Four Marks of World Changers

My name is René, I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Really glad that you joined us here today and before I start the message, I just personally want to give thanks for a real milestone that we are celebrating. Just a few days ago we celebrated the completion of our very first year in our brand-new children's building. One year ago this weekend we moved in over there. So let's give God glory for this. Let's thank everybody who worked so hard on this amazing project.

This was phase one of what we call our 2020 Vision Initiative and the pledge for that, the commitment period lasts till the end of this year and then in the fall of this year you're going to be hearing more about phase two. A lot of people have been asking, two people just asked me yesterday, what's going on with phase two of 2020? So let me just give you kind of a sneak preview here. Let me show you an aerial shot of our campus and I'll show you that we're going to build two more buildings, Lord Wilding, where the portables are now. A chapel, we're going to call Kraft Chapel, 325 seats and over there on the far side of the parking lot a college center and coffee house.

Now I could give you a lot more information about this. There's a few bullet points in this insert in your bulletins but if you'd like more information I'll be doing some informational desserts throughout the summertime. You can tear off the bottom of this if you'd like to attend one of those or you can just sign up at TLC.org.

Now let's plunge into the message for this morning and I'll start with this. You know I love to read business books about how to succeed. I don't know if you like those too but there's books like Mindset, The New Psychology of Success, or Built to Last, or Good to Great. These are all great books but here's one problem all these books have. They only look at what is successful right now, right? Here in our time, in our culture and they say what is making these current successes a success and let's try to learn from these successes and that's good as far as it goes.

The problem is often today's success is tomorrow's failure, right? Just for example of the 11 companies in Good to Great, 9 are losing flatlining or bankrupt today. For example, ever heard of Circuit City anybody? That is one of the businesses he profiles as a great business in that book. So what are we to do about this? Well instead why not get advice on how to succeed from people whose success has truly lasted and I'm talking of course about the early Christians because think about it, their success has lasted for 2,000 years and they completely changed the moral fiber of Roman culture.

Today we have public education, professional nursing care, orphanages, hospitals, laws against infanticide, laws against slavery, and much much more because of this explosion of faith that started with these early believers and they did it in a culture that was lining up all of its might against them. How did they succeed and still are a success 2,000 years later? Well this weekend we start our new series Hope Agents and that is a verse by verse series in the little book of first Thessalonians in the New Testament of the Bible so grab your message notes in your bulletins that look like this, these will help you follow along because the Thessalonians Christians were hope agents in a hopeless culture and today we are once again living in a culture that is just feeling hope draining away and God needs us to be hope agents in our increasingly cynical and despairing and divisive and hopeless culture.

I think you are going to love this nine-week study. Here's why, a few facts about the book of first Thessalonians. First it's one of the oldest books in the New Testament. Scholars think it was written approximately 50-51 AD, that's very early, that's only about 18 years after Jesus's life and death so it's one of the earliest pictures that we have of what these very first Christians were like. It's one of the very first snapshots of their enthusiasm and of that first Christian culture that was so magnetic and so appealing.

Also it's one of the shortest books in the New Testament, only 79 verses. You could sit down this afternoon and read it in about a half an hour and it's one of the easiest books in the New Testament to understand. No complicated theology to ponder for the most part. It is direct, it is simple, it is clear, it's just a short letter to a young church full of brand new believers and it's one of the most practical books in the New Testament.

In five short chapters, first Thessalonians deals with making a difference in your world, handling tough times, being a positive influence to people in your life, how to find purpose in life, how to prepare for life after life. So it is a great book for you if you're just sort of returning to the faith after many years away or if you're brand new to this whole thing because it really fills you in on the essentials of the Christian faith and if you're kind of a veteran believer it's a great book for you to study too because often we long-time church attenders can lose sight of the real core of our message and we get off message but first Thessalonians by nature helps us stop complicating and start simplifying getting back to the core of the faith again.

Now why is it all of these things? Well here's some background as we get into this. In Acts chapter 17 as you might remember from last fall's Acts Odyssey series the Bible describes how this church got started. Thessalonica 2,000 years ago as it is now was a major port city of Greece. It was in northern Greece which is called Macedonia. Southern Greece is called Achaia, the peninsula that goes down into the Mediterranean there and it was a major port city of northern Greece. It was on a huge bay strategically located right on the Ignatian Way which was the Roman road that led to Asia and down to Africa and being on a bay it was also situated on major shipping routes so pretty much anybody traveling between Africa and Asia and Rome ended up traveling either by land or by sea through Thessalonica.

So it was very influential you could almost picture it like the San Francisco of its day. Now I'll show you something cool a few years ago they were building in downtown modern Thessalonica and they discovered the ancient marketplace the very place that Paul walked while he was there that the Bible talks about and the shopping stalls and the roads and the civic buildings were almost entirely intact. They'd been buried centuries before we were able to see this and walk through these streets when we were filming for Acts Odyssey about a year and a half ago there.

Now back when all of this was brand new the Apostle Paul was there and he preached the gospel and he met a very very mixed response. Some people absolutely loved his message and Luke specifically says both Jews and Gentiles and many of the prominent women of the city loved what they were hearing and joined in with this new Christian movement but others did not like seeing that. Acts says they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace and formed a mob and started a riot in the city against the Christians.

What's interesting is this I discovered this when I was researching for the Acts Odyssey book writers not biblical writers but just ancient Greek writers talk about Thessalonica it was the second largest city in Greece at the time very influential as I said but it was a city that was known for mobs and riots. In fact three times in the first century Caesar's had to send troops down to Thessalonica to quell riots. It was just a divisive kind of an ornery town and so this description by Luke in the book of Acts is very very true to what we know from history about what this town was like and so this was bad news so it says as soon as it was dark the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea which is a beautiful little mountain village which is much more peaceful.

Now do you know how long Paul had been in Thessalonica kind of kick-starting that brand new little Christian movement there? Well Luke says in Acts that he had been preaching there for three Sabbaths and then he was kicked out so it was maybe as little as 15 days maybe a little bit longer than that but certainly less than three weeks Paul has been in this city before a riot forces him to leave and that's as far as we know the only time he was ever in Thessalonica not a great start for this brand new church you'd expect them to just wilt and blow away with this lack of a foundation and so little teaching and so much opposition.

I mean let's recap Paul is forced to flee violent opposition and then he sends his assistant Timothy to check up on the Thessalonican church and then he sends them the little letter that made it into our Bibles as first Thessalonians and in this letter what he does is he encourages them because Timothy brings back a great report despite this shaky start this church just thrives and in fact the church in Thessalonica never stops.

I want you to really get this from that day forward it has never stopped for the last 2,000 years nearly there has never been a day where there were not Christians in Thessalonica now you can't say that about a lot of the other places that that Paul and Jesus preached but Thessalonica that church starts with this shaky little brief beginning and it just grows and grows and grows and kind of the icon for the enduring legacy of the Christians there is this building this is the oldest surviving building in Thessalonica it is a big round brick building that was built by one of the Roman Caesars before the year 300 his name was Galerius Emperor Galerius was a vicious persecutor of Christians there he was one of those Caesars that you think of who killed Christians who threw them to lions who crucified them try to wipe out Christianity when his own daughter became a Christian secretly and he found out he forced his daughter to choose and when she wouldn't denounce Christ he murdered his own daughter this is how vicious a persecutor this man was.

Well he builds this building during his life because he's from Thessalonica and he wants this building to be his mausoleum in other words a giant tomb so people can come there and remember the great Emperor Galerius right well after he dies no one really wants to remember this guy it's like who wants to commemorate that you're the birthplace of you know Adolf Hitler or something and so the this giant building remains empty and then guess who buys it the Christians and they turn it into the first big church building in Thessalonica and it's still there to this day as an ironic testament just standing there almost 2,700 years later to the fact that the Christians endured far far far longer than the most vicious and and well-equipped persecution against them.

I'm gonna take you inside this building in just a few minutes later on in this message because it's got a fascinating background but as you think of all of this success in the face of all of these obstacles I just want to make this very practical and ask you a question do you ever struggle yourself with being the person that God wants you to be you know God wants you to be an agent of hope and faith and love in the world of course we know that as believers that's why God doesn't beam us up to heaven when we receive Christ he wants us to be his agent his ambassador here on earth but sometimes we struggle with that don't we because we get opposition sometimes just from life sometimes life is tough sometimes your marriage is tough or work is tough or school is tough or or you're a leader of people you're a boss and that's tough and and you or you're tempted in some way that's really tough and you think how in the world can I be the person God wants me to be with all of these things I'm facing in this life and sometimes you're down on yourself and you think these other Christians are great people but but I'm so bad I know so little about doctrine I'm not a very good role model I cannot be God's agent in the world.

Well I think these people have a lot to teach you and me so once again grab those notes and we're gonna dig into this and if you have your Bibles with you crack them open to the book of first Thessalonians it's kind of hard to find because it's so little but the good thing is all of the books that start with T in the New Testament are all grouped together so if you get to Timothy or Titus then just turn left and you'll get to first Thessalonians because that's the first one of this little group and right here in the first few verses there are what I call four marks of world changers four things that the Apostle Paul points out to the Thessalonians about the Thessalonians that he loves that he gives thanks to God for about the Thessalonians and and these things maybe the Thessalonians didn't even know they were doing these things but Paul says do you realize what has happened in your hearts and this is why you guys are already being agents of hope in your hopeless culture.

And you know what as we as we prepare to look at these things most people do not do honestly even one of these things and yet they're so simple and if you do these things and and ask for God strengthen doing these things these things are going to change your life and turn you into an agent of hope for marks of people who do that number one they're motivated by grace and this is maybe the most important one of all they are motivated by the grace of God toward them let me explain what I mean look at this description of the Thessalonians starting in verse 1 Paul Silas and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ grace and peace to you we always thank God for all of you and continually remember you in our prayers we remember before our God and Father and here's where he starts pointing out these things that he loves about them watch this your work produced by what faith your labor prompted by what love and your endurance inspired by what hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

I want you to circle the phrases produced by faith prompted by love and inspired by hope do you see how important that is they didn't just work labor endure and yet this is exactly what a lot of Christians think that they're called to in my observation if you were writing this verse for most Christians or many Christians that I know it would read something like this we remember before our God and Father your work produced by a sense of obligation your labor prompted by guilt and your endurance inspired by a bad dog sermon from your pastor right and you know what that kind of motivation will burn you out and I should know because it burned me out for a while but world changers who really last serve for a totally different reason.

Mother Teresa definitely a world changer was once told by a journalist quote pulling dying people out of sewers I wouldn't do that for all the money in the world and she responded huh neither would I I love that because that's not why she was doing it what was her motivation she said I'm doing this for Jesus who did this for me motivated by the grace of God your motivation changes everything like have you ever been in a class where the teacher is so mean that they make every homework assignment feel like you're on probation so you don't want to do the homework and not only that but when you do do it you choke because you're so afraid of their opinion and you just know they're gonna just rip it to shreds right and then other teachers you've had are so magnetic and they just love their subject and they love their students so much they're often technically the most challenging teachers right their assignments are super challenging they're not just busy work they're serious projects that you think would be way beyond you but you end up doing better than you ever thought you would because they're so engaging and so encouraging.

Well some people think of God like that first teacher and some people think of God like that second teacher and that makes all the difference see when we talk about the grace of God we don't mean that God is just okay with you doing all kinds of self-destructive things and he just goes there there now that's beautiful God's like that second teacher those second teachers are engaging and enthusiastic and they're encouraging but they make you want to be more than you ever thought you could be and that's the kind of teacher so to speak that the Lord Jesus Christ is you know this goes right to the core misunderstanding that so many people in our culture including many Christians have of the gospel so many people think of the gospel as what you could call moralism just a set of moral rules do this don't do that and they think of me or any other pastor as a guy who's just trying to tell people to be better people this week try harder and so what they think our message is is work labor and endure but that's not the gospel those three words are part of the effect of the gospel the gospel is faith hope and love faith in the Lord who gives you hope because he loves you and when you really internalize that when that just captivates your imagination that produces and inspires and motivates work and labor and endurance you see how that works very important to get the cart before the horse here like in the next verse Paul says for we know brothers and sisters loved by God that he has chosen you they saw themselves as loved by God and chosen and note Paul says that he preached this message with power with the power of the spirit with deep conviction Paul is preaching with deep conviction that they are loved by God and that they're chosen by God and they believed it and they internalized it and that changed everything about their motivation that man if all you remember is number one that's enough to change your life.

And then number two world changers mirror great lives they mirror great lives they deliberately look for role models for mentors probably a lot of Golden State Warrior fans here today saw a great article this week Mike Brown who's been coaching the Warriors because their head coach is out sick learned how to coach from Greg Popovich the coach of the Spurs who learned how to coach from Larry Brown who learned out a coach from Dean Smith who learned how to coach from fog Allen who learned how to coach from dr. James nay Smith who invented basketball so there's a direct connection between the very first basketball game ever played and last night's game between the Warriors and the Spurs and that's like our relationship with Jesus because this chain of people modeled themselves after people who taught them about Jesus Christ there really is a direct connection if you only could trace it back that distinctly between you and the Lord Jesus Christ and that's because great coaches imitate great coaches.

The Bible encourages us to live this way and the Thessalonians imitated the coach of all coaches the Apostle Paul verses 5 & 6 you know how we lived among you for your sake you became imitators of us and he's implying and in so doing and of the Lord circle the word imitators find a Christian role model to mirror I'll tell you in my own life I logged through ministry for years because I thought I had to be original that's a killer and then finally now for the last many many years now you'll notice that I put at the end of the sermon notes my resources where I got ideas for for this sermon like this message it's my own study and also Tim Keller and and Ray Pritchard and Rick Warren and many other pastors who've influenced me but that has changed my life and I think given me a lot more longevity and creativity because I now realize all real world changers they don't try to be original they all have role models they all have mentors that they're imitating that they're copying.

Philip Yancey's one of my favorite writers he says his role model is CS Lewis and CS Lewis and his role model was George McDonald and George McDonald and on and on and on it goes this is what world changers do so who are you looking to to deliberately sort of model your life after someone who really is showing the fruit of the spirit love joy peace patience meekness not somebody who's who's just skilled but somebody who's who's mature in Christ I'm gonna give you a great life for you to marry yourselves after in just a minute but but first I want to talk about the next point third world changers move through obstacles they don't let obstacles get them down the Thessalonians didn't and neither does anybody who changes the world.

I love collecting stories of world changers who blew through obstacles it's a hallmark of great lives like there was the young man who sold newspapers for the Kansas City Star and in the wintertime he didn't have enough clothes to keep warm so he would pile newspapers around him and huddle in the snowdrifts for protection he wanted to be an artist but nobody would hire him they said he wasn't good enough and so he started his own company and it was called a failure and then he started his second company and that was a success but then his whole intellectual property was and all of his staff was stolen by another larger company based in New York City and he was forced out of his own company and then he started another company and put all of his money into it and went through personal bankruptcy and then he had a nervous breakdown you might know his name Walt Disney.

We imagine that these people who are successes just had their success handed to them on a silver platter you know and they just kind of strolled into success but really every one of these people had one huge obstacle to navigate after another and I'll tell you in the Thessalonians church well they moved past much much much greater obstacles of course than even Walt Disney did in their endurance Paul says for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit this is one of the other marks that Paul is talking about in these first few verses things that he loves about this church if you've got your notes with you circle the phrase severe suffering it literally means to be pressed to the limit kind of like an olive in an olive press with the juices being squeezed out and as the idea of being under the thumb of somebody else a feeling the pressure just pushing you down you ever feel like that maybe you feel like that right now but look at what he says in the midst of that they had joy you can choose joy even in severe suffering.

Victor Frankl who as a Jew in World War two Europe was put in a horrific Nazi concentration camp once said this amazing quote he said I learned that everything can be taken from a man except for one thing the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances man if he could say that in his circumstances you can do it in yours and the really good news is it's not just up to you to choose joy and your own strength God wants to give you strength to do that through the Holy Spirit.

Now I got a question for you why did the Thessalonians choose joy how are they able to be joyful in spite of the severe suffering that they were going to go through not just when Paul's writing this letter but actually for for centuries after this and yet they endured how were they able to enjoy joyfully well I think I found a hint did you know that every single chapter of first Thessalonians ends with a reference to the second coming of Christ every single one they were motivated by the fact that here or there everything's eventually going to be okay this was such a part of their DNA earlier I said that I would take you inside that ancient church in Thessalonica if you go inside and look at the very ancient art on the walls at some of the earliest Christian mosaics maybe the earliest Christian mosaics in the world they were preserved because about a thousand years after it was built this building was turned into a mosque for a couple of hundred years and all of the ancient Christian art was preserved behind wood and plaster and so when they took all that down this very ancient art from the Thessalonians was still on the walls and every single painting and mosaic in there is about one theme the second coming of Jesus Christ.

This was really a focus for the Thessalonians Christians you'll see here there's a picture of Jesus is in the middle and he's coming down from heaven surrounded by his angels and then you see the Thessalonians believers there on the bottom of the dome and they're rising up to meet Jesus Christ when he returns you'll see as we do this study that is a consistent emphasis of Paul to the Thessalonians and it even is the theme of second Thessalonians as well and this gave them hope.

Now we're going to talk specifically about this in a couple of weeks but I think a lot of Christians miss out on this hope maybe it's because we've been spooked by all the prophecies about the return of Christ that didn't come true and maybe we think it's kind of all craziness but you know it is a basic belief of scripture that one day the Lord Jesus Christ will return and he will set all things right with justice and with compassion and he will wipe every tear from our eyes and there'll be no more death no more mourning no more crying no more pain and this is so important this is what helped the Thessalonians to be hope agents because it's such a contrast to Roman religion and Roman culture.

When we were there we saw an inscription that was found on a tomb in first century Roman Thessalonica this shows you the kind of a culture the Christians were in the inscription on this tomb says after death no reviving and after the grave no meeting again very very grim words right not very comforting not very hopeful so when the Christians talked about resurrection when the Christians talked about restoration that really helped them to be hope agents to a hopeless culture.

One of the best examples I've seen of this recently is a woman named Immaculae Ivebagiza and here's her story she hid for 91 days in a bathroom in Rwanda as genocidal tribesmen wiped out tried to wipe out her tribe they killed over a million of her fellow tribes people including most of her own family and yet today she is a spokesperson for reconciliation between the tribe that did those atrocities and the tribe they tried to wipe out and she says we have to start with forgiveness before we can even get to justice because if you don't get to forgiveness first you're never gonna get to justice you're just gonna get to revenge and the cycle is just gonna continue it's really insightful.

But when people ask her how she's able to forgive she says two things number one I know that one day Christ will return with perfect justice we can only do imperfect justice here on this earth and she says number two I see Jesus Christ on the cross forgiving his persecutors and I realized one day that he's asking me to forgive my enemies too.

I want to show you about 60 seconds of a of an interview with her because she said she was thinking of Jesus on the cross realizing that she was supposed to forgive as he forgave and she asked Jesus how in the world am I supposed to do that.

Then my question was how so when I go to the moment when he said they don't know what they do it was just for me they don't get it people are trying to do this to you take a kid who is burning the house because they're playing would you be mad at them this much but you will attend to the damages they have done if somebody's sick and is mad will you hate them so mad if they were sick and hated and you know for sure no but these ones are always sick spiritually so you are to protect yourself by hating them you don't have to write and when I felt like the world was divided there's a part of love and part of hate there's mother Teresa people who are who have suffered and people have hated so badly and I fell out our Lord was saying where do you want to be can you really have love and hate in the same heart no either we jump here or we jump here to the hate with Hitler or we jump here with my the Teresa in a side of love where do you want to be that's a good question for all of us where do you want to be what kind of lives do you want to mirror and did you notice she's doing exactly what Paul is saying about the Thessalonians she is mirroring great lives choosing to mirror herself after people like st. Paul and mother Teresa rather than the other side she is moving through that obstacle of unforgiveness and she is motivated by Christ's grace to her on the cross and so because of those first three things she has now become a role model for others and that's point four we can then go on and become a model for other people.

The Thessalonians come full circle they were mentored and in turn they become very quickly models for others you can almost sense Paul's astonishment because he barely had time to teach these people and yet he says in verse 7 and so you became a what a model circle the word model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia that's northern and southern Greece the Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia your faith in God has become known where everywhere.

Listen maybe you're saying this whole series Hope agent being God's agent I'm not a role model I'm not a good role model I I sin too much I don't know enough I used to say the exact same thing let me show you a saying that changed my life you may not think of yourself as a leader but someone's following you isn't that true someone's following you so you may as well be a good role model.

What keeps us from this listen a lot of times we don't think of ourselves as role models because we're not perfect well the Thessalonians weren't perfect either they were ignorant of many things they were baby believers but they made a difference you know last weekend we gave away empty baby bottles hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them in fact we ran out of them people were so generous and we said bring back these baby bottles filled up with change on Memorial Day weekend to help support Siena house that's the home for homeless expectant moms in town.

Well a couple of days ago I got these pics this is little hunter he has been picking up coins he has been finding around the house and the couch on the street for two years it took him about two years to fill up his little bear bank that you see him with there. Well last weekend he decided he was going to take all of that money he's been collecting for two years and fill up the baby bottle with his coins for Siena house how awesome is that for hunter that's two years salary.

Now let me ask you this does hunter know a lot of doctrine about the Christian faith no is hunter a role model for every single one of us in this room in a huge huge huge way and the reason I mentioned that is not to say you shouldn't learn doctrine doctrine will bring you closer to God if you learn the truth the reason I mentioned that is that so often we feel like I can't really be a Christian role I can't really plunge into ministry because I don't know enough some of you are brand new baby believers you know enough what you know is that God loved you so much that he sent his only son Jesus Christ into the world and you've trusted him that love has changed your life and now you want to bear that message to others you're like hunter you can take what you've got and you can be a role model it's not about knowledge it's about letting Christ shine through you it's about your enthusiasm.

You might think this is a corny joke but I love this one the story of the salesman who worked for a server company over in the Silicon Valley and he's mocked by all the Stanford and the Berkeley grads at the company because he was an internal promotion he clearly is uneducated he can't even spell and so they send him off to a foreign market where they figure he can't embarrass them and you know he's going to be a server salesman but they've never had much success over in this market.

Well after a few days he sends back this email I was surprised to get lots of orders for servers I got a hundred sales already and the CEO of the company forwards the email to the entire sales and marketing team and adds this comment I think we better start thinking less about spelling and more about selling don't you love that the Thessalonians were not the most educated Christians how could they be after three weeks of instruction and again maybe you're not the most educated Christian but you know Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins and like Hunter like Immaculae you could like the Thessalonians you can be an agent of hope no matter where God has placed you.

And I just want to wrap up by giving you an example a real-life example of how you can be a hope agent and I want to introduce you to somebody that many of you have seen play here before during Christmas concerts and and on other occasions here at Twin Lakes Church she grew up here at Twin Lakes Church she was Miss Santa Cruz County went on to study at Juilliard and now as a professional classical musician and she's going to play for us in just a minute but would you please put your hands together and welcome Rebecca Jackson.

Hey Rebecca good morning hey good to see you listen I wanted to talk to you about being a hope agent because I know that's really literally what you do in your life right now you try you say but here's you gotta understand Rebecca plays classical music all over the globe but Rebecca you do so when you're playing in concert halls in Africa or in Europe or here in the States you do something special no matter where you're playing describe to us what you do.

Well I I'd like to reach out and find opportunities to play for perhaps some crowds that don't get to hear the music like hospitals or homeless centers things like that can you describe to us for example what's happening in some of these pictures where are you here so this is actually well that one was before was local Galt Elementary the L system a program that's one of the poorest slums in Costa Rica where we played a concert and let's see here yeah that's also outside the school this 21 year old boy he went through the after-school social music program that they have in Costa Rica and built this string orchestra in one of the poorest communities in Costa Rica and what is this here that that's the same that's in the same area in Costa Rica it's called La Carpio and then this one was Beirut Lebanon in December of last year we three of us actually was five of us two singers as well we went into one of the refugee camps in Lebanon which was an insane experience and the best sense the word and you said that a filmmaker who's been working on a documentary about the refugee situation for a year said that when you guys played he saw something you'd never seen before what was that?

Yeah so so he was saying that in all of his time getting to know him and work with the community so that's one refugee camp there's three different refugees that are there from Palestine Syria and Bangladesh and this during this impromptu concert no one was told that we would play they all stood together and listen to our music he had not seen them stand together it's remarkable and you're informed what I love about this is it's exactly the four things that we've been talking about you're motivated by God's grace to you you yourself are mirroring great lives people have been mentors and role models in your life you are moving past a lot of obstacles including obstacles to even get into refugee camps like this to do your ministry and your outreaches and now you're a role model to others in doing this because you are you know you are Rebecca is a great role model and a great example.

Rebecca has told me that you know in her field of professional music especially in the classical arts there can be a lot of people who've had bad experiences maybe with Christianity or have preconceived notions of what a Christian is like and are antagonistic to the idea of faith and yet when they see Rebecca being a hope agent to her world it really opens up avenues for ministry and discussion and it softens hearts so would you like to hear Rebecca play?

All right let's welcome Rebecca as she plays for us right now.

Thank you, Heavenly Father. Thank you for this message. Thank you for the role model that the Thessalonians and Christians continue to be all the way down to us almost 2,000 years later. And God, I pray that you would help us, motivated by your grace, to turn from idols and serve the living God and go and be hope agents in the world around us. In Jesus' name we pray.