Stand in the Gap - Be the One!
"And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none." Ezekiel 22:30
As I prayed for the Lord’s leading and direction regarding a theme for the 2012 Mission’s Conference, I looked at several verses and different ideas. I have had some folks suggest some thoughts, to me, in the past couple of months. I had written down some notes with ideas, but God kept bringing the following back to my heart and after talking with Pastor and letting him review the idea below, we were settled.
This is our 23rd conference and 24 years ago the Lord allowed me to be in charge of my first Mission's Conference during my first year of Bible College at Word of Life Bible Institute. During that year God gave me the theme of "Standing in the Gap." We had a simple theme that year, but as I thought about it some more, God gave me better direction on our theme for our 2012 Mission’s Conference.
G.A.P. - Give, Appeal, Pray
Give – We need to give of our finances, give in our time and give in our talents to help missions.
Appeal – We need to draw others to Christ and be a missionary ourselves.
Pray – We need to pray that God will not only use our missionaries, but also use us.
1. God Uses Us! – God is seeking us to help fill the gap for souls. He doesn't want us to just expect others to do the work. We need to give, be involved in appealing to the unsaved and pray for souls to be saved. Most Christians don’t give, sit and watch others win souls, and only pray in passing for missions.
2. Don’t Waste Time! – The time is short and we need to get involved. Even thought the verse is not referring to the end times, it still shows an emphasis to get involved before it is too late. We don't know when Christ will return, so we need to take advantage of every moment that we have to give, go and pray.
3. Work Hard Now! – It's not just simply filling in the GAP that is needed. It takes hard work. The verse states that the person God is seeking "...should make up a hedge…" This is not an easy thing. It takes effort to get moving in the right direction for missions and souls.
4. God Found None! – Are we the one? Seek God's direction for how you should give, how you should be involved in winning souls to Christ and for how we should be involved in more effective prayer for missions, missionaries and our own mission’s involvement.
