Making Your Mark on Your Neighborhood As A Family!

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to preach on the importance of having your family be on mission within the neighborhood that you live in.

 

 

Here's why making your mark on your neighborhood as a family is so important:

 

1. God has called for you to live in a specific neighborhood. There are no "second class" neighbors.

 

Acts 17:26a - "From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth."

 

Here Paul is preaching against the nationalistic Greek belief that if you aren't a Greek than you are a barbarian or at best a second class citizen. All human beings, including your neighbors, are image bearers of God and have value, worth, and meaning. There are no second class neighbors.

 

In fact, if you feel you are 'too good' for your neighbors than you are 'too good' for God! Jesus left his neighborhood in heaven to live and reside in the roughest of neighborhoods here on earth (John 1:14).

 

2. God has purposefully given you your neighbors.

 

Acts 17:26b - "and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands."

 

God has determined not only when we should be alive but exactly where we should live. Everything and everyone God has put in our place is for a reason, including your neighbors. Instead of complaining about what you don't have be thankful for what you do have (because God has given it to you for a purpose!) Use whatever he has given you: a yard, pool, TV, cooking gift, mechanical skills to invite your neighbors over and impact them for good.

 

If reaching your neighbors is difficult realize that the Bible tells us to love our neighbor and to love our enemies, probably because many times they are the same people! You can fulfill two commandments with one action. God has given you your neighbors for a specific purpose, be the initiator and not the instigator.

 

3. Making your mark in your neighborhood as a family will save the souls of your family and your neighbors!

 

Acts 17:27 - "God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us."

 

The reason why God has placed people within your neighborhood who don't know Jesus is so that through Christians examples they would seek and reach out to God. This includes your own family.

 

Your family won't come to Jesus if they don't see that Jesus is important to you! More is at stake than your neighbor's souls, everyone who lives under your roof their souls are at stake too. When you live your life on mission for God it will become infectious within your family. You will be teaching them values of service, ministry, and living your life on mission!

 

If you are afraid to reach your neighbors remember that God "is not far from any one of us." You may be the closest thing to Jesus that anyone knows or sees. Be bold because the living God lives inside of you and me!

 

 

 

As I start my family, may my little girl come to love Jesus because her parents take God's commands to love their neighbors seriously!