Top and Bottom Line Blessings

Facilitator: Llewelyn
We opened in prayer and each person shared about their last 2 weeks of kingdom related activities.

Llewelyn’s passport came through. He and Jenni are leaving for Vietnam on Monday 12 April for 5 weeks. The children will join them the last 2 weeks.

JJ, Aldi and the 2 girls are leaving for India on 18 April – 5 May. They have also been investigating different missionary training facilities to pursue the latter part of the year.

Every situation is so unique that there is no set path or pattern to follow. When you put all in God’s hands, He gets to decide where and when you go.

Anything that denies complete Lordship in every area of our lives, is toxic.

Top-line and Bottom-line blessings are terms coined by Don Richardson, who did a study on how many times the covenant is repeated verbatim, partly or references made to it: 398 (there are more if one expounds on it). The 6 top-line blessings are often used in different combinations or summaries of 6, but the bottom-line is always kept as it is - the blessing will always flow/go through/in you so that it can go cross-culturally. Bottom-line=cross cultural=missions. The only vehicle left to accomplish that is us.

To know the difference between top and bottom-line IS important - it draws the line between salvation gospel and kingdom gospel. If there is no difference, believers are warehoused.

Is it us that blesses the nations? Surely it is God through us with His plans and purposes. Otherwise we limit God by what we can and cannot do. As we co-operate and partner with God, we become 'successful'.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SENDER (CONTINUED)

Tonight we continued our discussion on the responsibility of the sender. This is such an interesting subject. Even if we are involved in co-ordinating or going we should still be sending and it is important that we take that role seriously. We need to see our relationship with our missionary as a partnership. We discussed what that involved. It is definitely not only finances and prayer. The sender needs to understand strategy (those past and present) even better than the goer does. He needs to walk with the missionary every step of the way and help the missionary to become as effective as possible. There are many ways of doing this. The number one thing that stood out for us is that we need to be educated senders and that requires taking up our responsibility and learning how to do that.

We also touched on message, model, mandate and power. One thing is certain and that is that we learn so much every time we get together.

Saturday 6 March 2010

God, crime & violence in SA

When you lay your life down for total Lordship, God has the say where you live and under what circumstances, as His plans and purposes prevail. Looking at the last 400 year period (1600 – 2000) in SA history, our failure to respond to the Abrahamic Covenant of being a spiritual blessing to the nations, has resulted in ‘Involuntary going’ and ‘Invasion of those left behind’.

God uses Satan to achieve His purposes. But is there any justice and glory to be violated and sometimes die for money, jewelry, cell phones, cars etc. Clearly not, so what is the point? We looked at the rape of Hettie Britz and how she has overcome the violence to her body. She remains to victoriously represent the Kingdom of God on earth and be the hands and feet of Jesus. He overcame for us and says that we can also do the same in Him, trusting that all works together for the good.


§ God is in control of everything
§ His will (to establish His kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven, among all nations) is clearly revealed in how we need to respond
§ God is actively involved all the time

THE SENDER

We got together on Saturday night with the smell of paint hanging freshly from the walls. After sharing briefly about our week we launched into the topic.  Pauline came well armed with her research.  Jean-Pierre said that the role of the sender has unanswered questions.  200 years ago it was the goer that the church had unanswered questions about.  Thereafter it was the co-ordinator.  Now it is the sender.  People can see the value of the goer and the co-ordinator in that they can see what they are doing and they thus understand the need for supporting them.  The role of the sender however, is sadly undervalued/misunderstood.  It has a lot more depth to it than we understand.  The question that got us all thinking and still thinking on is:

If a sender sows a 100% of his income into the kingdom then what does he live on?  Is this a possible scenario?

We spoke quite a bit about the value of the missionary pushing back to the church and how this plays out in our lives and that of the church.  In speaking about this we realised how the role of the sender today is still "under construction".  We haven't quite grasped the depth of it yet and what God intends it to be.  Phew, this is so interesting.  We once again tapped into the four elements that help us to find our calling.  World christian prayer life, caravan of people, putting shoulder to the wheel and the telescope of vision.  Abraham's first test once he received his call was Sodom and Gomorrah.  Your world christian prayer life is your spiritual foundation or your pillar.  He passed the test when he "stood in the gap" for Sodom and Gomorrah (a city he didin't even like).  Hmm, food for thought. No-one is exempt from their responsibility to courageously risk their resources for the Kingdom of God.