Follower of One : Missions For The Rest Of Us

Hi, I'm Mike Henry with Follower of One, and I love to talk about the Bible and I love to motivate myself and to help motivate you to live our faith on a daily basis. Today, I want to talk about Philippians chapter 4, verse 11.

I love to talk about Philippians chapter four, but I almost always stop at verse eight because in verse 11, I get exposed. I'm not a very content person. It says in verse 11, and this is just a fragment of the verse "I have learned to be content." As for who I am, I haven't learned to be very content. I struggle with discontentment all the time. 

Paul is in prison writing to the Philippians, and he's thanking them for the gift that they sent to him. And he said, "I appreciate you sending the gift. I didn't really need it, because I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I find myself." And that's a little bit of a paraphrase, because I've been reading all these different translations of this passage.

I appreciate the fact that Paul said that he was content, and he's in prison. I'm not content and I'm not in prison. I spend most of my day, every day “trying” to do something, and I use the air quotes there because I'm constantly “trying” to do something. I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't learn to rest better; if I shouldn't learn to relax more.

My goal as a follower of Jesus always seems to be striving to do something else, instead of just trusting Jesus to do what He wants. We had a team meeting yesterday as I record this, and part of my discontent with that team meeting was the fact that I was trying to get us to do something that we clearly don't have the resources to do right now. I need to relax. "Mike it's not time," becomes a valid answer. 

Today in your workplace, I want to challenge you to ask God to show you where you need to be in this whole discussion around contentment. Our contentment, our willingness to be involved and engaged, but to be sufficient, prepared and equipped and sufficient for the circumstances where we work and with the people that we interact every day.

That status of our life, that peace in our soul becomes a witness. Our contentment comes from what we know about the world. God is in charge. He's taking care of us, and He can do whatever He wants whenever He wants. Therefore, I should be content. I don't want to "should" all over myself, but in this particular case, I know for a fact that Lord, I want to be more content.

And so I hope that God will encourage you today to let your contentment show up. And then He will also encourage us. Each of us, me too. Let's let our contentment make a difference in the lives of the people that we work with today. I'm grateful that you're a marketplace minister. I'm grateful that you follow Jesus.

And I hope that these devotionals help you. But maybe you've discovered that because Mike is his own problem in this area - I'm my own source of discontentment all the time - that you don't want to listen to these devotionals anymore. I would understand, but I hope that our discontent in our present situation, turns us to God; that we turn to him and follow him and let him use us in the workplace, and be content with what he does for us and through us today.

Thank you so much for being a marketplace minister, take a check, take a chance. Take a minute - I'm stumbling around a little bit - and go check out our website followerofone.org, where you can sign up for the next marketplace mission trip. I hope that you can put your faith to work, that we can use the calling that Jesus has given us to make a difference in the lives of our friends.

Thanks very much for being a marketplace minister. And thank you for taking your faith to work. I appreciate it. 

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One. What do you do when you don't know what else to do in the workplace? Today I want to talk about our fourth daily activity, which is to serve others. Jesus calls us to serve others. And he challenges us to do that in several places in scripture. I want to talk about one of those places today.

In 1 John 3:16, it says that we know love by this, that Jesus laid down his life for us. So we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. And that's from The New American Standard. There are different translations here. Sometimes this word brethren is, I believe, misinterpreted to convey that I'm only supposed to love other Christians.

Jesus clearly stated in his illustration of the good Samaritan that we love our neighbors. We lay down our lives for fellow humans, not just fellow believers. We lay down our lives for others. I believe when I had my worst days at work it's because I was focusing so much on what was happening to me and what I thought about it and how I perceived it.

And I was in the center of every one of my own perspectives, but when I can turn my attention to doing something for someone else, when I serve someone else, whether I follow Jesus or not, I believe when I serve someone else, I get outside of who I am and I develop a new perspective. If I do that service because I follow Jesus, then I get to take part in his work in our world.

We talk about five daily activities at Follower of One, and the first is to pray. And one of those prayers is to pray for the people around us. And when we start praying for those people, I believe God starts showing us how to serve them. It's this universal language for communicating. I can serve someone else, even if they don't like me or they don't know me.

And it breaks down barriers and it creates opportunities. I did such a bad job of this when I was working in the work world, but I want to do a better job of it. And so I try to pray for the people that I will meet every day and interact with them in such a way that I'm looking for ways to serve. I want to challenge you today in your workplace, lay down your life, look for a way to serve the people that you're with and look for a way to do something for them.

And Jesus will use that in their life. Thanks so much for being a marketplace minister. I'd also like to challenge you, to check out our website at followerofone.org. Thanks very much. Let's go live our faith today in such a way that others might ask us and we can tell them about our relationship with Jesus.

Thanks very much. 

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One. And I'm just going live today with a devotional to talk a little bit about knowing what we believe. Do you know the person you follow in Jesus Christ? Do we know him as well as we should? Our verse for today is just a fragment. Philippians 3:10 that I may know him.

That was Paul's goal, that we would know Jesus, that we would know him, the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. Knowing Jesus means that we know what He was about, and we understand His motives and His direction. We know what He would have us do and how He would have us live.

The more we study him, the more we know and it's limitless because He was God, there are no limits to what we can learn about Jesus, except the truth. We want to know the truth about him. That's part of the reason why we study the Bible. In the marketplace mission trip that we do in Follower of One, we talk about our third daily activity being that we would know what we believe.

Maybe it should better say that we would know who we believe. We need to know why it is we do the things we do. We want our relationship with Jesus to impact the way that we do our job, we want it to make a difference. I want my relationship with Jesus to make a difference in everything I do every day.

Now I confess there are days when I want some time off. I've asked God before to give me time off. I didn't want to be conformed to the image of Jesus today. I didn't want to have to live like a Christian today, but. When I take time off, I miss the joy of following Jesus. I miss the joy of doing what he says.

I miss the joy and the peace of walking with him and experiencing him. I want to enjoy my relationship with Jesus more, and therefore I need to know him better so that I can know how I should act in every circumstance. But the action of knowing what we believe on the marketplace, mission trip means.

That we practice having a one or two sentence answer. That explains why we got outside of our job description. Why did we go above and beyond to help someone else? Or, or why did we go the extra mile or give more than was expected of us? We want to live in such a way that people would ask us about why are you doing this?

And so we challenge ourselves. To have the answer ready. I want to challenge you today. Think about why you follow Jesus. Why do you follow Jesus? If you did a favor for someone and they asked you, "Why are you doing this?". Could you explain in one or two sentences that you did it because you follow Jesus and do it in a casual matter of fact way.

We want to challenge you today to practice thinking about why you follow Jesus. And then be able to articulate that in one or two sentences. That's our goal for knowing what we believe, which is the third daily activity on the marketplace mission trip. So practice that today and let's think about that as believers in the workplace, we want to be able to answer that question in a rational, simple way.

That doesn't offend anyone else that uses I/ME statements and explains why we act the way we do, because it's according to our beliefs. I want to challenge you today, think a little bit more about your faith and how it shows up in the workplace. And let's base that on. What we know about Jesus and grow our knowledge of Jesus at the same time.

Thank you for being a marketplace minister. And thank you for making a difference in your marketplace. If you'd like to know more about how to integrate your faith and work full-time, check out our website at followerofone.org, where you can learn more about the things that we teach and do, and you can also join us on our next marketplace mission trip.

Thanks very much.

Without love nothing else matters. I'm talking today about 1 Corinthians 13:3, my name is Mike Henry and I'm with Follower of One. We talk about five daily activities at Follower of One. One of those, the second one, is appreciating others. Today we're soon on our marketplace mission trip.

We'll be going through each of these five. And when we talk about appreciating others, I talk about that as being code for loving others. We can't really use the love word much at work, but I want to use the words that are necessary when I was thinking about how to come up with things that we could all do every day, regardless of what our job was, loving others was one of those things I wanted to say. It's showing appreciation and helping others feel appreciated. And the verse that I'm talking about today is 1 Corinthians 13:3 where it says but if I have not love, I am nothing, but if I do not have love, I am nothing. And I noticed that I typo-ed my text here as well.

If I do not have live, I am nothing. So let's get that off of there. The key phrase here is having love for others. This is the Greek word agapē. It means an active love, a purposeful love. In our workplace. what we want to do is we want to love other people, everything else that we do, doesn't matter if we don't care for and love the people that Jesus cared for and loved.

He died for each of us. And as I've said before, you've never met an ordinary person. We are all extraordinary. We are all specially created. We were all handcrafted for a particular purpose. God created each of us that way, we want to ask God to help us to appreciate others. That's our job on the marketplace mission trip.

And that's our job as a workplace missionary. Let's appreciate others in such a way that they feel appreciated. And they know that they're special to us. It's part of how our lives look different because we follow Jesus. So today I'd like to challenge you think about this verse. In fact, read 1 Corinthians 13 verses 1-3.

Because he talks about all these things that we can do, but if we do not have love, we are nothing. Let's love the people around us. Let's express appreciation to them in such a way that they know something's different. They know that our motives are different. They know that we operate according to a different standard and it might prompt them to ask today in your workplace today, wherever you are, whatever, whoever you're interacting with.

Figure out a way to show them love. Thanks for watching this or listening to this. We're now broadcasting these on YouTube as well as on our podcast channels. And so I want to encourage you to subscribe or to, uh, listen or follow this in any channel that's comfortable for you because we want to offer these as quick daily reminders of how we can integrate our faith into work full time.

Thank you for being a marketplace minister. And also don't forget to check out followerofone.org. That's our website, where you can learn more about what we're doing and find out more about the next marketplace mission trip or anything else that we do that might help you live as a marketplace minister full time.

Thanks very much.

Hey, do you love Jesus? I wrestled with the idea of loving Jesus. I want to continue our conversation from yesterday. When we talked about how we are become the will of God in John 14:15, Jesus says. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Now, two verses earlier, he said, whatever you ask in my name that will I do.

And he reiterated that in the verse in between. And now this next verse says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. To follow Jesus, we must love him, but I always felt like I didn't love him. I felt like my love for him was one of those things I knew I should have, but I didn't have, it was hard for me to appreciate and love Jesus.

I was too analytical. I think about my faith. I, some people have trouble loving him and other people jump right to loving him over time. I have come to love him more and appreciate him more, what he does in my life and the way he changes me. And the way he makes things work in my life. I'm learning to appreciate and enjoy more.

But love is not just a feeling. Love is also a choice. Love is something that we do. I want to love Jesus. I want to obey him. I want to do what he said. That's love when I do what someone else tells me to do, I'm showing some love for them. And when I listen to Jesus and obey him, I'm loving him too. My goal is a follower of Jesus is to love him by following him.

And he commanded us. He had a basic command. The great commandment is love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Love God and love people. I want to love God and love people more. How about you? How do you love people at work? How do you demonstrate your love for Jesus in the workplace?

For me, it's making time for people and helping them move one notch closer to Jesus. It's about being someone who's trustworthy. There's a book called I Once Was Lost. What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus. I just messed up the title. I Once Was Lost by Don Everts and Doug Schaupp.

And I would encourage you to check that book out. It talked about five gates through which people go, who are post-modern and want nothing to do with Jesus. They go through these five gates as they come to Jesus. Trusting Jesus. Being the fifth gate, the first gate is they trust another Christian. The challenge for us.

And I want to challenge us today to be trustworthy. People let's be trustworthy for the people that we interact with. The people that we work with. Let's be people who don't have an ulterior motive or ulterior objective, but instead we just want to serve the people that we're around. Let's ask God to show us how to be trustworthy to our coworkers.

To me, that's our challenge for today. I want to thank you for being a marketplace minister, and I want to thank you for being a follower of Jesus Christ and for trying to make a difference with your faith in the world. You can connect with us at followerofone.org. You can also go to followerofone.org and sign up for the next marketplace mission trip, where we practice these activities today, let's be trustworthy believers in the marketplace and watch Jesus use us as we do our jobs.

Thanks very much.

Have you ever wondered about God's will? What's God's will for my life? We're going to talk about that today. My name's Mike Henry, Mike Henry senior I'm with follower of one. And today I wanted to talk a little bit about John 14, verse 13, John chapter 14, verse 13. Jesus is speaking and he says, whatever you ask in my name that I will do.

That's not the entire verse, but it's the part that I want to talk about today. Because Jesus isn't pulling any punches here. The only condition is in my name and we don't understand that. I think I'm not sure I understand it, but I want to investigate that with you because when we do God's will, when we abide in him, we become the will of God. That's not my own idea. I actually got that from Oswald Chambers in my utmost for his highest, the will of God becomes what I do. If I can abide in Jesus Christ. Let me say that again. If I can abide in him, if I'm doing exactly what he wants, then I am the will of God. Challenging thought, but that's where I want to be.

I want to be the will of God, I want to do the things that he wants. I experience great joy when I sense that my life is aligned with what God wants. I get to see him work in my world. But if you're like me, I didn't like many of my jobs and, and having to go to work again today was a drudge. I felt like I had to turn off my faith.

And so that I could just get into the mode that I needed to be in when I got to work. I mean, it's a little silly when you think about it, but that's exactly the way I looked at it. And it's a challenge because what happens is we go into our workplaces and we're on the defensive, we're concentrating on our environment.

And we live in that world instead of continuing to stay connected to Jesus and trying adapt and to deliver what it is God would have me do in that place. We can compare ourselves with other people and we can miss out on the opportunities that Jesus has for us in our workplace, because we concentrate too much on asking God for the stuff that we want, instead of trying to remember and discover and understand what Jesus would want in our workplace.

Today. I want to challenge you, ask Jesus what he would want in your workplace, fall madly in love with him, and then do whatever you want is what Erwin Manna said. And I liked the idea. I want to know Jesus so well that my reflexes and my actions are the things that Jesus would have me do. Then I'm free to do whatever he calls me to do in situations where I'm happy.

And I enjoy my work or in situations where I don't like the work that I'm doing today. Let's concentrate on Jesus. Ask him what he would have you do today. And then go do that. Because when you live bent towards Jesus, you become the will of God. I hope you can become the will of God in your workplace today.

And don't forget we do this thing. Follower of one is an online community. And we do this thing called a marketplace mission trip. I stumbled around a little bit because we took a few weeks off and now we're back. And our next marketplace mission trip is coming up soon. Go to marketplacemissiontrip.com to learn more about how you can take a part in this event.

It's a free event. You can take part in it and we'll help you align yourself with Jesus more in your daily workplace. Thanks very much for joining us. Thanks for listening to this podcast.

What difference does it make that God is love. We hear that. I, if you're like me, you've heard that. What difference does it make that God is love? If God is so loving, how come his people look like Mike Henry? Because Mike Henry has a lot of trouble. Mike Henry doesn't love much of anything, but himself, if I'm totally honest and it's something I struggle with on a regular basis, I'm challenged to love other people. And I want to love other people. And I believe that God has set it up so that we love other people. That's the way that they discover about God. This love that he is he's inseparable from his love. It's like trying to separate the heat from the fire. They, they don't separate. The fire comes with heat. God is love. It means that. True love is God.

Samuel said here I am to God. This phrase "here I am" is a key phrase for us in the Bible. It tells God that we're available to do what he would have us do. It also marks this line in our life where we are telling God, and we're telling ourselves that we're available to be his person to do what he wants. Here I am is my way of getting on the clock. It's my way of punching in and saying, okay, Jesus. Here I am today. I'm your person. Would you please put me to work in the lives of the people that I interact with today? Every single person I meet is a potential opportunity for me to listen to God and do what he says. Every choice I make, every action I take. They're all opportunities for me to listen to God and do what he says.

What motivates you? Do you do anything because God makes you uncomfortable enough to ask? Has God asked you to do something that can only be explained by your faith in Christ? Jonathan took a chance and went and fought the Philistines when Israel was outnumbered. He took the risk because he didn’t like living safely. When you trust God you will do things that appear to be risky. Others, who see you take the risk, will ask. Will you be prepared to answer? And, when you act trusting God, you will get an opportunity to explain your actions to others. Will you give God the credit?

How do you know with confidence what you believe and why is it important to know? Our settled knowledge of God enables us to face difficulty and resistance. The more tested our knowledge, the more confidence we have. Study the scripture, walk with God and think about what you know about God. Your confidence testifies to the truth of what you know about God. And our knowledge of God and trust in Him pulls us through difficulties, too!