Living for the Worthy One

Shawn Tyler: Good morning.
What a perfect scripture to read as a presentation for our speaker this morning, Fernando Basso,
born and raised in Brazil, and has spent the last 13 years of his life working and ministering
as a missionary in Madagascar.
And he has a great message for you this morning.
: [APPLAUSE]
Fernando Basso: [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Someone knows.
So I'm really happy to be here.
My name is Fernando, and I work in Madagascar.
And this is the language of the people
that we have been reaching for Christ, namely the Bara people.
They are one of the 7,000 people groups in the world that doesn't know anything about
Jesus Christ.
And we were sent there 13 years ago, and we have been preaching and teaching them about
Jesus Christ.
I want to share some pictures about what we do, and then we are going to meditate on a
small time in the Word of Christ.
So this is my family, my wife, Janaini, my first son, Benicio, is 9 years old.
The second one is Timothy, 6 years old, and now with 3 months old, Titus.
And we are--my family, I call this my unreached tribe.
So I'm bringing them to Jesus Christ, and they live with us there, raised in the middle
of the wilderness in the mountains of the countryside of Madagascar in the southern
part.
So what we do there, we work with the film Jesus, visiting villages and talking about
Jesus Christ.
We have visited 500 villages there and seen the power of Jesus working with witch doctors
and cattle thieves, and most likely Texas in the past when you have the cowboys and
the cattle thieves.
So we are there and working.
We have children ministry with 1,000 children coming to Jesus Christ, and in our school
there, we teach them how to read and write, and we teach them how to know Christ and how
to put their faith in Christ, not in witchcraft or knowing the witch doctors, and how Jesus
can protect them and save them.
So we do this every Wednesdays and Saturdays, and here is our school, partners that we have
there working with us.
We have 22 pastors working with us in our project called co-workers that we co-work
with God in His mission.
The mission doesn't belong to us, it belongs to Him, and He has sent us there.
And this is my family, my sons, we adopted 19 children there that we care for them, and
our great desire is written down there, "May the Lord of harvest raise a new generation
of missionaries that will come and impact the world."
We are praying for you guys, that from this university, from America, from the other parts
of the world, God will save you, change your life, and send you to somewhere to preach
about Jesus Christ, because this is a life worth living.
I am primarily an engineer, and I was working in a big multinational company in Brazil,
but God called me, and I found something worth living, that is to live for Jesus Christ.
So I'm praying for you, I'm praying that God will raise some of you here, that you are
going to give your heart to Him, totally, 100% to Christ, and will serve Him in a mission
field, so people can get to know Him, and to worship Him, because this is His desire.
So I want to share with you this morning a very small passage of the Bible that is in
Acts chapter 5, verse 41.
So it goes like this, "And then they left from the Sanhedrin rejoicing, because they
had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace before the name.
Day after day they never stopped proclaiming the good news that Jesus Christ is the Messiah."
I was thinking on this text for this week, and came to my mind this question, why is
that that these 12 men, the apostles, that were preaching the gospel, and they were arrested,
they were beaten, they suffered disgrace for the name of Jesus, and in the future they
die because of Jesus, why is this?
That they found worthy of suffering for Jesus Christ, not receiving to their lives the healthy,
wealthy, prosperity gospel, but they found worthy to suffer because of Jesus.
And this is one answer for us this morning, that they find that Jesus is worthy of everything.
They had found the Savior of their souls and their life.
They have been impacted by the glory and the majesty and the worthiness of Jesus Christ
in the day they were filled with the Holy Spirit.
They weren't seeking for fame or glory in this earth, but they found something worthy
of living, that was to live entirely for Jesus Christ.
They gave their life, they gave their soul, they gave their entire soul for Christ and
living for Jesus Christ.
So I'm here to say to you this morning that to become a missionary is not something that
we do because nothing else works for my life.
I was doing a lot of money in my profession, my career was going up and I wanted to become
the manager, director of marketing for my company.
But God called me, so I was not doing nothing there.
Mission is not something that we do careless, that is not important.
Missions should not be done just because the pastor or anyone is just bothering us about
going out to preach about Christ and to be a witness in this world.
By the way, this lost world that we live, the darkness world that we live, that mission
should not be done also out of fear or guilt or for pressure from our church or for something
else.
But missions ought to be done because we have seen His glory and we have been facing the
crucified and risen and victorious Christ.
Because missions is not a department of the church that we choose to go or not.
Missions is the result of an encounter with Jesus Christ that changed our mind, that changed
our heart, that changed our wishes and dreams.
And now everything belongs to Him.
And we live for His glory and for the knowledge of God in every people, group of the earth.
Missions is the result of us to understanding Christ, not this Christ of the internet that
we heard about, that will give you a lot of things that you wish.
And if you come to this or that church and you put money there, He's going to put a Ferrari
in your garage or give you a beautiful big house.
This is not the Jesus of the Bible.
The Jesus of the Bible say to us, come take your cross and follow me and be my disciple.
And those who understand that will share about Christ and will live for Christ.
And in this metanoia, this is a Greek word for changing of mind, that is given by the
Spirit of God when we believe in Christ, when we repent from our sins, this metanoia changes
our minds and hearts.
And now we are able to follow Him.
And if someday you hear the voice of Christ saying to you, go, it's not going to be a
burden for us.
It's going to be a pleasure to lay down our life for Him who is the Lord of mission, who
is the essence of mission, who is the example for missions, the power in missions, the message
of missions, the glory of missions, the authority for missions, and the one who will be adored
and worshiped because we get involved in missions.
You see, this is the desire of God to be known in every single people group of this world.
And until today, we have 7,000, almost 7,000 people that never heard about Jesus Christ.
Three billion people in this planet that never heard the name of Jesus Christ.
We went to one village and we said, do you know Jesus Christ?
And the old guy that was in the village said, no, he doesn't live here.
We don't know him, but we are there talking about Jesus Christ because the Bible says
he has died for all.
So all that are living should not live for themselves, but live for him who has died
and raised from the dead.
You see, if our hearts is serving other Lords, we will become like them.
But if our hearts is full of Jesus Christ, we can impact the world and you are the generation
that can change the statistics of 7,000 people groups that doesn't know Christ.
What you need to do is come to him, confess your sins and say, Lord, here I am.
Use my life to be counted in this world because nothing else is more important than to serve
Jesus.
So I'm here to say to you, don't waste your life.
Don't give your life to this world.
Don't buy it.
Don't buy it.
What the society says to you, there's a life to be lived beyond all this, this thing that
we see here.
The wealthy of this world, this cannot be compared to what Christ has for those who
love him because no ears have heard nor eyes has seen what God has prepared for us in Jesus
Christ.
Don't waste your life because missions is a logical deduction from the universal Lordship
of Jesus Christ over the whole world.
And we do missions because we love him, because we know him, because we follow him and because
he's worthy of everything from our lives.
Give your life to Christ.
Open your hearts to him.
Let him use you powerfully to make people come to him one day.
I just want to tell you one story and I'm finishing.
We have been working in this people group.
They are a lot of witch doctors there and we are preaching to this.
We went to this village to broadcast the Jesus film and one guy said to me in the middle
of the crowd, "Oh, white man, if your Jesus is powerful, ask him to send rain.
We are a long time, we don't have rain here in our village."
And I am 13 years there in the same village, in the same place from March until December,
never rained.
And when he challenged me, I said, "I wish that I could be like Elijah, come fire from
heaven and show them the power of God."
I didn't have faith to that.
And I didn't know what to do.
And in my mind, a thought came and said, "And if does not rain?"
And I was really afraid.
So if I say, "Okay, come rain in the name of Jesus Christ, what would be happen if it
does not rain?"
So I didn't know what to say.
I said to him, out of my non-faith, I didn't have any faith.
And I said, "Oh, you should pray because you know, Jesus is God and he can send rain."
And I sit there, no rain, nothing happening.
I was really humiliated in my faith.
I didn't have faith even to look to Christ and say, "Sorry, Lord, I didn't have faith
as a mustard seed."
And then suddenly, we are 700 kilometers from the ocean.
There's a chain of mountains separating us from the ocean and our village, 700 kilometers.
And I felt that a wind, a cold wind was coming from the region of the ocean.
And I look there in the sky, there's a cloud coming, a black cloud coming on the top of
our village that day.
And I said this, "That is not possible."
I didn't believe that.
And then it started raining and raining and raining and rain so much that day.
We couldn't go out and go back to our home.
We need to sleep in that village.
And this guy stood and said, "Hey, white man, your Jesus is powerful.
We saw his power."
Then I became full of faith.
And I jumped in the middle of the crowd and I said, "You know, Jesus has proved himself.
He is God, all powerful.
And he proved that he is God."
Now the message for you is this, repent and believe in Jesus Christ.
And there's a church now there, a community of believers, brothers and sisters of ours,
that will be in heaven with us.
Don't waste your life.
Don't buy it, the dream of America.
Buy the dreams of God and let him use you for his glory because he's worthy of everything
of your life, your time, your wishes, your dreams, your money, your resources, everything.
He's worthy of it.
Thank you very much.
You are dismissed.
God bless you.
: [applause]