sermon from a couple of weeks ago

...It was a good sermon. something about taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. sermons are always interesting - well, not the sermons themselves, sometimes they are very dull and useless. the topic of sermons is what's interesting.
  
   its also interesting to see how they relate to yourself - why did God have me here listening to this? what does He want me to take away from this? so while someone can be preaching about xyz I'm actually learning about qrs. occasionally, I'm on the exact path that the preacher was hoping to lead me down. but I'm always right where God would have me, right?

   well, this sermon about being missionaries was very well placed. I had just heard our leader at bsm say something about how God has placed each of us students on this campus in particular to be His witnesses here. I like it when people acknowledge God's sovereignty.

   Our preacher talked about how we were redeemed. He used a pawn shop as an example. Christ comes into the pawn shop to redeem us at cost to Himself without us doing anything other than just sitting there - completely incapable of choosing who'd pick us up.

   He also said don't take "go" out of "gospel" - I thought that was funny, probably because I hate cliches.

   Cool thought - Christ is the ultimate missionary. Sent by God to a foreign people, Christ had to become one with the people in order to show them the way to God. He is our example. So when we go to foreign lands we must adopt their culture (as far as what is Biblically right) in order to show them to the cross.

   Preacher said that we should be praying that God would burden us with a heart for the world so that we will pray for the world. Some of us are called to be missionaries but all of us are called to pray.

   He ended with this thought - a church that does not have missions, or supports missions, is not really a church at all, and dishonors God.