Meals As Ministry (pt3) by Daniel Williams

Meals open doors for God to work in and through our relationships with others, and we have been looking at specific ways we can see this at work! Today, we will look at 2 areas we can see in the Bible where God uses meals as an opportunity to serve and teach one another.

Meals are an opportunity to CELEBRATE

Culturally, we celebrate things with meals and food. Not only big holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, but most special occasions tend to incorporate food. Jesus celebrated with people because the gospel was good. Christians should be celebrating as well and should be throwing the best parties because we have the best reason to rejoice! Our salvation! Jesus never leaves us or forsakes us, He is for us…so we should continually be excited and thankful!

Luke 5:27-29 says, “After this He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax    booth. And He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ And leaving everything, he rose and followed Him. And Levi made Him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them.”

Invite people over to a party and celebrate God’s goodness! 

Deuteronomy 14:26 says, “And you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.”

When we have people in our homes, it allows people to see what our lives are like. The kids arguing or making a mess is part of real life! People can see that we don’t celebrate because we have everything together, but because God is so good and we rejoice in HIS goodness!

Meals are an opportunity to CARE FOR PEOPLE

Sometimes, we can forget that there are people in need of something as basic as food. We know it is a problem in the world, but we can forget how much providing a simple dinner for someone can make a difference for them. John wrote in 1 John 3:17-18, “But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” 

Opening your home to people not only meets a physical need, but can also meet the even more important emotional need to feel loved and accepted. There is nothing worse than feeling out of place or unwelcome. When we open up our homes and our lives to people and make them feel at home there, they feel it. People know when they are truly welcome in your home and loved.

Hospitality is a very big deal for Christians, because LOVING PEOPLE is a very big deal! 

Romans 12:13 says, “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.”  Being hospitable is even a requirement for elders in the church. We should be looking for opportunities to show hospitality to people! And watch how the Lord uses these times to show His love and mercy to people through you. You may not see the impact in that moment, but you can be sure that God will use it!

So, let me challenge you to ask God what opportunities you have to use meals to show His love to someone. Look for ways that you can share COMMUNITY and CONVERSATION (see part 2 of this series) with someone, CELEBRATE the goodness of God by having a gathering, and genuinely CARE FOR SOMEONE in need through hospitality. God will use you!

-Pastor Daniel

Meals As Ministry (pt2) by Daniel Williams

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about how using mealtimes as an opportunity to encourage someone is something we can all do! In the following post, you can read about several important ways that the Bible helps us view even our meals as opportunities for the gospel and discipleship.

Meals are an opportunity for COMMUNITY

Community is a real need that we all have. Having been made in the image of our triune God, we can see that God designed us to need one another and to meet this need through His people. We were made for community!

Genuine community takes time. 

Relationships with people do not develop without time and effort. Welcoming a person into our day, listening and sharing experiences—each of these things build on each other to create a friendship. Jesus did not only teach his disciples from messages—he traveled with them, ate with them, and shared experiences with them. Jesus is our perfect example of how we can use every opportunity to demonstrate the love and truth of God. 

Building friendship and establishing a sense of community will happen one step at a time. Even if it feels awkward in the beginning, every relationship has this stage of establishing common interests, getting to know the other person better, and finally feeling a sense of community and comfort with one another.

Remember that when we give our time, we show people that we love them. When a person feels loved by you, they will be much more open to allowing you to speak into their lives, and this will open doors for ministry to take place where it may not have before. 

Meals are an opportunity for CONVERSATION

Meals force us to be people oriented rather than task oriented. Sitting and eating with one another is an opportunity that we have to be still and have conversation. When we can no longer hide behind a project or busyness, we expose who we are in our conversation. We know that out of the heart, the mouth speaks which allows us to really get to know people through conversation. 

Let God fill your conversations.

God can use our conversations to help demonstrate His heart for people and encourage them. Proverbs 16:24 says, “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.” So, consider meals as an opportunity to love people with your words. Speak about the goodness of God. Bring up the promises of the Bible. Mention how you are seeing God at work in your own life. We are bombarded constantly with the lies and half-truths the world offers; we need to be hearing the truth of God more! 

So, remember to pray beforehand, that God will prepare you to speak His words during your time together! Once you begin to view meals as a way to be used by Jesus, you will be much more intentional about doing it! Look for Part 3 of this series for a few more ways to view mealtimes as opportunities for ministry.

-Pastor Daniel

Meals as Ministry (pt1) by Daniel Williams

Once you have known the love and mercy of Jesus in your life, there is no greater joy than sharing His love with someone. Jesus commands us to go into all the world and make disciples, and nothing brings greater fulfillment than stepping out and helping a person grow in their relationship with Jesus. (Matthew 28:18-20, John 20:21) I want nothing more than to obey my Savior and tell someone else about how much He loves them and what God has already done for them! But have you ever found yourself feeling ill-equipped or maybe you just don’t know where to start when it comes to discipling someone or even sharing Jesus? 

When my family came to Florida to start a church, we did not know anyone. We had no team, no church to invite people to, and wanted a way to form relationships and share Jesus with people who so desperately need Him. We had always loved having people over to our house to eat, and we decided to continue using this approach to building relationships and see what God would do through it! 

Meals are a practical and powerful means of connecting with people. 

Jesus used meals as an opportunity for ministry throughout His life. Robert Karris said, "In Luke's Gospel Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal.”

Luke 7:34-35 says, “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ But wisdom is justified by all her children.” 

God is constantly using the everyday world around us to show us things about who He is. So, it makes sense that Jesus used every opportunity to teach those around Him, including meal times. It is amazing to note the number of times we hear some of the greatest teachings of Jesus come from a time sitting around a dinner table. 

The act of inviting someone into our home is becoming more rare as people are busier and connecting more and more through social media and texting rather than face to face. We have had many people tell us that our home was the first “real home” they had been to in years! Tim Chester wrote a book on this subject called “A Meal with Jesus.” “Few acts are more expressive of companionship than the shared meal….someone with whom we share food is likely to be our friend, or well on the way to becoming one.”    

We eat an average of 21 meals per week. 

It is a reasonable and attainable goal to plan out 1-2 of these meal times each week to connect with someone for the sake of discipleship! In a natural setting, eating a meal is an intimate and comfortable environment for real conversation.

So be encouraged that this is something you can do! Sometimes we may feel like what we are doing is not enough, or we feel at a loss in how we can better pour into someone’s life. This is a great starting point. Just as Jesus used meal times to pour into those around Him, we can begin to look for ordinary opportunities to do the same!

Be blessed,

Pastor Daniel 

Recommended Resources:

Recommended Reading: “A Meal with Jesus” by Tim Chester

Listen to a message I taught at Redemption Church on this subject: “Be On Mission with Meals”

Ask for Help

Nehemiah 1:11 "O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.”

We all need help. Most great leaders don’t know how to do everything and aren’t great at everything. But great leaders tend to have people on their team that cover their weaknesses. They recognize the value of other people’s strengths and aren’t intimidated to say they are weak in certain areas and need help. This important principle of teamwork is found in the Bible where it says “there are many parts, but one body.” (1 Corinthians 12). The apostle Paul uses the illustration of a body and how we all have a different role to play by God’s grace to accomplish great things to bring God glory. So rather than trying to be great at everything and get everything done by yourself, God tells us to walk in humility and work as a team to accomplish great things together.   But He also says pride can come in the way. 

We must ask for help. This may surprise you but I can’t read your mind…I don’t know what goes on in your heart..I am unaware of your all of your needs. Ok, that may not surprise you but you may find it surprising when people act as if these things are true. Sometimes great people that want to help you aren’t doing so simply because they don’t know you want help. You never actually asked them for help, and they may just be waiting for you to ask. 

Communication is key to any relationship, and many relationships suffer because of communication. Sometimes we aren’t prideful but we never communicate our need for help. We don’t want to bother anyone, we want to try to do it all alone, or we just want to take on too much. We are to ask people on our team to help us and to use their strengths to benefit the team. A great leaders is not someone who does it all but rather a great leader knows the gifts and strengths of the people that are following him and uses their gifts and abilities to benefit the whole team. This must takes place though good communication where the leader has to communicate clearly the needs, give clear expectations, and ask people to get things done. 

We can ask for help from God. Have you ever thought about this? The Bible says that we can join God to accomplish great things and bring Him glory—that we become a part of God’s team. How awesome is this! This means we can ask God for help. In our weaknesses, we can have someone from our team cover us with their strength’s. It almost seems unfair because God is better at everything we are so if this principle is true we would keep on asking God to do everything. Exactly. It’s called a life of dependence, and 1 Thessalonians 5:17 actually exhorts us to live this way by saying, “Pray without ceasing.” We can actually communicate with God through prayer and ask Him for help.

We see Nehemiah praying and saying, “Give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” Nehemiah went to God in prayer for help and relied on God to come through. He recognized that he needed help and communicated to someone who could help him. We must not let our pride get in the way of asking God for help in our time of need ,and we must communicate with Him through prayer. The Bible tells us that in our weakness He is made strong and He gives grace to the humble.  Just as you would ask people on your team for help to accomplish great things, ask God for help today and allow His strengths to cover you. 

The same playing field

Nehemiah 1:6 let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father's house have sinned. 

All leaders have followers. If you are out ahead and no one is following you, then you probably are not a leader. We must understand that we all play different roles and we need each other. The Bible tells us that leadership is a gift from God and is given to leaders by grace. What will make a person into a great leader is walking in humility. We need to recognize that we are all equal,  living our lives to glorify Jesus. God has given us different roles, gifts and abilities all by His grace and exhorts us to uses our position, gifts, and abilities for His glory. Just because we have different roles doesn’t mean we are ever more important than anyone else. We have the same goals in mind as we serve Jesus—we are all on the same playing field trying to win.

Nehemiah recognized this as he addressed the remnant of people that were living in despair. Why? Because he understood that both he and the people were sinners—imperfect people. He could have easily said that the remnant in Jerusalem deserved what they got because they had sinned against God, but he understood that he wasn’t perfect either. He says in this verse,  “We have sinned against You. Even I and my father's house have sinned.” Just because he was in a different position didn’t change the fact that he was imperfect as well. He understood that his position of cup bear was given by God’s grace.

It is hard sometimes as a leader not to elevate yourself and become prideful. You are doing so much, and it can be very easy to have pride slip in. You can actually think that you are better or even on a different level than the people you are trying to lead. But we aren’t better than our followers. We are all sinners, and we are all in desperate need of Jesus in our lives.

Those that understand they are just a piece in a larger puzzle are often more gracious. I want to be more gracious and non judgmental with those I lead because I know that I make mistakes as well. I know that I blow it. I know that I am a sinner. We see Nehemiah going to God with this truth rather than putting people down to elevate himself. I have come to find out that when I go to God with my sin and imperfections He is able to handle it all and lovingly forgive me. Jesus deals with my sin perfectly and has graciously loved me. So when I go to God with my sin as Nehemiah did,  I find love and hope in Him. This helps me lead people better because now I don’t have to put others down to deal with my imperfections. I can now help others by pointing them to Jesus to deal with their sins and imperfections. I can testify of His loving grace and encourage other to go to Him for strength. I can say WE are on the same playing field and we all need grace.

Remind yourself who God is today

Nehemiah 1:5 And I said, “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments,

Staying focused on your priorities is a very important part of leadership. If you are a leader, you are busy. Your calendar gets full fast, you have many to do lists, you are ambitious, and you want to accomplish great things…you are a leader! With this drive in my own life, I have many things going on all at once and this is why I love my smart phone. It helps me schedule, send email, listen to podcasts, make notes, and the million other apps I love to use including social media. The biggest help on the phone is the reminder. I often fill my calendar full and tend to forget the little details so I have the calendar alert me of my next appointments and my priorities. I find myself looking at my calendar often so I can see how I should spend my time next and what to make a priority. This helps me focus. This will help you. 

Just as I look to my calendar to remind myself of my priorities, I must also look to God’s Word and spend time praying to remind myself of His plan. This can be hard when there are long to do lists, people to get back to, projects to finish and the million other urgent things pressing on me for the day; but I find myself actually leading better if I stay focused and putting my priorities first. Just because something is urgent and pressing doesn’t necessarily mean it is the most important thing at that moment. Nehemiah just received the urgent information about Israel and how the walls where broken. He could have done a million things to just start the process to fix the situation, but we see Him praying and reminding Himself of who God is. 

I don’t want to lose sight of God in my life for the “urgent” things that consume my day. I tend to be so caught up in a situation that it consumes me, and I try to get things done. Although this can be helpful at times, God want us to make sure we have perspective. To base our life on His Word and promises (2 Pet 1:3-4) so that way we can prioritize the way we spend our time. I have to be reminded often of what really is important. I don’t want to lose sight that their is a God who made the Heavens. That nothing is impossible with Him. That He calls me to do great things for His kingdom and has good plans for me. That He keeps His covenants and is faithful. That He is for me and loves me. And that He loves you. 

I find the most important part of my day as a leader is not spending my time on the urgent matters of the day or even checking my to do list off BUT the part where I spend time with God. When I am able to do this, I am reminded of His truth and He helps me focus on my priorities, my time, and my life. When I remind myself of who He is and His love for me, it helps me. When I can spend time with Him, I find myself handling whatever pressing issue that comes up for the day a lot more graciously because I have persecutive. His perspective. I even go back through the day reminding myself that this great and amazing God is with me. This helps me lead better. This will help you lead better. I must continually remind myself of who God is. When do you remind yourself of who God is?

You Can Pray

Nehemiah 1:4 As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

BURDEN: A duty or misfortune that causes hardship, anxiety, or grief. A load, especially a heavy one

Nehemiah had known all of his life that the city of his father was in ruins. The Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem’s walls, gates and temple in 586 B.C. (2 Kings 25:1-21). There was a little glimpse of hope throughout the years as 50,000 Jews had returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and the city. Sadly, the temple took twenty years alone to build because Gentiles had hindered the work (Ezra 1-6), and the city and walls were still ruined. Nehemiah was going about his normal life as  the cupbearer for King Artaxerxes in the year 444BC, nowhere near Jerusalem even though He was a Jew. That was when he sparked a conversation with his brother who was with some men of Judah and received some news that wrecked his ordinary day.

Although Nehemiah may have known about the situation before, he never HEARD about it. It never really gripped his heart and caused him to be anxious. He was familiar with the situation, the status quo, and life as usual, but on this ordinary day God changed the way he viewed the situation so he could be burdened by it. When God gives you fresh revelation, it is for a reason even when you may not know how to process it; and for Nehemiah, this revelation caused him to pray.

I can relate to Nehemiah because often as a leader, I plan my day, but then have to deal with unexpected crisis. Things come up all the time that you cannot anticipate or prepare for, and it is a great responsibility to lead though these times as well. The weight of a leader is great and often times we can get crippled when we think about all the things we can’t plan for, but God has given us a tool for every situation. He gives us prayer. We must continue to live our lives not in fear, but in the truth that no matter what comes our way, we can pray. 

Often, our hearts are heavy and we feel worthless because the load of information is too much for us to bear because we feel like we can’t do anything to relieve the heavy load. We must remember that we can pray. God lets us HEAR and SEE certain situations for a reason. The Bible declares that we were meant to be alive at this moment and have specific tasks to accomplish to bring God glory. If you see a problem, often times that may be God giving you the burden to actually do something about the problem. As God’s beloved children, He desires for us to pray about these burdens and cast our cares upon Him for He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). It may take some tears, mourning, fasting and even days for you to process some of your burdens, but God doesn’t want to crush us with these helpless situations. Rather, He wants us to draw near to Him through prayer and allow Him to be God as only He can be. God may have recently given you some new insight, news, or burden that may have crushed your ordinary day, and you still may not know exactly what you can do about it. Nehemiah show us that you can start with prayer.

Don’t forget about the people

Nehemiah 1:3 And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.”

Nehemiah is a great leadership book! We see amazing leadership principles throughout the book of Nehemiah and see God use him to accomplish the great task of rebuilding the broken down walls of Jerusalem. Leaders like to get things done, but don’t miss that this book is something bigger then just a construction project…it is a book about people! What makes Nehemiah such a great leader is that his heart broke for the people, and that drove him to action. The people were in “great trouble and shame,” and if we ask God to open our eyes and look around, we will see that there are still many people today all around us that are in “great trouble and shame”. 

If you have been in leadership for any amount of time, you have probably felt the pressure to put the priority of a project over people’s needs to try to accomplish the task at hand. I can often be so task driven that I forget that I am doing certain projects for people to serve and love them. We must remember, as servants of Jesus, that He wants us to love and serve people. This is part of the great task God calls us to do. Leaders want to get stuff done, but we should never put aside the greatest project of all: loving people and leading them to Jesus who can restore and redeem all things.

How can you love some of the people you lead today? 

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Colossians 3 | Ups and Downs

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CHRISTMAS & the miracle of prophecy

I love Christmas. It brings so much joy to be around those you love, celebrating the miracle of Jesus’s birth. It always is a wonderful time of reflection for me. One of the things I find myself thinking about a lot during this season is the miracle of prophecy. It truly leaves me in awe at times as I remember the miraculous ways that God prepared His people for the arrival of His Son, using prophecy as a wonderful and remarkable sign of His coming.

So, what exactly is PROPHECY?

In the Bible, we see that prophecy is the prediction of something to take place in the future. It affirms the truth and trustworthiness of God’s Word to us when we see His words come true as they were predicted many years before, and the Bible is full of prophecy! The Bible contains approximately 1,000 prophecies of which approximately     two thirds have already been fulfilled. The remaining prophecies will be fulfilled during the end times, the days when Jesus returns for the second time!

Why is PROPHECY important?

It is exciting that God chose to use prophecy to show us that He is God. He tells us in the book of Isaiah that He proves Himself to us in this unique way. It is an amazing evidence to us that God is who He says He is, and it is a foundation for our trust in Jesus and the Bible! 

Isa 46:9-11 says, “For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’…I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.”

So, as we examine a few of the prophecies fulfilled by the birth of Jesus, I pray that this will give you a greater view of the magnificence of our God and the gift of His Son!

Here are 8 prophecies fulfilled in the birth of Jesus: 

 1.  That the Messiah the son of God would be born of a woman (Gen 3:15, Gal 4:4-5)

 2. That the Messiah would be from the line of Abraham (Gen 12:1-3, Gal 3:16, Matt1:1-17)

 3. That the Messiah would be from the house of David (2 Sam 7:12-13, Rom 1:1-6, Matt 1:1-17)

4. That the Messiah would be born of a virgin and be called Emmanuel (Isa 7:14, Matt 1:22-23)

5. That the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2, Matt 2:3-6)

6. That the Messiah would be worshipped by wise men and presented gifts (Ps 72:10, Isa 60:6, Matt 2:1;11)

7. That the Messiah birthplace would suffer a massacre of infants (Jer 31:15, Matt 2:16-18)  

8. That the Messiah would be in Egypt for a season (Num 24:8, Hosea 11:1, Matt 2:13-15)

Why did God give PROPHECY about JESUS?

God wanted us to know that Jesus was the Messiah! He demonstrated this by giving us so many unmistakable prophecies about the coming of His Son. The undeniable odds of all of these prophecies being fulfilled in the life of one man, Jesus, are almost incomprehensible. It is truly amazing that God did give such specific details about the nature of Jesus’s birth so that we could recognize Him upon His coming.

In the article, “Jesus is the Greatest Gift ever Foretold,” Jim Muelhausen puts this miracle in perspective in a tangible analogy: 

“There are so many prophecies which are fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ that it is difficult to fathom how extraordinary their fulfillment is. To help conceptualize the remoteness of the probability that one man could fulfill the prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ, Dr. Peter Stoner, a renowned professor of mathematics, calculated the probability to be 1 in 10 to the 17th power that a person would fulfill 8 of the prophecies which were fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ.

To better understand 1 in 10 to the 17th power, imagine that the state of Texas was covered with 1,000,000,000,000,000 silver dollars — this would bury the entire state of Texas 2 feet deep in silver dollars. Now assume that an “x” is placed upon one silver dollar and that it is mixed together with all the other silver dollars covering the state of Texas. The probability that one man would fulfill just eight of the prophecies which were fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ is equal to the probability that a blindfolded man would randomly select the silver dollar marked with the “x” from the two foot thick mass of silver dollars covering the state of Texas. As if that isn’t impossible enough, Jesus fulfilled more than 300 Old Testament prophecies, not just 8.”

Isn’t that incredible? God wants you to know and worship Jesus as the Messiah, and that is why He gave us such an amazing gift to let us know that He is God! Our God is gracious and the giver of all good gifts. Let this gift of prophecy cause you to be grateful and have an attitude of thankfulness. God want us to know His power and grace this Christmas season. 

May we enjoy His grace this season by worshipping His Son.

-Pastor Daniel