Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Just as assuredly as Jesus fulfilled God’s promise of His crucifixion and resurrection, we Christians are fulfilling God’s promise that we would take the message of forgiveness of sins to the whole world (Luke 24:45-48). We are taking Him to every street where God sends us. There is a song written by Michael McDonald called “Takin’ it to the streets.” One verse says—
Take this message to my brother
You will find him everywhere
Wherever people live together
Tied in poverty’s despair
We know what the “it” is. He is a Savior, a God, a Redeemer, a Father who has made it possible for everyone everywhere to be in a personal relationship with Him for all of eternity!
When anyone talks about taking the Good News of Jesus to people, our minds typically think “missionary.”
What is a missionary? What comes to mind when you think of a missionary?
Quite simply, a missionary is a person sent on a mission (see Luke 24:47; Matthew 28:19-20).
We are not sent on our mission unprepared, but Jesus promised us both His authority and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:18-19; Luke 24:49; Acts 1:8). In both Luke and Acts, Jesus says that our witness is to begin in Jerusalem.
I recently looked up a list of the most common street names in America. I found that the most common street name is “Main Street.” But Main Street is also used as a way for people to describe the average setting in the USA.
Going to “Jerusalem” or “Main Street” first is foretold in the Old Testament (Ezekiel 3:4-5). We’re not first sent to people with an unknown language or obscure customs, but to people we know and understand. These are people to whom we can easily find common interests.
There are two simple steps when we take Jesus to our Main Street.
Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal truth to you today and every day.
You cannot give to others what you do not first have yourself, so you need to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to you first. Pray before reading the Bible to ask the Spirit to give you insight (Psalm 119:18).
Find a friend and tell them what was revealed to you.
After Jesus was revealed to Andrew, he found Peter and told him what he had discovered. And after Philip met Jesus, he found Nathanael and brought him to Jesus (John 1:35-46).
Every person with whom you interact today is precious to God. Our mission is to help them realize that awesome truth.
So get filled up with the wisdom from the Spirit and then find a friend on Main Street and bring them to Jesus!
Follow along with all of the messages in this series Takin’ Him To The Streets by clicking here.
Jesus asks us to proclaim the message about Him, not argue about Him. The best witness is one who truthfully shares his or her personal life-changing experience with Jesus. There is never a reason to quarrel about this! Check out this whole message here. I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.
“In 1977, 40 years after arriving in Guatemala, the Franklins retired from full-time ministry, returning to the United States. They made numerous short-term trips back to Guatemala to rejoice with the people who had become their family. From the five small groups of believers they found in 1937, God had blessed them with 600 established churches, 700 licensed ministers, and 55,000 Assemblies of God believers.” What an amazing testimony of faithful, Christ-honoring ministry!
“Enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt
“When we are out of the way of duty, we are in the way of temptation.” —Matthew Henry
“Work of the enemy! Such deeds he loves: friend at war with friend, loyalty divided, and confusion of hearts.” —Gandalf, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Return of the King
I absolutely love the leadership insights I discover during my daily Bible reading. I have turned many of these insights into an ongoing series called Godly Leadership.
“Before one can correctly understand the work of the Holy Spirit, he must first of all know the Spirit Himself. A frequent source of error and fanaticism about the work of the Holy Spirit is the attempt to study and understand His work without first of all coming to know Him as a Person. … If we think of the Holy Spirit as so many do as merely a power or influence, our constant thought will be, ‘How can I get more of the Holy Spirit,’ but if we think of Him in the Biblical way as a Divine Person, our thought will rather be, ‘How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?’” —R.A. Torrey, The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit
We need to be careful of overlooking details we think might be insignificant because we can easily think that our small lives are somehow insignificant. They are not! As Tom Kaastra reminded us last week, we are here on purpose and for a purpose; our lives are eternally significant.
Immediately after His resurrection, the followers of Jesus struggled to wrap their minds around what they had just experienced. Just before His ascension, Jesus explained to them both what had happened already, and what was about to happen (Luke 24:44-49).
Jesus said He had already fulfilled the promised about His crucifixion and resurrection. Luke writes that Jesus “opened their minds so they could understand” (v. 45).
Notice two important things:
The Spirit of Jesus—the Holy Spirit—opens minds
He opens minds to grasp the truth in Scripture
Jesus also says that we are still fulfilling the “what is written” (v. 46) in the the proclamation of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We are fulfilling the prophecy that says the message of Jesus will be preached everywhere to all peoples, so that they also can receive the forgiveness Jesus paid for and repent of their Godless ways.
Who opens minds? The Holy Spirit.
What does the Spirit use as a catalyst to open minds? Our witness.
A witness is a truth-teller, who tells their firsthand story and who amplifies their verbal testimony by their Christ-honoring lifestyle. Jesus used two phrases to remind us that witnessing is not something we do, but it is who we are:
you ARE witnesses (Luke 24:48)
you will BE My witnesses (Acts 1:8)
Holy Spirit-baptized Christians are empowered to take Jesus to every street. God has strategically and purposefully placed us on our “streets” to proclaim our witness. From Easy Street to Skid Row, and everywhere in between, we are to fulfill the prophecy of proclaiming this good news to all nations (see 1 Corinthians 9:20-22).
The Holy Spirit opens minds closed to God. He uses our witness as the catalyst for people to repent from their sin and receive the forgiveness that Jesus made available.
Just before Jesus ascended to Heaven, He told His followers that they would have the joyful responsibility of taking the good news of forgiveness and eternal life to all the highways and byways of every nation. Later on, Paul would get more specific about all of the groups to which he was taking the message of Jesus (see Luke 24:46-47; 1 Corinthians 9:20-22).
That commission is still in effect for Christians today: We are to share the gospel with everyone—from easy street to skid row, from Wall Street to Main Street, and every street in between.
The streets on which you live and work are different from the streets where I travel. In fact, all of us live on different streets, but everyone we meet on every street needs to hear about Jesus. In this new series of messages, we are going to learn how the Holy Spirit can help us be ready to take Jesus to those on each street where God sends us.
I hope you can join me at Calvary Assembly of God for this highly practical series of messages. If you missed any of the messages, you can find them all here:
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
A large crowd surrounded Jesus. “He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing. Late in the afternoon the Twelve came to Him and said, ‘Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here.’ He replied, ‘You give them something to eat’” (Luke 9:11-13).
Why did the crowds seek out Jesus? They came to Him because they knew He had wisdom, healing, and food for them. As disciples of Jesus, we never know when people will be around us that are in need. In fact, the closer we walk with Jesus, the more needy people will begin to gravitate toward us.
Jesus never intends that we simply give them a verbal blessing like, “Go, be filled and be warm” (James 2:16).
Jesus wants us to give them something substantial.
This means we need to both prepare and stock up ahead of time (be proactive) and we need to be sensitive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in each encounter we have with a needy person (be reactive).
Jesus also instructed us to have available both old and new treasures to share with people around us (Matthew 13:52). The old speaks to being proactive, and the new is reactive to each thing that we are learning and experiencing.
That means I also want to leave every person better than they were before we crossed paths.
In order to do this, I have to have something substantial—something eternally significant—to give to them. When needy people show up, it is too late for me to prepare.
I want to be always ready. That means I need to be always abiding with my Savior. I need to be learning at the feet of Jesus, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, and saturated in the love of God, so that I always have something good to give.
Jesus, when you tell me, “Give them something to eat,” I want to give them You. Help me to proactively prepare so that I am ready to react in a way that glorifies You every single time.
I believe that one of the main reasons His words had such authority and power to capture people’s attention was because He was so immersed in Scripture. As Jesus cleared the temple, He quoted from two Old Testament prophets. As He told a parable to the crowd in the temple—a parable that the religious leaders knew “He had spoken…against them”—He made a passage from Psalm 118 the foundational piece of His story.
The words of Jesus are…
Scriptural
authoritative
loving
unswervingly truthful
practical
challenging
unconventional (according to human standards)
God-glorifying
paradigm challenging
life changing
I want others to say of me what Charles Spurgeon said of John Bunyan, “Why, this man is a living Bible! Prick him anywhere—his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his very soul is full of the Word of God.”
Wouldn’t you want that said of your life too? I sure would!
Our first step is to read the Word of God. Next, we need to allow the God of the Word to transform our minds. And then we can rely on the Holy Spirit to help us apply the Bible to everything we say and do.
Heavenly Father, I pray that people may hear the words of Jesus in all the words I speak. Holy Spirit, bring all of the Word I have read back to my mind (John 14:26; Mark 13:11) so that it is not my words that I am speaking but Yours. In the name of Jesus I ask this. Amen!
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
We said our protocol in approaching Almighty God in prayer is found in just two words: Our Father.
Notice the transition: your Father (3x in Matthew 6:6, 8) to Our Father (6:9). How does this happen? Jesus makes it possible and the Holy Spirit continually reminds us of Christ’s completed work (Hebrews 2:11; John 14:13-14; Romans 8:15-16).
It’s not just “our Father” but “our Father in Heaven.” Let’s remember that our Father is both All-loving and All-powerful. The phrase in Heaven reminds us of His absolute sovereignty. “Our God is in heaven; He does whatever pleases Him” (Psalm 115:3). What pleases Him? To give us His kingdom (Luke 12:32).
Then there’s another phrase that is vital: Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name.
Hallowed means both to acknowledge His greatness and to keep Him separate from any profane things. What is profane? The dictionary says it is irreverence or contempt for God. The opposite of profane is holiness—something set apart exclusively for God. This is not something better than something else, but something exclusively that will bring glory to our Father in Heaven.
The root word for hallowed is “holy.” We see this literally translated in the name Holy Spirit. It is a word also referring to Jesus when He is called “the Holy One of God” (see Mark 1:24). The angel uses the word twice when he says, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).
And that same word translated hallowed and holy is also translated saints. Literally that means “holy ones” or set apart people.
Jesus is teaching us that our prayer is BOTH an acknowledgment of how God’s name is to be hallowed AND a request that He would empower us to pray and live in ways that makes that happen.
This means our attitude needs to be focused on God’s reputation not my reputation (as in Matthew 6:5, 7:21-23).
We hallow God’s name when our prayer and daily lifestyle bring Him the supreme glory that is due exclusively to His awesome name! When we keep our eyes and hearts on Him, He will provide everything else we need (see Matthew 6:32-33).
To follow along with all of the message in this prayer series called Kingdom Praying, please click here.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.” —G. Michael Hopf
“Luck is when an opportunity comes along and you’re prepared for it.” —Denzel Washington
“Ministers are set to be lights to the souls of men in this respect, as they are to be the means of imparting divine truth to them, and bringing into their view the most glorious and excellent objects, and of leading them to and assisting them in the contemplation of those things that angels desire to look into…by which they may know God and Jesus Christ, whom to know is life eternal.” —Jonathan Edwards
“Scripture the unus sermo Dei—the one sermon of God.” —Augustine
T.M. Moore is presenting another outstanding series of posts, this one about the dignity of work. In one post, he wrote, “A just society requires all members to contribute love for their neighbors, whether they are poor or wealthy. Those who will not work when they can do so should be left to the consequences of their sluggardliness (2 Thessalonians 3:10). It is incumbent on local community leaders to discover ways, analogous to the work of gleaning, of helping to meet the needs of local poor. These might include keeping part-time work available, identifying ‘community work’ opportunities and helping to fund them, offering job counseling and training, and so forth. Churches certainly could pioneer the way in this, creating opportunities for work on their campuses, on behalf of needy members, and for the community at large.”
“The Holy Spirit responds to our walking according to the Word, not merely talking about the Word.” —Dr. Tony Evans
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
The apostle Peter said he wrote two letters to the church “as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking” (2 Peter 3:1). And Paul reminded his young friend Timothy to “keep reminding [your congregation] of these things” (2 Timothy 2:14).
In the spirit of those great apostles, I have made it a practice to take time at the end of each year to look back on all that we have learned in the previous year, and then to look forward to where God may be leading Calvary Assembly of God in this upcoming year.
Clicking on each series title will take you to a list of all of the sermons in that series.
Intimate Conversation—The dictionary defines the word “intimate” with these phrases: associated in close personal relations, characterized by warm friendship, and closely personal. These words perfectly describe the relationship God wants to have with His children through prayer. Pete Briscoe said, “Prayer is an intimate conversation with the One who passionately loves you and lives in you.” The One who loves you so passionately desires to walk with you and share intimate knowledge with you. Prayer is not something formal, cold, or mechanical, but it is vibrant, warm, engaging, and life-changing.
A Christian’s Mental Health—I don’t think there is any arguing that Jesus was the healthiest individual who ever walked planet Earth. Some may want to push back with, “Of course He was because He didn’t have any problems to deal with!” But the writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus experienced everything you and I will ever experience (Hebrews 2:17), so His deity didn’t exclude Him from the stressors that His humanity would have to face. And yet, He handled all of these things successfully. Luke the physician observed the growth of Jesus and tells us that it all began with Jesus having a robust mental health. From that foundation, everything else—physical, spiritual, relational—all could develop properly. We must learn from this example and pay careful attention to our own mental health.
Bold Claims—“That’s a pretty bold claim. Are you prepared to back that up?” I’ll bet you have heard something like that said to you, and maybe you have even said that yourself to someone else who made a big, audacious statement. After Jesus is arrested by the religious leaders—an arrest that will ultimately lead to Jesus being crucified on the Cross—there are some incredibly bold claims spoken by key people in this part of the Story. For the most part, these are claims that we don’t read earlier in any of the Gospels, but as this story is heading toward its most crucial moment, we have these audacious statements pronounced. But here’s the most important part: These bold claims weren’t just made, but they were backed up with proof as well.
We Are: Pentecostal—Pentecost for over 1500 years was a celebration in Jerusalem that brought in Jews from all over the world. But on the Day of Pentecost that came just ten days after Jesus ascended back into heaven, the meaning of Pentecost was forever changed! Followers of Jesus—now empowered by an infilling of the Holy Spirit—began to take the good news of Jesus all over the world. These Spirit-filled Christians preached the Gospel and won converts to Christ even among hostile crowds, performed miracles and wonders, stood up to pagan priests and persecuting governmental leaders, and established a whole new way of living as Christ-followers. We, too, can be Pentecostal followers of Jesus Christ today.
Ascending—Every year, Jews from around the world made four pilgrimages up to Jerusalem for various feasts and sacrifices. These journeys reminded them of God’s goodness as they went to the Temple to worship, and they helped refocus on God’s ways as they returned to their regular routines. Jerusalem is over 2500 feet above sea level, so the pilgrimage there was a physical workout as well as a spiritual workout. These workouts were beneficial for God’s people, preparing them to minister in their cities in the following months. The Book of Psalms contains 15 songs that these pilgrims would sing to and with each other as they traveled up to Jerusalem. These Psalms of Ascent are still instructive for Christians today.
Saints Together—Throughout the New Testament the word “saints” is always in the plural form. This is a clear indication that none of us can develop into the full-fledged Christians we were meant to be on our own. We all need each other. More specifically, we all need the most mature version of each other. A key component of an individual saint’s development is the time spent alone being forged by the discipline of the Holy Spirit. Maturing saints then come together with each other to continue to strengthen and sharpen everyone in the church. Strong individual saints make a strong church, and a strong church makes strong individual saints! Let’s learn about six important spiritual disciplines that each individual saint must put into practice so that they can use their newly developed strengths to help other saints in their own development.
The Great Attitude Of Gratitude—There’s something about gratitude that distinguishes people. Think about it: would you rather hang around with grumblers or grateful people? The gratitude of Paul and Silas certainly made them stand out from the crowd when they were in Philippi. Wrongly accused, beaten, and thrown in prison, but instead of bellyaching, they were praising God. Later on, when Paul wrote his letter to the Christians in Philippi, the theme of gratefulness permeates his letter. The distinguishing mark is actually in the title: The GReat ATTITUDE spells out GRATITUDE!
Long Live The King Of Kings—Throughout human history, whenever a king died, the people would say something like, “The king is dead. Long live the king!” They would say this because the next king ascended to the throne immediately after his predecessor died. Except when a nation had been defeated, the cry, “The king is dead” was unanswered by, “Long live the king!” Israel must have felt like this. After being defeated by Nebuchadnezzar and spending 70 years in exile, it appeared to many that the line of kings was broken. Even after retuning to their homeland, Israel continued to live under the thumb of other powerful nations. And yet, some still clung to the glimmer of the promise God had made about an eternal King sitting on Jerusalem’s throne. The First Advent of Jesus revealed to us in the Gospels reassures us that the promise of an eternal King is true. Jesus came to earth to reveal His majesty to us. The First Advent is so important because it bolsters our faith for the imminent Second Advent when Jesus will return as the King of kings! Christmas is a great time to be reminded that even now we can confidently declare, “Long live the eternal King of kings!”
2024 promises to be an exciting year! If you don’t have a home church in the northern Kent County area, I would love to have you join us!
Just as assuredly as Jesus fulfilled God’s promise of His crucifixion and resurrection, we Christians are fulfilling God’s promise that we would take the message of forgiveness of sins to the whole world (Luke 24:45-48). We are taking Him to every street where God sends us. There is a song written by Michael McDonald called “Takin’ it to the streets.” One verse says—
I recently looked up a list of the most common street names in America. I found that the most common street name is “Main Street.” But Main Street is also used as a way for people to describe the average setting in the USA. 
Craig T. Owens 