In the summer of 1985, Elliot Tepper moved his wife and four young sons to the outskirts of Madrid, Spain. His mission was to start a church, to reach out to the community and share the love of Christ. He knocked on every door he could, and no one responded. Within just a few weeks it was clear that God had closed the door he thought would be his mission field for life.
But then he began to notice something. There were all kinds of people around him every day who needed the Gospel, people easily accessible to him. He hadn’t seen them before because he was busy stepping over them on his way to knock on a door, or as he meandered down the street toward his home. This particular part of Madrid had become the epicenter of the heroin crisis in the city. Everywhere he turned there was someone selling, using, or stealing to support their habit.
Tepper is a man of strong abilities. He had graduated from Harvard business school before pursuing a missionary call. He put his immense planning skills to work. It wasn’t long before they had hundreds of recovering addicts attending treatment programs and churches. Still today, he leads these centers that minister to more than 2,000 addicts a year all over the world.
I think many of us have prayed for God to open a ministry door, to guide us to an area of service, to use us to accomplish a particular vision we have for ministry. But sometimes the mission we have in mind is not what God has in mind. Sometimes we look right past the person He put in front of us to go knock on a door that stays closed. I don’t know what this looks like for you, but I’m guessing there are people God has put in your path that you’ve stopped praying for, or have looked past on your way to church (I’ve done it too). We need to pray regularly that God would give us ‘eyes to see and ears to hear’ (as it says in Revelation) the people He wants us to see and hear.
It’s healthy to remember that God doesn’t need us to accomplish His mission. He is God and He can do whatever He needs to do. He chooses, however, to involve us in His work in a way that He gets the glory (see Ephesians 2:10). I think the main way that happens is through prayer. The more we pray, the more we see Him move! And I believe God is on the move at Valley View. Last month we had twelve people join the church and this Sunday we will have ten baptisms. God is stirring in a fresh new way. Ask Him to show you this week whom He wants you to pray for and invite to church. We plant, we water, but at the end of the day, it is God who causes the growth.
This week we move on to the next church in Revelation, Pergamum. With each church we see challenges (Colby told us about the suffering church in Smyrna), but we also see some encouragements. In Pergamum, we will see a church standing strong in the midst of a pagan culture. Pray that God gives us wisdom for how we continue to live out our faith in the midst of a “crooked and twisted generation” (Philippians 2:15) and shine the light of the Gospel all across the South End of Louisville!