March Newsletter

Dear Friends of Mission Surge,

In this month’s update I want to share with you the following things for you to be aware of and pray about. 

1.  I ask you to pray for me over the next couple of months as I travel and preach.  I will be preaching a Harvest Day at Unity Baptist Church in Atmore, AL on Easter Sunday morning.  Please pray that many will be touched by the Gospel and born again.  Then on Monday night, I will be meeting with some of the men of the church to discuss moving from a deacon led church government to an elder led church government.  On Wednesday I will be sharing with the congregation about the work of Mission Surge.  Then on Saturday night, April 6, I will be preaching in McDavid, FL at a youth event.  I will be delivering the gospel to these young people and challenging them to a life of true holiness.  Then on Sunday, April 7, I will be preaching 4 times at Rays Chapel Baptist Church in McDavid, FL as I lead a Family Discipleship Conference.  Then I will be traveling back to Jones County on Monday to lead a Bible study.  April will conclude on Monday, April 29 with a Missions Conference at Macedonia Baptist Church in Petal, MS.  I plead with you to lift me up and these churches up.  I am hungry to see God do a work and I covet your prayers.

2.  I also ask you to please pray for my preaching schedule to continue to fill up.  Please share with anyone and everyone that I am available to preach Harvest Days, revivals, missions conferences, and family discipleship conferences.  I am also available on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights to simply come and share about the work of Mission Surge with churches.  I know as a pastor I was often looking for someone to come and fill a Sunday night or Wednesday night spot.  I will come!   I would appreciate it if you would share the word about Mission Surge with your pastors and churches.  

3.  I also ask you to pray for a special event in Birmingham, AL.  You can go to the following website and check it out.  I have the privilege of speaking at this event and would encourage you to bring all the father’s that you know!  Please pray for all of the speakers and those who attend the Master’s Plan for Fatherhood.  Here is the link:  https://ncfic.org/events/view/birmingham-masters-plan 

4.  The Bible study in Jones County continues on Monday nights.  Please pray for that as well.

5.  I also want to ask you to pray about the following things that I cannot expound upon at this point in detail.  More info will come in April’s newsletter.

• Gene Pickern has just recently returned from the Dominican Republic.  I will be meeting with him the week after Easter to be brought up to speed with what is happening there and with what is planned for the future.  There are many promising things going on in the DR. Please pray for us as we meet and look to the future work in the DR. 

• I also want to ask you to pray about 2 major developments in the international work of Mission Surge.  I can’t go into great detail at the moment, but know that I covet your prayers as we are going to be considering some major expansion to the international work.

• Also, please pray about a major endeavor locally that is in the process of being fleshed out.  This will be an opportunity for individuals, missions committees and local churches to join hands with Mission Surge and impact individuals and families in their communities! 

• Please pray for us as we replace a number of our board members next month.  Pray that God will lead, guide, and direct in this process.

6.  If you are not following me on twitter please follow the link below and do so:  https://twitter.com/missionsurge

7.  If you are not following my blog please follow the link below and do so:  http://kevinivy.blogspot.com/  I have been posting fairly regularly thoughts on contentment.  I would encourage you to follow me and read them as God would lead. 

8.  If you have not like Mission Surge on Facebook, please go the following link and do so:  

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mission-Surge/145423062144598?ref=hl

9.  Finally, I appreciate your continued prayers concerning our home saga.  We made another offer on a home this week, but were outbid so we are back to square one.  Baby Silas is due in May and I was hoping that we would have a contract before the end of March so that we could close in April and move in before May.  That apparently is not going to happen at this point.  We definitely do not want a house that God does not want us to have.  We want to be exactly where God wants us and that is why we are very methodically trying to follow His leadership, guidance, and direction in relation to this.  In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.  That is what we are hanging on to.  We covet your prayers.

Please pray for us!  We desperately need your prayers.  

Why so many posts about discontentment?

Why so many posts on discontentment?

            Well, to be transparent, it is a constant battle in my life right now.  We sold our home back in July feeling confident that God called us to do so and feeling hopeful that he would provide for us another home within in our meager budget.  It has been 8 months and we are still waiting.  That hopefulness has subsided to say the least.  It is as if God is tarrying and my faith is weakening.  I find myself prone to frustration and struggling with discontentment.  I am seeking to be patient and wait upon the Lord, but it often feels like He is not listening to my prayers, is not answering my call, and is not working in this area of my life.  Discontentment is real and it is sinful. 

            Discontentment is un-Christian.  We profess to live by faith.  Faith is a grace that substantiates things not seen.  Faith looks beyond circumstances and feeds upon promises.  True faith will trust God where it cannot trace Him.  If I am discontented because I do not have all that I want, either my faith is a non-entity, or at best it is but an infant.  It is a weak faith that must have stilts and crutches to support it. 

            Discontentment is sinful because of its roots.  One root of discontentment is pride.  A discontented man is often a proud man.  He thinks himself better than others, and therefore finds fault with God when he is not treated better than or advanced above others.  Discontent is nothing else but the boiling over of pride. Another root of discontentment is envy.  He who envies what his neighbor has is never content with what God gives him.  The envious man looks so much upon the blessings which another enjoys that he cannot see his own mercies, and so continually tortures himself.  More roots of discontentment are covetousness and jealously and distrust.  Discontentment is nothing else but the echo of unbelief.  It is the evidence of weak faith.  In reality, distrust is worse than distress!  Discontentment is sinful because of its roots.

            When I find myself discontent, I often find myself sullen.  Because I do not have what I desire, I get frustrated with God and bitter.  I take my frustrations out on God!  I am quite content to receive mercies from God, but if He crosses me in the least thing, then, through discontent, I grow irritable and impatient, ready to take out my aggressions upon God.  The discontented person thinks everything he does for God is too much, and everything God does for him is too little.  That my friend is evil and that is the battle that is raging in us all.  Can you relate?  And are you at war with your discontentment?  Let us not only strike the plant of discontentment, but let us go to the roots as well:  pride, envy, covetousness, jealousy, and distrust to name a few.  

When is Discontentment Okay?

            In all of our discussions about contentment, let us consider today the following question:  When is it okay to be discontent? 

             While it is not okay to be discontent with our physical condition, it is okay to be discontent with our spiritual condition. Though we should be content with an adequacy of food and clothing, we should not be content with an adequacy of grace.  We should covet more grace.  Never think you have enough! The Apostle Paul, though content with so little of this world, was not content with only a little grace.  He was continually striving for more, fighting for more, running for more.  A Christian should be the most content with where he is, yet the least satisfied with who he is. 

            In our discontentment over our sin however, we still must be careful.  Our discontentment over our sin and state of grace may be out of bounds and sinful too.  For example, if we are viewing our sin as greater than God’s mercy, we have gone too far.  Consider Numbers 21:4-9.

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food." 6  Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7  And the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live." 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. ESV

            When God sent the fiery serpents among the children of Israel, what would have happened if, rather than looking to the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up, they had only looked at their wounds?  They would never have been healed.  That sorrow for sin which drives us away from God IS sin!  There is more despair in it than remorse.  Judas was so remorseful for betraying Christ that he confessed his sin to the Pharisees, returned the money, and then went out and hung himself and went to hell.  That was some serious remorse, but it did not end in forgiveness.  It ended in despair.  Why?  Because Judas did not look to Christ and cling to His grace and mercy!  Let us be careful, in our discontentment with our sin, that we do not forget to look to Christ!  In the words of Thomas Watson, “Sorrow in itself does not save (that would be to make a Christ of our tears).” 

             When our sorrow over our sin is not relieved by the grace of God and the mercy and forgiveness of Christ, it makes the heart out of tune for prayer, meditation on the Scriptures, and fellowship with God and other believers.  It secludes the soul.  To quote Watson again, “This is not sorrow, but rather sullenness, and renders a man not so much penitential as cynical.” 

             It is good to be content with our physical condition.  It is good to be discontent with our spiritual condition.  But even in our spiritual discontentment, we must be careful that we do not spend our lives focusing only on our sin.  We must look to Christ and be forgiven.  We must embrace more of His grace!