New Covenant International Blog

THE MEASURE OF YOUR TREASURE
Biblical Principles for Giving
By Randy Alcorn

Quote of the Week
“ We can and should live now—and invest in eternity now—with the perspective that will be ours one minute after we die.”
—Randy Alcorn

John D. Rockefeller was one of the wealthiest men who ever lived. After he died someone asked his accountant, “How much did John D. leave?” The reply was classic: “He left…all of it.”

You can’t take it with you. If that point is clear in your mind, you’re ready to hear the secret of the Treasure Principle.

The Treasure Principle

Jesus takes that profound truth, “You can’t take it with you” and adds a stunning qualification. By telling us to store up treasures for ourselves in heaven, He gives us a breathtaking corollary, which I call the Treasure Principle:

You can’t take it with you—but you can send it on ahead.

It’s that simple. And if it doesn’t take you breath away, you’re not understanding it! Anything we try to hang on to here will be lost. But anything we put into God’s hands will be ours for eternity (insured for infinitely more than $100,000 by the real FDIC, the Father’s Deposit Insurance Corporation).

If we give instead of keep, if we invest in the eternal instead of in the temporal, we store up treasures in heaven that will never stop paying dividends. Whatever treasures we store up on earth will be left behind when we leave. Whatever treasures we store up in heaven will be waiting for us when we arrive.

Financial planners tell us, “When it comes to your money, don’t think just three months or three years ahead. Think thirty years ahead.” Christ, the ultimate investment counselor, takes it further. He says, “Don’t ask how your investment will be paying off in just thirty years. Ask how it will be paying off in thirty million years.”Suppose I offer you one thousand dollars today to spend however you want. Not a bad deal. But suppose I give you a choice—you can either have that one thousand dollars today or you can have ten million dollars five years from now. Only a fool would take the thousand dollars today. Yet that’s what we do whenever we grab onto something that will last for only a moment, forgoing something far more valuable that we could enjoy later for much longer.

The money God entrusts us here on earth is eternal investment capital. Every day is an opportunity to buy up more shares in His kingdom.
It’s a revolutionary concept. If you embrace it, I guarantee it will change your life. As you store up heavenly treasures, you’ll gain an everlasting version of what that man found in the treasure hidden in the field—Joy.

—Excerpted from The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn (Eternal Perspective Ministries, www.epm.org), Multnomah Publishers. Used by permission of author.

Greatest Potential for the Christian Movement rests on the Shoulders of Christian Business People

The greatest “unrealized potential” in the Christian movement for the next 20 years probably rests on the shoulders of Christian business people. That’s great news for every Christian person who loves business. Talk about a life of adventure. What more could you ask for when your faith and your love for business intersect?
The marketplace is the only institution that touches virtually every person on planet earth. Pastors are very limited in their direct exposure to the marketplace. At the same time, the marketplace in general terms doesn’t look to professional church staff for guidance on managing their business.  They do look to their pastors to help disciple them on how to live out their faith, but most haven’t showed them how to connect it to the marketplace.
Here is the $70 billion question.  What is our strategy to reach this world for Christ? Do we try to hire another 600,000 pastors, missionaries, worship leaders,etc??  Or do we unleash 6 million business people to take the Christian movement to the next level?

For too long, many faithful Christians have “out sourced” their responsibilities as believers.  They give generously to the church and then allow the “organized church” to do the work. Honestly, it’s easier. You can live your life in compartments.  There’s your task driven, results oriented, hard charging business world.  Then there is your church world.
But what happens when you are asked to combine your sacred activities and your spiritual activities?  Have we been indoctrinated to believe that oil and water do not mix?  No wonder many successful entrepreneurs and business owners can’t wait to “cash out” when they are 50 or 55.  For them, perhaps business was all about business.
There is a new generation of business leaders who see the world differently. For them, God has called them into business.  Their company is to be used by God for His purposes. They are passionate about creating products or services. They love marketing and sales. They are always mindful of the bottom line. But there is a higher calling. Everything that the church stands for is actually expressed in “real terms” in their business.Most people today, don’t think this way but we need to see that more do. I’m convinced that we can discuss terms like Business as Mission and Marketplace Ministry and so many other subtleties until we are blue in the face but unless the bridge between our sacred spaces of Sunday morning is bridged with our work, then we’ll continue to struggle in living a segmented life.

Labels: Sacred and Secular Divide

Everyday Evangelism: Christ in You

[Excerpted from The Monday Morning Church by Jerry Cook. Reprinted with permission from  www.jerrycook.org]

You are called not so much to do great things, as to be a great person–and that person is Jesus Christ. The Church is the resident presence of Jesus in the world.

No matter how big church attendance is on Sunday, it will never penetrate the culture with Jesus. The reason is clear: The church on Sunday is experienced by the church community; it is only observed by the unbelieving community.

However, Monday through Saturday, the church operates in the experience of non-believers. It lives on their turf, moves in their society, and operates in their culture. On Monday Jesus becomes incarnate through you. And because He can be seen and touched, He can be received or rejected. True evangelism is possible.

Your Strategic Placement
Most Christians have been trained quite well to be the church on Sunday. But what does it take to be the church on Monday?

The first step is to recognize your strategic placement. “Strategic placement” means this: each redeemed, Spirit-filled Christian has been strategically placed by Jesus, the Lord of the church. Where each believing man or woman lives and works is part of that strategy. Christians are people of destiny, purposely placed deep in our culture. We are God’s points of penetration. Because of us Jesus is present at the very heart of society. And it is this strategic presence of Christ that opens the door for his revelation as Savior to man.

Christians are people of destiny, purposely placed deep in our culture. They are God’s points of penetration.
Incarnational Christianity doesn’t try to get people to God. Many men and women don’t want to get to God. Others are unaware there is a God to get to! The incarnation was God coming to us; in a similar way, incarnational Christianity brings Jesus to man.

That’s the basis for true evangelism: in the believer the presence of Christ reaches out to others. It’s also the basis for true discipleship: in the believer the presence of Christ walks alongside the new believer. Thus, the two main activities of the church–conversion and discipling–are wed, as they were meant to be. The Great Commission, after all is not simply to go into all the world and make converts; we are to go and make disciples.

Jesus said simply, “I am the way. If you have found me, you have found God.” Unfortunately, the church often adds a debilitating step to the divine program. We say, “Jesus is the way to God, and the church is the way to Jesus. Come to the church and find Jesus, then Jesus will take you to God.” We must never allow the church institution to be the way to God. Jesus himself is the Way. The goal of the church on Monday is to make the Way present and visible in the world.

Open for Business
Of course, it does no good to have a strategic force in place if the people don’t know they are strategic, don’t know they are a force, and don’t know they are in place.

Most Christians give mental assent to this idea of strategic placement, but they have no concept of its implications. Some think of inviting hurting people to a church program, others think of using some type of soul-winning gimmick to make a convert. Most, however, don’t do anything with the idea at all. It simply floats around, untapped, in the background of their experience. They’re strategically placed, but they’re not “open for business.”

Through the gifts of the Spirit, you are fully equipped and capable of responding to the needs of others exactly the way Jesus would.
“Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27) means you are filled with the Holy Spirit and Jesus is present wherever you go. You are capable of responding to the needs of others exactly the way Jesus would. The gifts of the Spirit are how Jesus works through you to touch people’s lives.

Our time on earth is about being Jesus in our world. Jesus didn’t come to our planet on vacation; He came on assignment. Likewise, you and I have not been born here and now accidentally. We don’t just happen to bump into hurting people. There’s divine strategy at work. You are where you are because God strategically placed you there.

I’m convinced that if more Christians were open for business, then more business would show up. Evangelism as a primary goal is often artificial and powerless. But when it’s a serendipity of spirit-filled believers being Jesus in their world, it is natural and unstoppable!

Excerpted from The Monday Morning Church by Jerry Cook. Reprinted with permission from www.jerrycook.org.

The Monday Morning Church: Out of the Sanctuary and Into the Streets

Unless there is a church on Monday, the church on Sunday makes no difference. Drawing from the book of Ephesians, Jerry clearly lays out how Christians can be the church on Monday–not just in buildings on Sunday, but 24/7 in the clutter, confusion, and hard work of everday living.

Incarnational Christianity doesn’t aim to get people to God; incarnational Christianity brings Jesus to them. As Christians we are people of destiny, purposely placed by God deep inside our culture. We are his points of incarnational penetration, his strategic presence in the world.

As God’s redeemed people, filled with his Spirit, we have been strategically deployed into a hungry world to bring the presence of Jesus into the very heart of society. Not a list of clever techniques, this book describes a way of seeing, a way of understanding, a way of responding.

It’s time we stop doing church and time we start being church–in the world, on the streets, among the people. This book will show you how to be the Monday Morning Church, open and ready for business.

Table of Contents

Part I: Where is God on Monday?

• The Power of the Church on Monday
• The Radical Relocation of God
• A Window in TimePart 2: Who You Are
• Where Confidence Begins
• Will the Real You Please Stand Up?
• Embracing Your New Identify
• You Are What You BelievePart 3: What You Have
• Hope, Wealth, and Power
• Alive and Free
• Transformed and Courageous
• Welcome to the FamilyPart 4: How You Live
• A Worthy Life
• The Christian Lifestyle
• A Life of Love
• Not in My Neighborhood!
• God’s Plan for You

To order click on our “e-CATALOG” button and choose the AMAZON.COM search box to make your selection at an amazingly low price!

What does the Kingdom of God look like? I recently read an article concerning the coming of the Kingdom of God that was posted in Christianity for Today  (January 2006). [Full reprint of the article can be found at How the Kingdom Comes ]

For some time we have been seeking to bring to the forefront pertinent thought concerning the coming of the Kingdom in these turbulent and exciting days we live in. I am sure that you, like me can easily identify with the dilemma faced by Michael S. Horton the author as follows:

“It was confusing to grow up singing both “This World Is Not My Home” and “This Is My Father’s World.” Those hymns embody two common and seemingly contradictory Christian responses to culture. One sees this world as a wasteland of godlessness, with which the Christian should have as little as possible to do. The other regards cultural transformation as virtually identical to “kingdom activity.”

Certainly the answer does not lie in any intrinsic opposition of heaven and earth. After all, Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Rather, the answer is to be sought in understanding the particular moment in redemptive history where God has placed us. We are not yet in the Promised Land, where the kingdom of God may be directly identified with earthly kingdoms and cultural pursuits. Yet we are no longer in Egypt. We are pilgrims in between, on the way.

In Babylon, God commanded the exiles to “build houses and settle down,” pursuing the good of their conquering neighbors (Jer. 29). At the same time, he prophesied a new city, an everlasting empire, as the true homeland that would surpass anything Israel had experienced in Canaan.

So both of my childhood hymns tell the truth in their own way: We are pilgrims and strangers in this age, but we “pass through” to the age to come (not some ethereal state of spiritual bliss), which, even now in this present evil age, is dawning.

The challenge is to know what time it is: what the kingdom is, how it comes, and where we should find it right now”. The gospel proclaimed by Jesus was foremost a call to become part of God’s Kingdom, a call to live under God’s rule and reign. “Christianity is more than a matter of having a new understanding. Christianity is an invitation to become part of an alien people who make a difference because they see something that cannot otherwise be seen without Christ.” The unbelievers who first responded top Christianity did not view it as a new philosophy or another national religion. They saw a community of people who lived counter-culture to the world of which they were a part of at that time. The church of the first century was identified not by its theological teachings or its mystical revelations – in the beginning Christianity was a different way of life.

To become a Christian required a second birth (John 3:1-3), which created a totally new way of life (2 Cor 5:17). Christian conversion meant radical change, a redirection of life, characterized by a new allegiance at the center of the personality and by a new direction in social relationships.

When Zaccheus the Tax-collector was converted, he immediately responded by resolving to redistribute his wealth to the poor and those whom he had cheated. Jesus consequently declared when he saw the evidence of the inner change with Zaccheus “Today is salvation come to this house” (Luke 19:9).

In that Graeco-Roman world of vicious immorality, where wealth was worshipped, life was cheap, and purity and chastity were vanishing virtues, came a new moral influence. The extraordinary life of the Christians was a blazing torch of attractive moral witness that appealed to the tired world of its day.

Perhaps the most striking quality of the early followers of Jesus was their “agape” love, especially towards the most neglected of that day – the orphans, the aged, the sick, the prisoners, the slaves, and the abandoned. Tertullian once defended the Christian Faith from false accusations when he wrote in his “Apology” – “as a people we are one in mind and soul, and we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us, but our wives!”

In the beginning, the Christian faith was profoundly ethical. The earliest community of believers became known for their love for God, their love for their neighbor, just as Jesus had taught them (Matt 22:37-39), but sadly this truth was soon to be corrupted as the worship of the world and its systems became paramount to a persecuted church.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once wrote in his journal “I want a truth for which I can live and die.” He found that truth in Christ and the Word of God concerning God’s Kingdom being established in the hearts of men and women here on earth.

Have you found the truth worth living and dying for? We have free studies for those who are interested in pursuing the subject of the challenge of the two kingdoms and how to live a new way of living. Simply write and request a set be sent to you via email file attachment.

God bless, and have a great day loving Jesus, and of course those in your most intimate sphere of life,

Kevin Dyson