A Faith That Works.Com
A ministry partner of SinglesOfFaith.Com / SinglesOfFaith.Org
Welcome!
Q: What are the Two Most Important Questions a
Christian Could Ask Himself (or Herself?)
1: "If Faith is what gets me to Heaven, and faith is the
one thing God most expects of me, exactly what IS
this faith He demands? What does it LOOK like?"
2: "Does this faith DEMAND anything of me? Or can I
relax now that I have 'prayed the prayer?' Is there
any ACTION required as part of this faith?"
3: Can you think of a 3rd question that is even close?
There have been countless "types-of-faith" options the past several thousand
years:
• Secular : "I am confident / I have faith that this
chair will hold me."
• Hypocritical : "I say I have faith but I regularly
cheat or speed or gossip or ..."
• Pharisaical : "God uses a different set of rules with
me."
• Sincere : "I'm ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY, COMPLETELY,
IN-MY-HEART-OF-HEARTS
I-KNOW-THAT-I-KNOW-THAT-I-KNOW, I'M *POSITIVE* that
I'm going to heaven !"
• Cerebral : "I know Jesus. I really really really
really KNOW Him. I'm heaven-bound."
• Emotional : "I love Him and FEEL Him in my heart
and with my very BEING!"
• Shallow : "I read the 'Four Spiritual Laws' and prayed the
prayer so I'm going to heaven !"
• and one other (as we'll see below) ...
Though we all know folks who exhibit these types of "faith," are any of them
effective as bridges into an eternity with the Master? Review the list. Would
Jesus have approved of any of them? When it comes to entrance into the Kingdom of
God, what kind of faith is acceptable to God? What kind of faith is
EFFECTIVE unto an eternity with Him?
The Kind of Faith that Changes Eternity
This ministry is built around the
KIND of faith (a faith that works) that Jesus of Nazareth
invited men and women to adopt as He invited them out of the kingdom of this
world into the Kingdom of the Heavens -- a faith that works. It works to get us
into the Kingdom, and it works itself out in servanthood. Since Jesus never asked anyone to
"pray the Sinners' Prayer with me" or "invite me into your heart right now" or "accept
me as your Lord and Savior" (what we hear so much of these days,) we'd
propose there is a qualitatively different call from the Master:
He demanded of those who would follow Him into eternity a clearly visible and
completely transformed life that was immediately different to bystanders than the life
that person had been living prior to accepting Jesus' invitation into the
Kingdom.1
We're obviously not talking about a "faith" that merely drives us to church twice every Sunday and a bible study every week and a small group or two per month. Jesus was unimpressed with people who merely read the Word daily (the Old Testament in those days) and prayed regularly (though those behaviors are indeed a part of the life He seeks.)
So what would a Christ-demanded genuinely transformed heaven-worthy (though 'unearn-able') new life of
faith look like to onlookers, neighbors, co-workers, friends and unbelievers in
the first century? What did faith mean for Jesus' followers (those disciples
and apostles who were with Him A.D. 30-33 and those who chose to follow Him
later like the believers in Acts?)
If most or all the above "faiths"
are lacking the substance demanded by the Master, what is He looking for?
Well, may we ask a question that may bring the answer to your mind?
"If Jesus flew into our town for one week, and then left at the end of those
seven days, WHAT WOULD HE DO DURING THAT WEEK ?"
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• Who would He visit? (Please answer this question in your own mind
right now.)
• Where in town would He go?
• What organizations might He visit (and NOT visit?)
• HOW WOULD HE SPEND HIS TIME SUN-UP TO SUNDOWN?
May we suggest some answers from what history records of His life?
• He'd heal the sick
• He'd teach the willing
• He'd invite unbelievers into the Kingdom of
God
• He'd feed the hungry, clothe the homeless, invite
strangers in, visit prisoners
(and widows?)
• He'd make disciples
So what would He do if He checked into a motel room in our town starting
tomorrow?
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And what would He ask YOU and ME to do if we said we wanted to follow Him, to accept His invitation into an eternal Kingdom? A: The exact same things. (He'd lead and He'd expect us to follow.) It matters not that we're exactly as busy as the first-century followers with jobs and families and children and responsibilities. Nothing has changed in thousands of years. He still invites. He still leads. He still expects us to follow if our faith is real. That brings us to what we're about ...
Who We Are
We are catalysts, mostly single Christians, men and women on a "missionary journey" in the 21st Century. We're traveling from town to town, (upper midwest currently) inviting men and women, believers and unbelievers, to follow Jesus into the Kingdom today,
What We Do
Each week we:
• Email a month ahead to the city we'll be visiting thirty
days later ... emailing :
(1) SinglesOfFaith.Com members with the opportunity
to Meet, Become and Serve2, and
(2) Pastors with the opportunity to lead their
members into following Christ to their knees3
• We visit those pastors who respond, then ask THE
QUESTION4 re: their town in particular
• We coordinate with the service organizations gleaned from
above for a volunteer surge
• We serve the men and women targeted by those ministry /
service organizations
• We identify local volunteer (or paid5) leaders
who surface from that servant workday
• We equip the growing national team of community servant
leaders with online
communication, training, encouragement, etc. via blog,
email and conference calls
• We pursue hard after God's heart together to "serve a
hurting world into His Kingdom" 3
• We move on to the next town
Why We Do It
It is our understanding from pondering God's word that God is "in the business" of serving. That is what "lights Him up." That is what brings Him joy. We sense God created a universe with a "secret" : joy and peace lives in (following Him by faith) serving. We sense that Heaven may be all about "addicts" (in the great sense of the word :) unstoppably "mining for" / searching for opportunities to serve one another. We sense that God started serving us humans when He created the earth and its inhabitants -- us -- so He'd have more folks to lovingly serve. And we sense that if we don't find ourselves serving we may have missed the whole purpose of faith ... to live the life God designed for us. He seemed to flesh that out 1,975 years ago when He visited this planet. Jesus was "servanthood on legs." Every single day He sought out hurting men and women that He might love with God's love. (And for that reason thousands and thousands also followed Him! Hmmm ...)
We'd propose that God is trying to reveal a secret to His universe: Joy inhabits servanthood. Joy lives inside of a faith that follows Him daily, serving others.
By the way, can you think of a more effective evangelism strategy? In a day of spectacular evangelistic ineffectiveness nationwide, when so-called "Christians" are vilified in the media (often with good reason) because their "faith" has been reduced to Kingdom-ineffective issue-oriented national opinionating, what would Jesus likely be doing? Issue-oriented opinionating? No. Serving.
So, what's the faith God wants? A faith that works. (A faith that serves.)
Why? Because that's what God's up to in this universe. He's "into" action, not
words. He's "into" serving. He is all about giving of Himself to enrich the lives of
those He has created. And He has invited those of us who want to serve with Him to join
Him, to follow Him. Forever. Starting now.
Summary?
When God visited this planet, He didn't campaign for as many cerebral or emotional conversions as He could secure. He got on His knees daily and served His dying world. He served wedding guests, paralytics, widows, children, prisoners, the poor and outcast, the diseased. He demonstrated what the Kingdom is all about, and He invited us to follow Him into that Kingdom. Those who dislike serving would hate Heaven anyway. We don't get to pick and choose how we want to follow Him and still balance our busy 21st Century schedules. We either follow Him on His terms or we don't. "Churchianity" may anesthetize us into a false "eternal security," but following the Master to our knees in service to His lost sheep prepares us for an eternity of grace, serving with the King.
Join Us
If you'd like us to visit your town soon, or if you're crazy enough to join the team
as we travel the United States, please contact us! This is exciting and we're meeting
tons of folks we'll be spending eternity with :) Please ... Let us serve you and
the men and women God wants to serve and give life to in your community!
Contact Us
If you have any questions about what we're doing or how you can join us or how we might enhance the ministry, how we might more clearly hear God's voice and respond to His heart, or just to say, 'HI,' please [ contact us ] and we'd love to dialog !
Overview / Summary
- Although it's roots are well-intentioned zeal rather than biblical exegesis, we'd propose that most "Christians" today are unfortunately (and unintentionally, unmaliciously) taught a non-biblical, non-saving "faith" that is purely western -- thinking & feeling only. (Why? Probably the "heaven-insurance" mentality so prevalent in America today.)
- Jesus, on the other hand, invited men and women to follow, to move, to act, to obey, to serve ... not to sit ... (action/activity, not passivity.) Why? Because servant action is at the very heart of God. It's one reason He created humans ... to have additional creatures to serve and to teach the joys of servanthood.
- The question that can drive home the passion and motivation (and thoughts) of God: "If Jesus flew into town and had 24 hours before His next departing flight, what would He do with those 24 hours? How would He invest in the people in our town?"
- History says He'd head immediately to His knees. He'd search out folks to serve. He'd heal, teach, visit, feed, quench, encourage, invite, challenge, lead, empower, commission, ...
- Since this seems to be central to the heart of God, His primary motivation, we are travelling town to town throughout the U.S. (1) to seek out and to serve the same people Jesus would be serving and (2) to catalyze servant teams in those towns to carry on the mission of the Master until He returns.
Footnotes
1 Jesus apparently was not interested in a 20th / 21st-century kind of "faith" that exists only in a persons' head (their seat of thinking) or in their heart (their seat of feeling.) Jesus made it clear that He was interested in men and women whose faith "leaked out" into their lives, their actions, their behaviors: God's call throughout history has been to change human lives, not just minds or hearts.
2 SinglesOfFaith.Com proposes that God's three highest priorities for His unmarried men and women are these (not in this order :) ... (1) Meet the person He has for us to meet, (2) Become the person He has for us to become, and (3) Serve the people He has for us to serve.
3 We'd propose that servanthood is absolutely central to God's heart (and therefore His strategy) to serve the Lost into the Kingdom of the Heavens (the Kingdom of God.) He so loves serving that He created a new planet to populate with beings He could serve. And we'd propose that only those of us who love (following Him into) serving will love (following Him into) Heaven.
4 "If Jesus flew into our town and had exactly seven days before His next departing flight, what would He do with those seven days?"
5 For those leaders who also want to spearhead ongoing workdays, workshops and events for local single Christians, full-time and part-time paid positions exist.
