Follower of One : Missions For The Rest Of Us

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One. Today, I want to read a very convicting verse to me. This is a conviction to me, and that's part of the reason why I want to read it. I think it's a challenge to all of us, especially in business, but in any type of work. Proverbs 16:9, "The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." I've been working for the last few days, doing some strategic planning around the growth of what I hope the growth will be for Follower of One, and bathing that in prayer and asking God for his direction, for his wisdom and his guidance. And then I would turn right around and get something- we'd get interrupted. And what I thought I would be spending my time doing X, I ended up having to spend my time doing Y. The Lord directs my steps. He ordains interruptions and circumstances and things that happen in my life, and I often don't like it. I've just become a pouty little child because God's not letting me do what I wanted to do. The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. I pray constantly. I don't pray constantly. That's an exaggeration. I pray regularly. That I would be easier to interrupt, that I would trust God more. My natural instinct is to get angry at interruptions, not to trust God that He would have me do something else. Almost every interruption, almost everything that takes longer than I thought it would take, ends up being a blessing to me, if I would just trust Jesus and do what He says. Today in our workplaces, I would like to challenge you: let's remember the mind of a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. And now let me say that exactly correctly. I'm reading from the New American standard, the mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. I don't really think that references all that gender-oriented. I think, male or female, we can get all wrapped up in our own goals and objectives and we forget God, but the Lord directs our steps. He's the one directing us. He's the one choosing what we do. I want to plan to do what God has for me to do, and that means my plans must include interruptions. My plans, and my attitude must be good with interruptions, because God is sovereign. He's the one choosing the plan. We have a person on one of the recent mission trips talking about how she had it all planned out that she was going to do her fastest exercise time walking through her neighborhood, but she couldn't get any of her timer apps to work, and she was very frustrated about that. So she took off anyway and she got interrupted a couple of times on the way and had opportunities to interact with her neighbors, that she never would have done had she had the timer ticking. And it was just God saying, no, you're walking around the neighborhood today, but I want you to interact with the people that you come into contact with. I think God does that with my schedule. That I wire it tight as a drum, and I'm always in a hurry, and I always have to hurry up and get to the next thing. And then an interruption will occur, or something will take longer, or something will need to be redone. Lord, may I please have an attitude of openness to you. And I pray that we all do. That openness and that willingness to be God's person in our situation is what makes our faith attractive to the people around us. I hope today that this criticism of myself, this challenge I'm giving myself is beneficial to you in some way. Let's be the people that Jesus calls on today to make a difference in the lives of our coworkers and bank on it, that will require some interruptions. Thank you for being a marketplace minister, and thank you for making a difference with your faith. Don't forget if you're interested in more of this content, check us out at followerofone.org. Thanks very much.

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One. Today I'm doing our podcast on both video and audio. And so you can hear this in both places and it will come out at different times, but our verse for today is 1 Peter 5:7 "casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you." Peter is talking to us, and he's telling us that we can cast our anxiety on him. In our previous episode, we were talking about being humble, and the humility is a key for this anxiety passing. We sometimes feel like we're the victims of anxiety. We're confident that we're not powerful enough to deal with our fear, and yet, it's not our fear that exceeds the power that we have. It's God who exceeds the anxiety and the fear that we have. When we humble ourselves and put ourselves in the right place, then we're in a position to be able to hand our anxiety to Jesus. We can give it to Him, because He cares for us, and He's powerful. In John 16:33, Jesus said: "These things I've spoken to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have trouble. But take courage, I have overcome the world." The trouble of the world does not exceed the authority of Jesus. And so even the true things that we fear, much less the anxiety, which is as Seth Godin called it "experiencing failure in advance", the anxiety is something that we can give away. We can give it back to Jesus. We can place that on Him because He cares for us. Today, I want to encourage us to go into our workplaces to pray, and to take that anxiety. If you have a big meeting coming up, or if you know you have a difficult conversation coming up. Or maybe it's a review that's going on. Cast that anxiety on him. Don't spend time experiencing your failures or your fears in advance, wait for them, and trust Jesus. He has this under control, and He will care for you in such a way that you can take that anxiety and put it on Him, and He will give you peace in its place. And use that peace to make a difference in the lives of the people that you work with. We do these things so that we can be ministers in our marketplace. A minister is just a servant. And so we give this anxiety away and we're back and we're free to be able to serve the people that we work with so that they might ask us, "Why are you doing this?" And we can tell them, "I'm doing this, and I'm peaceful because I trust Jesus, and He's working these things out in our lives and He can do that in yours as well." I'm so excited to get the chance to be a minister in the marketplace, a minister of Jesus Christ in the marketplace. I hope you join me. Ministry is helping other people move one notch closer to Jesus. And that's what we try and do at Follower of One. And so I want to encourage you to join me by going to followerofone.org and checking out our online community and signing up for the next marketplace mission trip. Thank you for being a minister in the marketplace and thank you for making a difference in the lives of others. Your ministry at work matters and it makes a difference to those around you. Thank you very much.

Markee Johnson, former director of the marketplace ministry called Endeavor at Celebration Church in Austin, talks about her unique background in a Fortune 100 tech company that led her down the path of workplace ministry. Topics include starting a marketplace ministry, the global anti-human-trafficking organization A21, and how excellence builds equity in the workplace.

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One. Today, I want to talk about how humility unlocks joy for us. Let's use 1 Peter 5:6 as our verse. "Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you at the proper time." Exalt is one of those words that I don't use very often, but when I look at the word, I see the definition: it's to raise in rank, or to elevate, or to praise. We want to experience the exaltation of God. My goal here is to experience this relationship with Jesus, where I experience His joy. I enjoy what He's doing in my life, and it's not a transactional thing. His exaltation and lifting me up, I believe involves me more in the work that He's doing. I experienced joy when I joined Him in the work that He's doing in and around the people that I'm with, the people that I work with or in my family. When I humble myself under His hand, what I'm doing is I'm realizing my position. My right place in the world is doing whatever God says. He's the one who created me. He will always be my boss. He will always be my king and my Lord. Those are awkward. Some of those words are awkward for us. We think we're in charge, but when we can humble ourselves under God's mighty hand and do what He says, we experience exaltation. We are lifted up. We are blessed. We are praised. We are exalted. That's the word. That comes from having a right understanding of what God is doing, and where we are in relation to Him. In relation to God, I'm not that much, yet He died on the cross for me. Jesus died on the cross for me to restore my relationship with Him. And today, if I can remember who He is, and who I am, it's my job to just shut up and do what He says. It's my job to listen to Him and do what He says, and then I will get exalted at the proper time. If you've experienced the joy of following Jesus, you know what I mean. And if you haven't, maybe you need to ask God to give you some direction on how you can be humble. How you can have a proper understanding of where you fit in the world. I believe God will give you that if you ask Him for it. In fact, asking Him for it is our first daily activity. Praying, punching in, telling God that we're on the clock. Here we are. We want to do whatever He has for us to do today. And listening to Him. That's our job. When we do that, we're on a mission trip. We're on mission with Jesus Christ when we obey God in our world, and in and among the people we meet every day. I want to challenge you today. Stick your foot in the ground, and from here forward, say "I want to do what God calls me to do." You'll mess up again pretty soon if you're like me. I mess up pretty regularly, but I want to keep trying. I want to follow God and do what He says. And I'm on this podcast, I'm involved in this ministry called Follower of One, because I believe as I do that, and as we do it together, we help one another. Check us out at followerofone.org where you can practice this a little bit. One of the ways we practice is through our marketplace mission trip. Trust God today, humble yourselves under His mighty hand, listen to Him, do what He says, and trust that He will exalt you at the proper time. We have a choice to make. Every action is a choice. Make the choices that line you up in the right relationship with God and watch Him exalt you. You will experience joy through that. Thanks for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for listening to this and for sharing it with people. Let's follow Jesus today and do what He says. Thanks very much.

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One. Let's continue our conversation from yesterday, where we were talking about how to get right with God, so we'll call this episode part two. Today our verse is Acts 16:31. They said: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." Yesterday we were quoting from the old Testament in Habakkuk, and it said that the righteous shall live by faith. Sometimes, we think that all you have to do is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. That's exactly what this verse says, but this word believe, and sometimes what we translate, what we understand as "believe", like "I believe that certain things will happen" or I believe this, or I believe that, the way that we hold our intellect and our beliefs in this country, in this culture, in this time, it's a little different than what Habakkuk and the author of Acts are saying. I believe this word "believe" and this word "faith", the faith that we live by in Habakkuk, and this belief that the Jews understood when they were being told "believe in the Lord, Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household", it means the same thing. It means that we must translate our life. We must transform our life. Maybe even the word "repent" fits in this, because as I believe in the Lord Jesus, I now bend my life to do what He says. Yesterday, or in the previous episode, we heard that as lining up behind Jesus; the righteous will live by faith. And here we're learning it as well. Turn your life, bend your life to follow the Lord Jesus. Believe in Him and do what He said. Some of us, we filter, I filter, I do this. I filter my own choices sometimes through the lens of the Lord Jesus. There are times when I choose not to do what He says. There are times when I choose not to tell the absolute truth. That's a full confession. There are times when I want to cut corners on the truth, or make something sound better than it was, just so that I won't irritate someone else. When I do those things, I'm not believing in the Lord Jesus at that moment, I'm actually trusting myself. I'm following my own instruction. I become an idolater, because I put something else in the place of God. I'm listening to me, instead of listening to Jesus. I want to challenge us as followers of Jesus Christ. We want to live by our faith from Habakkuk 2 in the previous episode. And we want to bend our life to believe and to live like we know that everything that Jesus Christ said is absolutely true. When we point our lives after Jesus, we are saved, and that salvation, it's dependent upon Him, not us. So it doesn't turn on or off when we stop believing, but the salvation that we experience every day, the salvation that we experience comes because we follow Jesus Christ. Today, you can choose moment by moment, decision by decision, to follow Jesus Christ and do what He says. And you watch, you will make a difference in the lives of the people that you work with. Don't believe me? Try it out. Try for 30 days, pray for your coworkers every day for the next 30 days, and watch what Jesus does. I hope that every person listening to this podcast can bend their lives and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But that means that our lifestyle will change, because now, we'll be taking direction from Him. Thank you for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for considering daily how you can transform your own life by following Jesus, and making a difference in the lives of your coworkers. Check out the tips that we have and the online community that we've created at followerofone.org, where you can connect with others of us who are trying to do the same thing on a daily basis. We want to move our faith forward daily by trusting in Jesus and doing what He says. Thanks very much.

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One and today's passage, still in the Old Testament, Habakkuk 2:4, "Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith." I love the last phrase in that verse. I love an old Rich Mullins song that he wrote that was about this verse: The Just Shall Live. And, I want to talk today about how we get right with God. I think it's interesting because I always thought that getting right with God meant that I had to live according to a bunch of rules. I had to check the boxes and do the right things. I had to be baptized and go to church and do this and do that. And I love the way now that I think about this verse, because I think Jesus has flipped it in my mind. When I live by faith, I do what Jesus says. There are days when Jesus tells me I need to go to church, or I need to tell the truth, or I need not to eat that extra dessert. When I'm living by faith, I listen to Jesus. I follow him. I am a Follower of One. When I'm living by faith, I'm righteous. I'm doing the things that Jesus would have me do. I'm following Him and I'm in line with Him. I'm in the Jesus groove, doing the things that Jesus would have me do. It's not that I'm trying to obey a certain set of rules. I'm trying to conform my life to the direction set for it by my Creator, by the person who gave me life and who put me here. And we're also told in Ephesians 2:10 that He gives each of us a job to do, that He created us for good works that He prepared beforehand, that we would walk in them. "Behold as for the proud one," the one who goes his own way, which is what I tend to do. I can be one of the most arrogant, proud people I know, and when I do, my soul is not right within me. I'm wrong, I'm broken, I'm off track. I'm out of the groove. I'm not operating according to those things that I was created to do. But when I live by faith, when I put my trust in Jesus and I do what He tells me to do on a moment by moment basis, I'm righteous.That's how you get right with God. It's not about doing the things, the rules that other people cast on you, it's about following and obeying Jesus. Today in our workplaces, I would like to challenge us. Today, let's listen to God, ask him what He would have us do. Remember, our first prayer is to punch in. Here I am lord, put me to work. Let's punch in and ask him to show us what He would have us do for the people that we will interact with today. And then when we hear a word from him, when we get an idea, if you pray and all of the sudden you get this wild idea, you can pretty much bet it was Jesus. If that wild idea lines up with scripture, find a way to do it, find a way to solve for that. Whatever idea came into your brain, find a way to implement it. You can believe that you're following Jesus. You're living by faith, living by trusting Him. Listen also to other believers in your life, attend church and listen to the leadership of your church. Have other Christians who are involved, and read the scripture. But when we talk to Jesus and He gives us ideas, let's find ways to do them. Today, give away a little bit of your life to the people that you work with. Ask Him, ask God to show you what to do, and then do it. Thanks for being a marketplace minister. And thank you for following Jesus at work for living by your faith. That makes us righteous. Let's do that today so that Jesus will be visible in our world. Thanks very much.

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One, and today's episode, I want to talk about where our faith is based, or what is our faith based on, and I'm using a fragment of a sentence. 1 Corinthians 2:5, "so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God." That's from the New American Standard Bible. What does your faith rest on? Does it rest on the wisdom of man, or does it rest on the power of God? I believe that our faith rests on the power of God, the more we can show that we make choices according to what we know Jesus would have us do. When we go above and beyond what is expected of us at work, because we trust Jesus, we demonstrate that our faith rests on the power of God. When we can do the right thing and be bent towards serving others on a day in and day out basis, moment by moment, as opposed to trying to serve ourselves, we prove that our faith is based on the power of God. I want my faith to be based on the power of God, not just on the miracles that I see. Not the flashy miracles. You know, it's a miracle to be- to stay married for a number of years. It's a miracle to avoid sin when sin is very tempting. It's a miracle to avoid shading the truth, or telling a white lie when you have the opportunity. Those things are miracles. We look past them often because they're common. They're miracles that we're expected to do every day, and we look for the exceptional miracles. We look for the drama and the exceptions, but the miracle of God is that we can live based on His power on a daily basis for the rest of our lives. So we want to base our faith, and I want to base my faith, not on the wisdom of men, not even on my own wisdom or my own understanding, but on the power of God, the ability of God to make His word true in my life, even when I don't see it. That's a challenging idea for us, but today I want to challenge you to put it to work. Today in your life, go outside of what's normally expected of you, and serve someone over and above what you might normally do. Today, you might give a large tip to a waitperson at lunch or at dinner, or you may go out of your way to provide a gift for someone who's a service provider, like the people who clean your office or the people who deliver the mail, or your package delivery person. Let's get outside of our comfort zone and let's go and invest something - some money, some time, some energy - in our own faith. Let's go spend some money to make Jesus visible. When you do that, you're resting not on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God today. Let's do that. Thank you for being a marketplace minister. I also would like to challenge you to consider building this into your life. Join us at followerofone.org. We have an online community there where we challenge one another to live this way, to live blessing other people so they might know Jesus, and we want to do that on a daily basis. I want my faith to make a difference in every day of my life. And I hope you do too, because then we get to experience the joy of walking with Jesus on a daily basis. Check out followerofone.org, and also look at the marketplace mission trip. There's always another one about to happen. Sign up for the next marketplace mission trip, and join us as we practice this. Thanks very much.

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One, and today, I'm thinking about what makes things happen. What moves the needle in our world? I'm reading from Zechariah chapter 4, verse 6. "Then he said to me, this is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel saying, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,' says the Lord of hosts." God is reminding His prophet to go speak to the priest and the king - I think Zerubbabel is the king; I probably should have done a little more research - to say to him it's not might or power that makes things work. It's my spirit. The spirit of God makes things happen in our world. He's what moves the needle. He's what makes things change. He is the one factor of all the factors. Often, I tend to believe that my actions or my power, my effort, or my energy, my money, or time, or resources are what's needed to make something happen. Often we tend to believe that the government is, or that some other person is supposed to be making something happen. It's their fault that they didn't do something, or someone else is responsible. We might take responsibility among ourselves, or we might dump it on someone else, but here it's as clear as it is anywhere in scripture. God's saying it doesn't matter what you think you do. It doesn't matter what you think you're doing or how powerful you think you are. It's my spirit that makes things happen, and I wanna remember that today. This could be a short podcast. Today God is the one who makes things happen in our world. He was then, and He is now, and we believe that is something else or that we might wring our hands, that something's outside of our control, but today I want to remind myself, and I hope I remind you, the holy spirit is what makes things happen in this world. And He's working His plan. Nothing, nothing is going to thwart his plan. Nothing will stop Him. We get to relax in that, to trust Him, and to do what He says. Today, let's ask God to show us how we can relax in trust, and then just obey Him and do what He says. I pray that for you and for me. Let's relax in trusting Him and do what He says today, because He's the one who moves the needle. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Let me give you a minute back today. Also take a minute and check out followerofone.org. This is our community; it's a community of believers who come together to try and practice living our faith more on the six days between Sundays. I hope that you will join us there. Go to followerofone.org, where you can check out more about our ministry, about the online community and join the online community and then you can take part in the next marketplace mission trip too. Thanks very much.

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One. Today, I want to jump into the Old Testament for a couple of days to get us to think a little bit more strategically and long-term about our faith at work in the practical attitude towards how we live our lives. In Psalms 78, verses 5 and 6 says "For he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should teach them to their children, that the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children." Psalm 78:5-6 This part of the Psalmist is making a statement about how God has called us to pass down the things that we learn about him. To pass them to the next generation. And part of how we do this- most of what we talk about in the marketplace mission world that Follower of One is involved in has to do with here and now, at work, how we live our lives today. We want to be very practical. There will be an application today at the end of this recording. We have things to do today. But we're also challenged to pay attention to our children, and their children, and their children after them. What are we doing to make sure that we have a legacy that goes forward into the future? And I'm not talking about saving up money for retirement, or building a retirement fund or something that you can allow your children to inherit. I'm talking about creating the kind of reputation and being the kind of person that makes a difference in the lives of the people around them. Set up a character for your family, for the people that bear your name and the people that are part of your family. We're the kind of people who do X. Here, the Psalmist is talking about the people of Israel. He established a testimony in Jacob. He appointed this law in Israel, and he commanded the fathers to live a certain way. Basically, this is an identity statement. We are this kind of people, and you can't see me, but I'm using air quotes again. We are this kind of people. We are the kind of people who minister to our coworkers, and who make a difference in the lives of every person that we meet. We are the kind of people who help everyone around us move one notch closer to Jesus. I want to challenge you today to begin asking God and praying about how you can live in such a way that the intentionality of your faith, the way that you are purposeful about living and serving others for the sake of making Jesus known. The way that you live becomes something that even your kids and your grandkids and your great-grandkids pick up. That generations after this one know what kind of person you were, and they try to live up to that standard as well. This is not something that we're trying to project on other people, but it is something that we decide to be on the inside. When we choose to be a minister, instead of just choosing to do ministry, we flip a switch. This choice to be a minister makes a difference. It says that we are the kind of person who does certain things, and our identity directs our actions. Today, ask God to show you how your identity in Him might need to transform some part of your life. It might need to make a difference in the way that you do your work. It might need to make a difference in the way that you interact with your coworkers, or the way you teach your children and grandchildren about these types of beliefs. Let's live intentionally today, so that our faith is making a difference in the lives of our family for generations to come. Set a goal now for what you'd like people to say about your family 150 years from now, and see if that doesn't change the way that you do your job. Thanks very much for being a marketplace minister. And thank you for making a difference in the lives of the people that you work with. Your actions matter. Let's develop an identity that is based firmly in Jesus, and let that identity guide us as we take our faith into the workplace every day. Join us at followerofone.org as well to check out the online community that we have, the next marketplace mission trip, and to connect with others who will help you. And you can help them as we move forward, being intentional with our faith in the workplace. Thanks very much.

How clever are you when it comes to using money? And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." Mark 12:42-44 ESV I don't know about you, but I like to think I'm pretty sharp with how I handle money. I am a pretty good shopper and I can make a good deal. I'm not the best I've seen, though. I've seen better. We've been talking about how we use temporal resources in our world and we've called this series Eternally Shrewd. To be shrewd means that we are clever, resourceful. We may even be cunning, or a bit under-handed. We get the results we want. In this passage 2 really extreme things are happening. First Jesus is noticing something and he makes a point of it. He sees something no one else sees and he points it out to the disciples. But the second thing is this poor lady gave away everything she had to live on. I can't imagine the kind of guts that took. I want to be courageous, but I confess when it comes to money, I can be a coward. I want the courage of this lady, but I am afraid to ask for it. In one way, only having a penny would be a bad situation. But in another, Jesus makes a great point. She put in all she had to live on. The next move is up to God. Jesus doesn't even discuss it. She is dependent on God. Jesus also said in Matthew 6, "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? Matthew 6:26 NASB. Can we trust Jesus like a bird, or like this widow? And what do we miss if the answer is "No?" To be eternally shrewd it would mean to make choices and take actions that produce the best result. Everywhere in scripture, I see God challenging me to trust him more, to give more away, to go big. Today, I want to live more like that. You can pray about that for me, and I will pray about that for both of us. I hope God's people live so radically different that every person notices. If you heard yesterday's podcast, ask me what I did. Head over to https://twitter.com/mikehenrysr and ask. Let's work to be shrewd in the eyes of God. Let's do the things he says even when they sound a bit crazy. That may mean taking a marketplace mission trip. Or getting some friends together to take one. God to www.MarketplaceMissionTrip.com to learn more and step out.