if it gets much worse. 

2. We need to see this as an opportunity to share the Hope we have in Christ with those who do not have this Hope. 

3. We need to recognize that we do not have the power to respond like this, but the Holy Spirit does. 

This past week our Global Focus Latin American facilitators have been mentoring several churches. Although I do not have space to write about each one, I do want to highlight a few: 

Yovanny Alvarez says that Global Focus in Venezuela continues to grow as more and more churches want to learn how to personalize and participate in missions. He is now mentoring the leaders of FBC of San Felipe. He and his team are mentoring nearly 100 churches in Venezuela! 

Luis Marti (former pastor of Miramonte B.C. in San Salvador) is mentoring dozens of churches in Central America! One of the pastors that has been wanting for his church to be mentored in our missional process is Oscar Rodriguez, who is pastor of one of the Amigos churches in Chalatenango, El Salvador. Luis was able to start the process with the leadership of his church! 

Pablo Caruachin is one of our Peruvian directors and this will soon launch our process with the Assemblies of God in La Paz, Bolivia. We have been in touch with this denomination for some time, and are now ready to begin a mentoring relationship with them.

L. and E. received a voice mail (which I personally heard) “Do not come back to our country, people are dying everywhere from the Coronavirus! With tears in their eyes they told me, we have to go back, the people in our (closed) country need the Hope of the Gospel. They are on a plane now as they returning to a country others would not go because of the fear of the Coronavirus. Why? We Live Sent, it is His Mission not our own mission that is fundamental. Living Sent means taking the Gospel (the only hope) to areas that are at risk to our own well being. Please pray for L. and E. as they return to this country. 

R. and A. are from Arequipa, Peru, and are now living sent in a totally closed country of North Africa. This past month they have been sharing the Gospel with K. who delivers the butane gas to their apartment who is very close to make a decision to follow Christ. They also deliver Bibles to those who are seeking Christ; please pray for M. who solicited a Bible and is now contemplating following Christ. Pray for them, when they give out these Bibles they never know who the other person is receiving it. (In this country it is very dangerous to “proselytize”). They are Living Sent. 

Last week Xochitl and I were able to participate in the Global Impact Celebration for Shades Mountain Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL. Global Focus mentored this wonderful church along with pastor Dr. Danny Woods 20 years ago. For the last 19 years they have had one of the premier Global Impact Celebrations in the United States. Their church has not only raised phenomenal amounts of funding for missions, but their people have personally engaged in missions locally and globally. (Take a look at this wonderful video of what it means to Live Sent https://vimeo.com/shadesmtn)

As Pastor Danny read an email from a college age young person and his perspective of having grown up in a church that is so focused on missions, and has a yearly Global Impact Celebration. The email expressed the impact that missions has had in his own life;  how he viewed missionaries as normal people, that taking missions trips was a normal part of his church experience and that even now as he personally considered a career in mission, he did not view it as something extra spiritual or abnormal, but a normal pathway for his own Christian experience. 

If there is a theme that encompasses what Global Focus teaches, it was the theme of the Global Impact Celebration at  last week, “Live Sent”. What this theme teaches is that every single one of us, at every moment in our lives, and in every place,  are sent by Jesus Christ to fulfill His Mission and not necessarily our own. That is exactly what God is doing in churches all over Latin America! 

Members of those churches are not just attending worship services, they are on mission outside the walls of their church in their own communities and around the world so that true worship of God can take place among those who are not currently worshipping Him.

Last month we hosted a training event in Mexico where we were able to begin to train new Global Focus facilitators in Mexico. Two of those new facilitators have hit the ground running; they are already sharing with local churches, pastors and leaders how Global Focus can help mobilize their church to personally engage in making disciples in their own city and country, and making disciples among unreached people groups in all nations. In order to help mobilize more churches and help send out more Latin American missionaries to the nations next year we will be hosting at least 4 training events train new Global Focus facilitators, to date we have 16 men that are helping to mentor churches, and coach potential missionaries, but there are still thousands of unreached people groups waiting for the Gospel and there is still so much more we can do. 

Last week we had several Global Celebrations in different countries of churches that we have been mentoring, in Mexico City, in Venezuela and Central America, and here in the U.S.  A Global Celebration is when a church celebrates all that it is doing in missional both locally and around the world.

They bring in their missionaries, they meet in homes with the people and mobilize them to intentionally live on mission for Christ. We are excited about how God is using these churches in Latin America to prove what our pastor Dr. Johnny Hunt has always said: “You don’t have to be rich to be generous, you just have to be generous.”

These churches are now giving more to missions than ever before, and more than almost any other churches in Latin America in spite of the economic difficulties in many of these countries. The key is not pressuring them to give, the key is engaging them personally in missions. 

Last week in their Global Celebration we were able to sign a strategic alliance with Miramonte Baptist Church, one of Latin America’s largest baptist churches, and one of the first churches we mentored and a church that models our Global Focus process. We have always had a “special relationship” with Miramonte, to the point that their former pastor of 25 years, Luis Marti, is now our Central American director for Global Focus. But now we have formalized our relationship through this strategic alliance that will prove to be both beneficial to their church, to our ministry, but also to the Kingdom of God at sending even more missionaries from Latin America to the nations. 

Yovanny Alvarez, our Venezuelan director preached the Global Celebration at Miramonte, and did a wonderful job at challenging the church to go even farther and do more for God’s Kingdom. We are excited about all that God is doing and all of the opportunities He is giving them and how many other churches are being challenged by the example of this great church. 

It goes against our nature to focus, to invest, to pray for or send our people to areas of the world that do not benefit our own churches. Our human nature wants us to focus on ourselves; that’s why so many churches just focus on things that can boast their own attendance or benefit their own church. In order to participate with what God is doing around the world, we have to focus on His Mission, not our own. This is the natural tension for every church, every pastor, every follower of Christ; our own self-centeredness struggles with God and His Mission.

Pastor Ezequiel Velez is pastor of Senda de Restauracion, a Hispanic church that we mentored in Global Focus about 5 years ago. God gave this word to pastor Ezequiel while his church was still renting other churches facilities and meeting on Sunday afternoons: “Focus on Missions and I will build your church”!  God has done exactly that; The congregation has significantly grown, and He has now given them their own beautiful campus. How did they get there? They focused on God’s Mission, and God has blessed their church!  Since implementing the principals we teach in Global Focus, now this Hispanic church in Atlanta is laser like focused on mobilizing its own people to local-global missions.

They have taken many of their people on numerous missions trips, they have seen hundreds come to faith in Christ locally and on the mission field! They are planting daughter churches, and they have worked with missionaries and  distributed food boxes to refugee families in the Middle East! Dr. Larry Reesor, the founder of Global Focus was able to preach their 5th Global Celebration and their Faith Promise Missions Offering was nearly $130,000.00 plus they raised another nearly $15,000.00 for special projects! God is doing an incredible work in this church that is focuses outside of its own walls! 

Last week before traveling to Brandon, I was in Cd. Valles, Mexico with Luis Marti (our Central American Director for Global Focus). Iglesia Evangelica de los Peregrinos of Cd. Valles had their 3rd Global Celebration. The church was packed as they welcomed their 25 missionaries and missional projects into the auditorium. 

What has God done in this local church since they have implemented Global Focus? God has taken this nearly 100 year old Wesleyan church that had never sent out a missionary and now they are sending 2 missionaries; one family to Macedonia, and the other to Southeast Asia, both working as church planters among mslms. Their own people have have owned local/global missions, they are personally participating by starting local missions projects, by participating in missions trips. They have also quadrupled their missions giving! 

God is doing so much in this church that this year we decided to host our first ever Missional Church Conference in Mexico. The host church invited  50 pastors and leaders of their own Peregrinos (Wesleyan) denomination. Luis and I were able to teach for 2 days these leaders and show them how the incredible transformation that has taken place in the host church can take place in their churches also. Then we were able to have a facilitators conference where we both taught several of our new facilitators in Mexico how to help churches with the Global Focus missional process.