On any given Sunday, the NFL is the largest spectator sport in the world. Over a million fans fill stadiums across the country and 272,000,000 are armchair quarterbacks, watching the game from the comfrot of their recliners. Millions and millions of people, at any given time, are watching just 22 people play the game.
There’s another growing spectator sport on any given Sunday. About 50 million people attend a worship service in America each weekend, and at any given time, most of them are watching just a handful of people in ministry. The Church doesn’t exist to rally a group of people to attend a worship service, the Church exists to glorify God and make disiciples.
Are you watching the game, or are you in the game?
In the message you can watch by clicking the link below, I look at how a man named Matthias got in the game from Acts 1. The message closes with this quote from Teddy Roosevelt:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
I hope this message challenges you and the Holy Spirit ministers deeply to your spirit.
Avalon Beach Church 