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I write this open letter to church planters because of the importance of the work you do, because I have a heart for pioneers and risk takers, and because  I pastor a church that believes in church planting and lives it.

But, the truth is this letter is for pastors, leaders, and believers of all stripes.

This is a dark world and times are (to use the nicest term I can think of) precarious.

These truly are days when people have started to call good things evil and evil things good. Doing the work to which you are called often feels fruitless at best and dangerous at worst.

But you, we, are not alone. The Apostle Paul was a man who obviously knew how to suffer for the sake of the Gospel and kept his joy, even singing in prison. This rock star pastor saw the miracles of God drip from his fingers and proclaimed that any suffering here is light and momentary compared to the eternal glory that awaits.

If I could be completely honest, his strength, determination, endurance and spiritual prowess are so amazing that sometimes… I really dislike him.

That’s why I was drawn to Acts 18.

• Paul moves from the cosmopolitan, spiritual epicenter of Athens to the dirty, outskirts travel hub of Corinth. Comparatively, this place was a hole.
• The city was hard and full of sexual dysfunction and immorality.
• He was broke and had to revert to a day job to support himself.
• And, the people he was trying to reach with the love of Jesus “opposed and reviled him” (Acts 18:6).

The rejection was so public and defeating that Paul “shook out his garments and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads!’” (Acts 18:6)

It was an obvious low point for Paul, and maybe this says more about my brokenness than his circumstance, but this is where I started to like him again.

He apparently doesn’t wear a cape; this guy bleeds too. Now we can share a cup of coffee and lick our ministry wounds.

But, at just this point in the story, we see one of the rare ‘red letter’ passages in the book of Acts.

18:9 And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, 10 for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.”

I don’t believe we doubt the continual presence of Christ with us, even in the dark times.

I bet most of us don’t struggle with speaking up, even when the world tells us to shut up.

And, most of us have just settled in with the knowledge that attacks will come, and personal loss is a part of the game.

But, did you catch that last part?

“For I have many in this city who are my people.”

I wonder if Paul woke from his vision and said, “Really… where are they?”

Paul couldn’t see them because God was talking about His “already not yet” church. They were unknown, unreached, unconverted, undisciplined, but they were there! When Paul was ready to shake the dust from his feet and move to some place where things were more fruitful, God showed up and allowed him to see through the eyes of God.

God was doing more than Paul knew, expected or could even begin to understand.

This same chapter says that Paul’s response was to plant, dig in and commit. He stayed there for 18 months, even in the face of failure. He adjusted his ministry to focus clearly on his calling.

That’s when God did what only God could do:

• A new location, right next door to the synagogue (the house of Titius Justus)
• A celebrity convert who caught the city’s attention (Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue)
• New friends and instant leaders that would be with him for the next 16 years (Aquila & Priscilla)

I don’t know where you are right now leader, but don’t give up.

God is doing more than you know, expect or can even begin to understand. There are many in your city who are already His, beginning with you.

Seeking more of Him and less of me,

Pastor Andy Addis

John 3:30

Several years ago when Kathy and lived in Ft Worth during the seminary years, we had some friends come and visit us from Kansas.

It was a pretty easy trip; basically from Kansas go south on I-35 and exit on Seminary Drive… one turn and your at our doorstep.

Well, these friends took our simple directions, and we assumed they must have been running late, until we got a call from them. This was a big deal pre-cell phone days as you had to stop the car and pay for a call. 

They said they had been up and down I-35 through the whole city and never even seen Seminary Drive. I apologized, gave them some landmarks to look for and they tried again.

But, about 30 minutes later the same phone call. We played this game for about 90 minutes with increasing frustration at every phone call, until I heard my friend on the other end say in exasperation, “Why would you ever live in Dallas anyway?!”

My response was, I don’t.

I lived in Ft Worth, but just north of the Metroplex is a community called Denton and in that place, I-35 splits into East 35 and West 35 to pass through these two metros.

My friends had taken the wrong road.

All morning they had been going up and down the wrong 35, looking for an exit that would never appear, the whole time thinking to themselves they were right and I was crazy.

It’s unfortunate, and a much more devastating mistake, but Jesus says we do the same thing spiritually.

Matthew 7:13-14 says, “13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

How horrible it is to think of living a life, thinking you’re on the right road, thinking other people are crazy, and waiting for an exit that will never come.

Maybe you’re reading this because it’s a God-given opportunity to check the map. Maybe this is you stopping to make a call.

Maybe it’s time to make sure you are on the narrow road that’s going where you’ve been hoping you were heading.

I’d love to help you. 

Let me invite you to pray and get in touch.

First, pray to God asking for forgiveness for all our time on the wrong road and commit to following Jesus for the rest of your life as best you can.

Here’s an example of a prayer like that you might want to pray: “Father forgive me for all my mistakes and failures. I want to begin again with You. With the faith that I have I trust Your Son Jesus who lived, died and rose again for me. I want to follow Him for the rest of my life as my Lord and my Savior. I will mess this up, but help me to walk in a new way. In Jesus name, Amen.”

Second, get in touch. If you prayed this prayer I would love to help you get started out right on this new road. Drop me an email at andy@crosspointnow.net 

Many blessings my friend. I am thankful for you and pray you take the time to make sure these moments were not wasted. 

And, if the road you are already on is the right road, please share this post.

Dear Heavenly Father,

Over the years, I have often thanked you for Jesus, and I mean it every time. But, but I must confess that I have not thanked you for the effects of what He has done.

When Christ died on the cross, He defeated hell, death, and the grave, but those were the generals in the army of our enemy. At their destruction also came the crushing of their foot soldiers.

Christ devasted lust, pride, hurt, anger, greed, doubt, loss, pain, fear, laziness, unforgiveness and everything else that has ever tied me up and abused me! My enemies have been defeated and because Christ shouted from the cross “It is finished!” they are defeated with finality.

Jesus crushed those sins in my life, and I thank you God for that victory, that grace, and that hope. The only time I can every be imprisoned by them again is when I walk into their camp, sit in their prison and close the door myself.

So, I have three requests:

First, forgive me for the many times I have handed myself over to a defeated enemy.

Second, train and mature me so that I may never be bound again by defeated foes.

Third, let me remember to thank you every day that Jesus has already won the war.

Father, help me to walk in reality. Let me feet follow the path of freedom that you have already created.

In Jesus name, amen.

There has been a quest over the centuries by some of the great philosophical and engineering minds to come up with a perpetual motion machine. Something that once started, is powered by the energy it produces itself and would never have to stop because it is completely self sustaining.

No degradation of power, a leak proof passage of energy from one motion to the next. 
An automated marvel that would have the potential to change with world by meeting global energy needs for virtually no cost.

Yeah, I’ve got nothing.

Wish I could help there, but I did find a bit of that logic in a passage I studied this morning, which I visualize as a spiritual perpetual motion machine.

Romans 5:3-4 says, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

So, step one: suffering produces endurance. This is kind of a no brainier, because suffering that doesn’t produce endurance produces death. I mean, if you don’t endure, you die. In this case, we can suffer on many fronts, and you can either persevere, or you can die. The death of a dream. The death of a calling. The death of a relationship. Or, in that very same suffering you can endure, persevere, overcome. 1 John 5:4 sets every believer up for this kind of victory: “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”

Step two: endurance produces character. Think about it, when we say someone has character we aren’t actually saying very much. Everyone has character. But, what we mean, is we see character quality traits that are worth holding on to: faithfulness, determination, optimism, hard work, etc. It’s in the process of clinging to God in the middle of suffering, enduring through it that these qualities rise to the top. Those who don’t endure often succumb to a different list: doubt, negativity, weariness, etc. So a person who endured suffering truly becomes a person of character.

Step three: Character produces hope. Let me supply my own definition of hope here (feel free to argue, but I’m not changing it). Hope is a confident expectation of the not quite yet, just out of reach, but already a fact to me! A person with all those positive character traits listed above will find themselves clinging to hope like it’s already in the bag. What others call a wish, they call tomorrow. When others are on a wing and prayer, they are guarded by angel wings praying thanks to a God who has ‘already’ answered their prayers.
Now, here is where it gets weird, because it looks like “hope” is the last stop on this train from the passage I’ve quoted above, but there actually is a step four.

Step four: Hope fuels faith to make it through suffering. Yes, in an amazing twist of reciprocity, the very thing that suffering produces, is also the fuel needed to overcome it. From the very same passage, just one verse later:

Romans 5:5 says, “Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” The hope streaming from Godly character, forged by enduring, that’s heated by the fires of suffering is the same hope that will help get you through!

God poured into you in the beginning creates the opportunity for God to be poured out of you in the end… a spiritual perpetual motion a machine. That’s why the very beginning of the passage says one of the craziest things in the Bible: “But we rejoice in our sufferings.”

It makes no sense until we understand that as we walk through, suffer, lean more into our God, and feel the presence of His spirit more and more, we are given what we need to make it through.

Everyone suffers, but not everyone overcomes. We can rejoice, because we have a God who is not overwhelmed, discouraged, or out of His depth.

If you’re going though something right now, remember, you can’t do it.

But, God in you can do anything.

My wife and I both have college degrees in communication. They usually don’t help.

Kathy is emotional and intuitive, feelings-based with high levels of relational energy invested in every conversation. I’m trapped in a perpetual viewing of Dragnet… I just want the facts, ma’am.

This has lead to more than one episode of, hmmm, how shall we put it… marital imperfection?

And, it’s too bad, because when we fight we usually have no reason to be even upset. The problem is that we just don’t communicate as clearly as we should.

When my wife wants something, I wish she’d just ask. But, instead, she wants me just to get it, figure it out, or perceive it because that would mean so much to her.

Honestly, I’m just not that smart.

So, in this playful bantering of communication mishaps, Kathy has tried to train me by asking leading questions to see if I can figure out what I should apparently understand:

• Kathy: “What do you want to eat tonight?” Me: “I don’t care.” Problem: the answer was right, but I didn’t understand the question. She wasn’t looking for information; she was looking for me to help… strike one.
• Kathy: “Can you believe she said that to me?” Me: “Yeah, it makes sense.” Problem: Whoa, danger zone. She didn’t want an answer; she wanted support. Not bright there big guy… strike two.
• Kathy: “Are these your underwear in the middle of the floor?” Me: Well, they better be.” Problem: It may have been funny, but… well if I have to explain this one to you, you are not trainable. Strike three.

The prophet Jonah did not have this problem. When he heard from the Lord, it was clear, distinct and undeniable.
“Arise, go to Nineveh,” said the Lord.

Jonah’s response was also clear, distinct and undeniable: “But Jonah rose to flee.”

The next time we see the word arise or rose is when everything has gone critical, and even a pagan sailor (can you even imagine the language on that boat) wakes Jonah up in the middle of a life-ending tempest and screams, “Arise, call out to your god!”

This was no three-hour tour where the weather started getting rough, and a tiny ship was tossed… this storm was God’s wrath in undeniable technicolor.

Well, we know what happens. Jonah becomes fish bait (or for you wealthy folks, sushi), suddenly has a change of heart from the belly of the beast and agrees to deliver God’s message.

Don’t give him too much credit. Most of us would agree to do about anything from the belly of a whale.
And after the most disgusting disembarkation in history, we see a rerun: the same word (arise or rose) is used three more times.

“Arise, go to Nineveh,” said the Lord. His message had not changed.

Jonah’s response was slightly different this time: “So Jonah arose and went.”

This time, the third use of ‘rise’ concerned the King of Nineveh, “And he arose from his throne.”

There is a huge difference in a “But Jonah rose” and “So Jonah arose.” The first brought a killer storm into his life, and the latter moved a king off his throne.

One risked the lives of sailors, and the other saved a nation.

One was the result of disobedience and the other the natural outcome of obeying the Lord.

Thanks be to God His word is clear. No guessing, figuring out or trying to understand.

God has given us promises, commands, rules, laws, guidance, and direction. The only thing that remains is our response.

Will we obey?

You’re probably thinking about something very specific. Something you know God has communicated, without a doubt.

That’s a word from the Lord my friend… it’s time for you to rise up.

The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

Those who want to be great, must become servant of all.

In order to save your life, you must lose it.
Paradoxical. It’s one way to describe the faith.

And today is the day we historically remember that Jesus instituted the “Last Supper”… I wonder how paradoxical that is as well?

He changed all the meanings of the Passover meal to this new celebration of Christ’s sacrifice, suffering and new covenant.

He changed the Last Supper of the Passover, to the first supper of the church age.

And with that, like a meteor striking the surface of a distant planet sending shockwaves in every direction, completely unstoppable, this “Last” Supper paradoxically generated a new world of firsts.

• The Firstborn among the dead.
• Our first hope beyond the grave.
• Humanity’s first entrance into the Holy of Holys.
• The first Advocate for us in the throne room of grace itself.
• The first Sacrifice to completely satisfy.
• The first and only work to bring redemption, restoration, reconciliation, resurrection!

He is the First and the Last, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords!
He is our Savior.

The last supper calls us to remember his body broken as bread crumbling in the hands of the disciples. It calls us to remember His blood spilled out in sacrifice as we drink the cup of the new covenant.

A cup that represents a peace treaty between humanity and it’s failed war against the Creator of the heavens.

The last supper.

The garden prayer.

The mockery of a trial.

The humiliation of the cross.

The temple veil torn.

The disciples gathered, afraid.

The stone rolled away.

The empty tomb.

Jesus is risen!

The first day of our eternity.

This is part of a 12-week series designed around some basic Christian disciplines that will propel you to spiritual growth!

If the above player does not work for you, simply click this link:  DOUBT

Here is the podcast above in a nutshell…

• Lean on God – “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”
• Invite God into all arenas of your life – “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
• Admit your weaknesses – “Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.”
• Wait on Him – “It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.”

• Pray, and be honest with God.
• Confess it to a friend to pray with and encourage you.
• Seek comfort in the Bible.

Seeking more of Him and less of me,

Andy Addis
Pastor, CrossPoint Church
John 3:30

This is part of a 12-week series designed around some basic Christian disciplines that will propel you to spiritual growth!

If the above player does not work for you, simply click this link:  Worship

Here is the podcast above in a nutshell…

Seeking more of Him and less of me,

Andy Addis
Pastor, CrossPoint Church
John 3:30

This is part of a 12-week series designed around some basic Christian disciplines that will propel you to spiritual growth!

If the above player does not work for you, simply click this link: Missions

Here is the podcast above in a nutshell…

Seeking more of Him and less of me,

Andy Addis
Pastor, CrossPoint Church
John 3:30

This is part of a 12-week series designed around some basic Christian disciplines that will propel you to spiritual growth!

If the above player does not work for you, simply click this link: Disciple Making

Here is the podcast above in a nutshell…

Welcome to Beginnings! We have been on a journey challenging ourselves with some of the basics of Christian discipline. This week we continue under the heading of Share your Life: making disciples.

The purpose of a believer staying here in this world, and not being immediately swept up into the heavens is that we are called to multiply, to reproduce. This means we should make disciples, and not just converts.

There is a substantial difference between someone who believes they’re a Christian and someone who has been trained to live the Christian life.

Jesus expressed this in the Great Commission, Matthew 28:18-20, “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.””

We see several elements here: going out, making disciples, baptizing, teaching, etc. The essence of this process is moving from information to transformation.

Here are some of the basic elements of Christian disciple-making, or how disciples make disciples:

• Pray for others – Colossians 1:9 – 9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
• Live life with others – Acts 2:42-47 – 42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
• Challenge others – Hebrews 10:24 (ESV) – 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.
• Serve with others – Ephesians 4:11–12 (ESV) 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

So what are some practical steps to becoming a reproducing disciple?

1. Be intentional. Decide right now your spiritual life will multiply, make a disciple.
2. Dedicate yourself to prayer, asking God to help you identify someone specific to share the gospel with and to train in the Christian life.
3. Move from consumer to producer by bringing someone along in the day-to-day of your life. Let them pray, serve and live life with you as you open your life to theirs.

Make sure to check out the podcast for more on this topic and then start becoming a disciple that makes disciples!

Seeking more of Him and less of me,

Andy Addis
Pastor, CrossPoint Church
John 3:30