In order to plant the Gospel, we must take risk.

With all the decision making in my life, I often have to pause, look up and remember God is the One working behind the scenes. I say to myself, “He is able to work all things out for good. I just need to submit to Him and His ways. I can rest.

God's word tells us that righteousness is a gift; it cannot be earned. But godliness is not a gift. We must pay a price to touch godliness through a daily decision to die to self and embrace the cross. God calls us to learn godliness in the classroom of life among people as we sit on airplanes and buses, walk among our neighbors and labor at our factories or desks.

Rediscover the real meaning of the Great Commission. Beginning in our own prayer and devotional lives, we must begin to feel the compassion of the Lord for a lost and dying world. As we have already seen, the Great Commission is not something that was given to a tiny group of specially trained and educated envoys. It was given to all Christians—to the whole Church. It is something that we are all to be engaged in naturally every day.

How many more cars, clothes, toys and trinkets do we really need before we wake up and realize that half the world goes to bed every night with empty stomachs and naked bodies?

We pretend with a spiritual life we don't live, a peace we don't experience and a holiness and commitment we don't possess. ... We will never make any progress in becoming more like Jesus unless we permit God to cut us open, search our hearts, try us, know our thoughts and then change us from the inside. Only then can we become real according to the Word of God.

For Noah, preaching 120 years without results meant choosing the hard road year after year. Nehemiah, building the wall of Jerusalem, faced constant harassment by enemies from within and without. We cannot honestly, authentically, reasonably and deliberately serve our Lord without our willingness to accept difficulties and inconveniences.