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A Life of Significance

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Answering the Call Matthew 10:1-15 “And when you go, preach, saying, ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”               What is your goal in life?  At the end of your life, what do you desire to accomplish?  These are no idle questions to ponder and dismiss.  They are the hard questions we need to ask so that our life has genuine purpose and meaning. Tim Kizziar wrote, “Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be the fear of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”  Too often, we spend our lives in pursuit of the things that, in the end, are insignificant and temporary rather than meaningful and eternal.             In response to the spiritual needs around them, Jesus sent out his disciples to proclaim the kingdom's message.  In 9:38, he challenges his disciples to pray for workers to be sent into the harvest.  We are to pray for people who are willing to become participants in Christ's redemptive program by proclaiming his mes
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The Prayer God Answers

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The Prayer that God Loves to Answer Phil. 1:7-11 “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”               When we pray, what is the focus of our requests?  James points out that one of the reasons we are powerless in prayer is because we ask with the wrong motives. Our prayers focus on what we want for our pleasure and happiness rather than spiritual transformation (James 4:3). Effective prayer starts with the proper focus.  This is not to say that God does not desire us to pray about our personal needs.  He invites us to pray about all things and issues in our lives.  However, prayer is not alligning God’s will to us, but our will to his.  Effective prayer aligns our lives with Christ's will
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Seeing as Jesus Sees

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Seeing as Jesus Sees Matthew 9:35-38 “Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.”               “Seeing” is a significant thread woven throughout the chapter, focusing on what Jesus sees in contrast to what others see.  Throughout the chapter, we find Jesus seeing people, not from a physical but spiritual perspective.  In verse 2, He saw the faith of the men who brought the Paralytic.  In verse 9, while people saw a despised tax collector, Jesus saw someone who would be a disciple and writer.  In verse 22, Jesus did not see an unclean woman but a woman who was desperate and in need of healing and had faith in his ability to provide for her needs.  In verse 23, Jesus enters a room of mourners, and he sees a hopeless crowd in the face of death.  In verse 30, Jesus give physical and spiritual sight to men who were both physically and spiritually blind.               What Jesus saw stands in contrast to what ot
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