We are going to look at Peter’s life to see what three things helped him become a person who powerfully helped people find and follow Jesus.

God never meant for us to receive the salvation blessing and have it end with us.

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Good morning. It’s good to see you again. My wife and I are 11 days away from having our third child, and I’m 11 days away from a breakdown. You can pray for us. We are excited. We don’t know what we’re having. We decided to be surprised. Hopefully, it’s not an alien. Hopefully, it’s a baby.

We are in the final week of our series called The Deeper Life where we’ve been exploring what the first Christians did to experience the deeper life that Jesus promised them. Jesus said, “I’ve come to give you life, life to the full, or life abundant,” and they really had that. I believe that’s possible for us too. So we’ve been exploring what they did to experience that deeper life. We talked about how they met together, how they were seeking Jesus daily, how they were sharing, how they are giving, or meeting together, seeking, giving, sharing, and we’re going to talk about that sharing portion today.

Jesus, when he came, he said he came to seek and to save the people who are sitting in church. No, he said he came to seek and to save those are who are on a Hawaiian vacation. No, but they’re already saved, man. They got the good life. He came to seek and to save the…

Lost.

Lost. He came to seek and to save people who are far from God. And then, Jesus gave that same mission to his disciples. He gave it to fishermen and tax collectors, and now he continues to give that mission to you and to me. He gives it to stay-at-home moms and dads. He gives it to a customer service reps, and financial agents, and bankers, and all of us, people who are working every sort of job in every sort of area. He gives it to every single one of us the mission to seek and to save the lost.

We rephrase that and say our mission is to help people find and follow Jesus. It’s really simple. We’re to help people find and follow Jesus. That’s what he’s given to us. We’re supposed to share Jesus with others. But have you ever wondered why he gave that mission to us? Why did he give it to the disciples then? Why did he give it to us now? Because it seems like there could be a more uniform method of communication.

We’re pretty unreliable at times. We tend to bungle things up and yet Jesus could have done it in a lot easier and simple and cleaner way. He could have had great Instagram posts. It would have been really easy to share that way. He could have done hilarious TikTok videos and everybody would have loved it, or he could have done an annual Superbowl commercial and that would have been the best commercial in the Superbowl, right? But he didn’t do that. For some reason, he gave you and I the mission. Why did he do that? Why did he give you and I mission? Well, I think it’s because of this. He wanted to include us in what he’s still doing.

Our God is still seeking and saving the lost, and he wanted to include his people, his children, in what he’s doing. One of my favorite things to do is to include my kids in what I’m doing. I love it when they get to show up at work and see what I do. I love it when we get to play games together. I love including my kids because I like being with them. And do you know that Jesus actually likes being with you? That he wants to include you in what he’s doing. He’s still seeking and saving the lost, so he’s included us to do it as well.

But how do we do this? How do we help people find and follow Jesus? I’m reading a book right now by J.D. Greear, Pastor J. D. Greear, and it’s called Gaining By Losing. It’s a book about church planting. And maybe you didn’t know this, but we as a church are a church-planting c