/> ### MESSAGE NOTES
Because of Love | Partnership in Mission | Week 4 | May 5th, 2024

Teacher: Dave Brown 

/> On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with[a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.” Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

— Acts 1:4-9

/> Power because we’re going to need it.

/> What does it mean to be a witness?

/> We have over spiritualized our salvation as well as the mission of God.

Millions of Christians in many parts of the world still think the cross means “Jesus died for my sins so that I can go to heaven.” The “mission” of the church, then, becomes a matter of explaining to more and more people that he dies for them too and urging them to believe this, so that they too can go to heaven…That way of looking at the gospel and mission both shrinks and distorts what the Bible actually teaches.

—N.T. Wright

Can we seriously believe that God would establish a plan for us that essentially bypasses the awesome needs of present human life and leaves human character untouched?  Would he leave us even temporarily marooned with no help in our kind of world, with our kind of problems: psychological, emotional, social, and global?  Can we believe that the essence of Christian faith and salvation covers nothing but death and after?  Can we believe that being saved really has nothing whatever to do with the kinds of persons we are?

—Dallas Willard

/> “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

—Luke 4:18-19

/> Our mission is to be with Jesus, to become like Jesus, and to do as Jesus did.

The people who are rescued by the cross and the love it reveals will then be shaped by the cross and the love it will reveal through them to the world…This is how we learn not only to tell the story of Jesus, but also to live the story of Jesus.

— N.T. Wright

/> Jesus did not simply die to save us from our sins.  Jesus also lived to save us from our sins.

/> When the prophets Daniel and John envision the empires as vicious beasts, what they’re saying is, Beneath all the wealth, power, and excess of these dazzling empires lie grotesque monsters, trampling everyone and everything in their path. And when they depict God as tolerating, then restraining, and finally destroying these monsters, what they’re saying is, The story isn’t over; even the greatest empires are no match for goodness, righteousness, and virtue.

—Rachel Held Evans

/> The Bible is a collection of resistance stories because all of it anticipates or announces the Kingdom of God and the rule and reign of Jesus Christ.