Last Thursday, the staff attended a South Carolina Baptist Impact Conference in Columbia. The first speaker, pastor, Jimmy Scoggins quoted Arthur Ashe; Start where you are, Use what you have, and Do what you can. This is excellent advice for anyone at any time in their life. During Scoggin’s message, he added this; Expect Jesus to multiply.

When we survey the church landscape today, it seems that many pastors and church members aren’t satisfied in the truth of Arthur Ashe’s quote. We tend to want to start at the top, complain about what we don’t have, and expect others to do it all. Of course, that’s a recipe for failure every single time. And of course, we don’t consider Jesus as the multiplier of our efforts. We want to think that we got were we are on our own, and spiritualize it by thinking that we did it all for Jesus.

Lately, we’ve been teaching about Solomon’s wisdom in Sunday School and on Wednesday nights. Arthur Ashe’s quote is wisdom that we should consider for our own spiritual lives, and for the life of our church. So let’s do this. Each one of us, take some time in the next week to define where we are in our spiritual lives and our church is in God’s Kingdom. Then, let’s spend a couple of days defining what we have personally, and in our church, and how it can be used for God’s Kingdom.

After we’ve taken stock of the first three things, let’s come up with what we expect Jesus to multiply