Bracing to Be Impacted

Bracing For Impact

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

January 16, 2022

Bracing to Be Impacted

Pray for health care workers and families: Monicah, Rebecca, Patrick, Colleen and fams.

We’re in a series called Bracing for Impact and this morning I want to talk about the other side of impact.

Impact naturally has an outward focus to it. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Outward focused. The impact Peter and John had wasn’t from a quiet sermon or sweet worship service inside the church, it was loud and messy and outside the church. A lame man was healed. The gospel was preached to a large crowd and two thousand people got saved. And as a bonus a group of religious establishment figures got their nose bent out of joint. That’s a pretty good day! Impact tends to pull us outside of our self-contained world or self-contained church.

But there’s another side to impact. Gospel impact isn’t just something God works through us, gospel impact is also something God works in us. Impact needs to flow outwardly and inwardly if we’re going to be healthy believers. Jesus commanded the disciples to go into the world and make disciples (outward focus – impact happening through them) and then he promised “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (inward focus – happening to them).

That’s the other side of impact – where we are inwardly impacted by the gospel. We see both sides of impact in Col. 1.

³ We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ⁴ because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— ⁵ the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel ⁶ that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. ⁷ You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, ⁸ and who also told us of your love in the Spirit. Col. 1:3-8

As far as we know Paul never visited the Colossian church in person but he heard about them and what caught his attention was the impact the gospel was having in their midst. But notice how healthy this impact is: it’s happening through them, and it’s happening to them.

• We have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus (impact happening to them)
• And of the love you have for all God’s people (impact happening through them)
• ⁵ the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel ⁶ that has come to you (impact happening to them)
• In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. (impact happening through them)
• You learned it from Epaphras (impact happened to them)
• who also told us of your love in the Spirit. (Impact happening through them)

Paul writes and says, I’m hearing about the impact the gospel is having among you all the way from here! And I want you to know that I’m praying that you impact and are impacted even more with all the riches of Christ.

⁹ For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, ¹⁰ so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, ¹² and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. ¹³ For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Col. 1:9-13

Bracing to be impacted

If you are a Christian, you have already been impacted by the gospel more than words can possibly describe. Bracing to be impacted isn’t saying that we haven’t been impacted, but like Paul prays for the Colossians, it’s praying for more impact and posturing ourselves to receive more impact.

We know there’s more impact than what we’re experiencing. Over the years I’ve heard many Christians say they feel spiritually dry. Many of us sense a shallowness in our faith. I want to share a few things I feel the Lord has been speaking to my own heart this week through this passage.

1. Proclaim the truth of the gospel to your soul

Paul writes: because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— ⁵ the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel ⁶ that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. 

The power of this passage hinges on one very important word: “true”. “The true message of the gospel.” All the other things would be powerless if they weren’t true.

We live in a very feelings-based culture. We kinda worship our feelings. The problem is, as someone once said, feelings make great friends but lousy masters. When feelings run our lives, we’re in trouble. Feelings can feel powerful in the moment but they’re really not: they just “feel” powerful. Building our lives on feelings is like building a home out of sand on the beach. Not going to last.

Truth on the other hand can’t be washed away. It can’t be “felt” away. Truth is the rock we can build our lives on. The gospel of Jesus is true which mean all the massive promises of the gospel is true. Your faith is in Jesus, you know God loves you and His love is in you. And this faith and love you have spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven. Our hope is anchored in heaven which means our souls are

anchored in heaven. How precious is that?

On Monday I learned that one of my best friends from Bible school died of covid. He was in his fifties and leaves behind a wife and two children. Brad and I fell out of touch although we reconnected a bit on FB five years ago. It’s incredibly sad that he is gone so soon, but there is comfort for his loved ones because Brad had a hope stored up for him in heaven and now that hope is sight!

That is the true message of the gospel! So when lies try to convince us otherwise, when feelings try to make us doubt God’s truthfulness, we need to speak truth to ourselves. My faith is in Jesus, I believe that Jesus’ blood paid for all my sin, cleansed me of all my sin, and restored me into loving relationship with my heavenly Father. I believe God loves me, and that I have a strong hope in heaven. That when I close my eyes in death, I will open them in life and never die again. But sometimes I struggle with doubt. You struggle with doubt. Don’t try to anchor yourself by strengthening your feelings, proclaim truth to yourself until you believe it!

Talk to yourself, don’t listen to yourself. Proclaim the truth of God to yourself until that truth begins to impact the way you think, filling your thoughts with biblical thoughts rather than unbiblical thinking. Because this gospel is true.

2. Let the hard knocks of life knock you towards Christ

Last week I closed the message with a prayer asking God to use our humble lives and this humble church to impact lives for Jesus Christ. I believe God can do it and wants to do it. I believe it!

Except when I don’t. I got hit with a wave of doubt and discouragement. I felt an inner voice saying, “c’mon, do you really believe God could use your life, or this small church, to impact lives in an eternal way? People just aren’t interested in Jesus anymore. Forget impact, aim for survival.”

Have you ever had faith turn into doubt, encouragement into discouragement? “Our marriage is never going to change” “Our son, our daughter wants nothing to do with the Lord” “I’m never going to get out of this job I hate.” Or, even, the love of my life and father of my children is gone. We prayed and prayed, but the Lord took him anyway. What’s the use in praying?”

Life sometimes hands out some hard knocks. And the fight for faith is real. Glimmers of faith turn into waves of despair. Doubt doesn’t mean you don’t have faith. Fear doesn’t mean you don’t trust the Lord. Discouragement doesn’t mean something is wrong. These are real things that can take a real toll and knock us around. Here’s my encouragement: let them knock you towards Christ.

Paul prays the Colossian believers are impacted by power to have endurance and patience:

being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 

You only need endurance when you’re going through something you wish you weren’t. In moments of doubt and discouragement this week, I’ve tried to let those things press me to Jesus. To remind me how much I need him. To encourage my soul in God. Don’t let the pressures and problems and trials push you away from Jesus, let them push you towards Jesus.

“It’s not the blowing of the wind that determines our destination, it’s the set of the sail.”- Jim Rohn

You can’t control the problems and trials that come into your life. You can control where they take you. Let them take you towards Christ.

The last two points I’m going to make really quickly but I encourage you to let them sink in:

3. Don’t forget your friends

The big impact to their souls came to them from someone else: ⁷ You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, ⁸ and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

The gospel impact started with someone faithful to share the gospel with them. We all owe so much to others. We didn’t come to Christ because he appeared to us, we came to Christ cause someone shared Jesus with us.

And now Paul and others are praying for them. Church, we need each other. I had a couple conversations this week that encouraged my heart. There are so many of you that at some point or another encouraged and strengthened my heart. We can’t do this alone.

When the gospel impact gets weaker, don’t forget your friends. Don’t isolate yourself. Don’t downplay how much we need each other – Jesus uses each other.

4. Impact to be impacted

My last brings us full circle. Sometimes the thing that will impact us is getting out there and letting God use us to impact others. Someone might say, we can’t impact unless we’re first impacted and I get what they’re saying, but sometimes what we need to be impacted more deeply by the good news of Jesus is sharing that good news with someone else and seeing it impacting them.

I think a lot of the weakness and dryness that we as believers may struggle with isn’t a matter of us needing more, but a matter of us giving more. Not a matter of looking more inwardly but a matter of looking more outwardly. Just a thought!

We need both to be healthy Christians and healthy churches. We need God working through us, and we need God working in us.