 When he saw the crowds and had compassion because they were confused and hopeless, like a sheep without shepherd, he said to his disciples, Harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest. Ask Him to send more workers onto the field. All right. So today I want to talk about the believer's progression. I believe that every person, every believer must grow through life and must progress. And I want to share three stages that every believer needs to progress through. And today, as I speak to you, I want to ask the Spirit of God will examine your heart and examine your life, help you to identify which stage you are in and to challenge you and encourage you and convict you to go to another stage in your walk with God. Amen. First stage that every believer starts in is a stage of multitudes or crowds, say with me, multitudes. And before we get there, I want you to see something about Jesus and I want you to, because we are called to be like Jesus, that means to have the worldview and a paradigm of Jesus. And Jesus, he sees the multitudes and Bible says he has compassion on them. And we see everywhere in the Bible, he was walking around, multitudes were following him and he loved the crowds. He loved and he had the compassion for the crowds. Bible says he ministered to them. He healed their sicks. He cast out their demons and he taught them. Jesus, he had compassion on the crowds. He never turned them away. While Jesus had disciples, he had the 12, the 72 and more people followed him and were his disciples. But he had the crowds and he never turned away to the crowds. On the opposite, he went and ministered and served them. As a church, we have to have a big vision. We have to see beyond just few of us. Me and my family will serve the Lord. We have to see beyond just this 300, 250, 300 people that are sitting here, every single service. We have to even see beyond the new building where we are going to have a thousand people coming in every single service. We have to see even beyond the Colosseum that we are going to fill, the Toyota Center that we are going to go and fill for the kingdom of God. And many people will be gathered. We have to see the multitudes, say multitudes. Because that's what Jesus sees. Sometimes people condemn us in a way that all you care is about crowds. Because you want crowds to build a platform for yourself. You want bigger church so you can be called a mega church. So that you can have a platform and so you can be elevated and your influence can grow. Now that comes as a result of multiplication of a crowd of a multitude. But to be honest, I don't want that because that comes with a lot of headache, a lot of work and a lot of responsibilities. I mean, imagine just with this many of you here, how much work, how much planning, how much of effort goes into just managing and shepherding this amount of people. Now take them by times two, times three, times four, times ten. Yeah, the platform is nice, but the headache, the work, the effort is ten times of that as well. I get to preach here once a month for 30 minutes. Okay, that's my platform, but the rest of the month, seven days a week, I'm in a trenches working, putting effort, discipling and all that. And so now multiply that by time, by time stand. So the accusation of, oh, it's the church is about the numbers. No, we are about the crowd and the multitude because Jesus was about that. Because every person, because in the crowd there is that one person. And in the crowd there once was you and me. And Jesus sought you and Jesus brought you into his fold and now you are part of his disciples. So we are not just about the numbers, we are about the one in that number. We're about that one in that crowd. We're about that one out of the 99 that is lost. And we want to see many people come to know Jesus Christ. And we are not one of those Christians that believe that, oh, when Jesus comes on this earth, will he find faith? There's going to be so few of us. You know, we're going to be the elect hiding in the caves away from Jesus, away from the world, waiting for Jesus' return. No, Jesus said that in the last days as the darkness will increase, so his grace will increase. As the darkness will increase, so his light will increase. As a sin will abound, his grace will abound even more. The kingdom of God Bible says it will put a stiff resistance to the antichrist in all of his works. That means that we're going to be growing, that we're going to be powerful, that kingdom of God is going to grow. And we're going to be a fighting force against the darkness. The grace of God on the church, the church will be powerful in the last days. Jesus is not coming for a small bride of a bride that is feeble and weak and powerless. He's coming for a glorious bride. He's coming back for a victorious bride. He's coming back for a mega bride. And I want you to embrace the vision and mindset of Jesus. He cares for the crowds. He loves, he ministers, and he sees many people. He said that if all the four corners of the earth will come to me, I will take him. That's what Jesus sees. That's what the Father sees. He sees the four corners of the earth. Not just a few people here and there, a few families here and there. And church, I want us to carry the vision of Jesus to see our family safe, extended family safe, to see our community safe, our school safe, to see our city and state safe, our entire nation. Jesus is worthy of the crowd. And thinking anything less than that is selfish. Because in that crowd once upon a time, I was there and you were there. And that crowd deserves Jesus. It deserves the gospel. It deserves the power of God, healing deliverance and breakthrough in Jesus' name. It deserves to hear the gospel with power in Jesus' name. So that's the introduction to the multitudes and crowd. But every believer starts in the crowd. And the crowd is a place where you first come to know Jesus. You begin to hear his message. The crowds were around Jesus. A crowd is a place where they receive healing. They receive deliverance. They're being fed. And maybe you are part of this crowd today. Maybe you just came to church. You've been coming to church for maybe a couple of months. And you are part of this crowd. Today we're going to have a deliverance service on the third service. You're going to be getting delivered from your demons, from the pain in your heart that you've been carrying. You heard this wonderful testimony of this lady. You're going to be going through that process. A crowd is someone, a person in a crowd, someone that receives, receives love, compassion, receives healing, receives deliverance. But a crowd, being part of the crowd, following Jesus, it carries a shallow commitment. Because the crowd, one day was with Jesus. Jesus, you are the next common Messiah. And few short days after that, crucify him. Because, you know, he's turning up rebellion in the community. And I want to encourage you to enjoy the time in the crowd. Enjoy the ministry of love and compassion that you receive right now. Enjoy the season of receiving instructions and teaching. But there is more. Say there is more. So crowd just follows Jesus and receives the ministry, receives the benefits of the cross and Jesus. But there is a next stage. There is a next step that every Christian has to take and needs to go through. And that stage is a disciple. Say a disciple. A disciple is still a person that is going through inner healing, the renewing of the mind. It's still a person that is getting set free from various things. Strongholds are being broken. But what is being added is Christian disciplines, instruction, and even corrections or rebukes. Now, I know that requires a deeper level of commitment. It requires you to begin to walk with Jesus. See, crowds came to an event. And that's what crowd is. You come to Sunday. You come to conferences. You come to various events that we put on for you. And it's awesome. It's good. Come and enjoy. Come and partake. Receive the blessing of those events. But you've got to go deeper, say deeper. And deeper is becoming a disciple of Jesus. It's learning to walk with Jesus on a daily basis. Crowds just came for events, for services. And if you're part of the crowd and you have not become a disciple of the house, you have not become a disciple of the world, today I encourage you to take a step further. Get engaged. Get involved. Get plugged in into the home group. And I'm going to also outline a few other discipleship steps that we provide in this house so that you can become a disciple of Jesus. Amen. I believe there is four things that identifies a disciple of Jesus. Four things. First one is prayer. Say prayer. And in Luke chapter 11 verse 1 through 4, when Jesus finished praying, one of his disciples came to him and said, Lord, teach us how to pray. As a disciple of God, as a disciple of Christ, one of the first things that you're going to have to learn to do is to develop your prayer life. It may look differently for different people, but you have to have time in a day where you begin to cultivate your personal relationship with God through prayer. It might start with two minutes, but let it be consistent. Begin to grow from two minutes to five minutes. Begin to develop your prayer life. Begin to develop your prayer language with God. Begin to develop your fellowship with the Holy Spirit. And as you grow, it will grow with you. Then you're going to be spending 30 minutes in prayer. And building your place where you spend, Jesus said, could you not bear with me for an hour? He was talking to his disciples that as a disciple of Jesus, that we build our prayer life that we could spend an hour with Jesus every single day. Now, some days would be less, especially if you have young kids and your mom or your single mom. Things might look different. Things might not look like it's in the morning. They might be in your lunch break. They might look like you're spending time with Jesus at the end of the day when you put everybody to sleep. But whatever it is, prayer has to be a part of your life, of your discipleship life. Without prayer, you cannot be true disciple of Jesus. Amen? Second thing that I believe every disciple must develop or develop as a disciple of Jesus is the word. Say the word. In Matthew chapter 13 verse 11 says this, you are permitted to understand the secrets of the kingdom of heaven by others or not. Who are others? He was referring to the crowd. The crowd were the others. So even though Jesus was preaching to the crowd, but there was certain level of understanding that they had. A disciple, he goes further. A disciple is the one that takes the message, for example, from today and goes back into his prayer closets and begins to say, Lord, how can I take a next step? Lord, what does that mean to me? And begins to digest and begins to study the word for themselves in their private time. Meaning they have a regular reading schedule in their personal life. And they begin to get deeper in the word of God. And the Holy Spirit begins to bring revelation, begins to bring and open up the mysteries of the kingdom. They are not only being spoon fed on Sundays, but they are beginning to learn to feed themselves as a disciple of Jesus on a regular basis, on a daily basis. So today I want to ask you, where are you at? On what stage of your journey as a believer you are at? Are you still a crowd? Do you still rely on a leader to spoon feed you? Do you still rely on events and Sunday service experience to receive your measure or word? Then you are still just on a foundational level, just the beginning. You are still a crowd. I want to challenge you, and the Holy Spirit is challenging you today, to get deeper with God, to become a disciple of Jesus, and that means to establish your prayer life and to establish your word life where you begin to read God's word and God begins to speak to you and reveal the mystery of His word. Where you begin to receive a revelation of His word. Amen. You can't be disciple of Jesus without these two things. The third thing that I see that made disciples separate from the crowd was serving, say serving. And it's recorded in Mark chapter 9 verse 10 through 17 NIV version, but examples throughout the Bible, throughout the Gospels are many. Jesus was trying to feed 5,000 people. He replied, you give them something to eat, they answered, disciples answered. We have only five loaves of bread and two fish, unless we go and buy the food for all the crowd, about 5,000 men were there. But he said to his disciples, have them sit down in groups of about 50 each. Then disciples did so. Then he prayed for the bread, prayed for the fish. They distributed it. And then Bible says, then they all ate, were satisfied. And disciples picked up the 12 baskets of broken pieces that were left after. So what are disciples doing? They are serving. They are mushrooming people. Jesus said, hey, why don't people come in, set them in rows of 50. Hey, now take this bread, now spread it out. The service was finished. Hey, let's go, let's clean it up. There was practical service. And we see that throughout the life of Jesus, disciples were serving Jesus. They were there to accommodate the crowd. They were there to help Sunday service experience to be excellent. They were there for the events to go smoothly, to begin to help in every area. Whether it's parking lot team, whether it's welcome team, whether it's ushering, whether it's a media team, whether it's a sound team, whether it's on worship, whether it's the broadcast team, whatever it is, whatever my gifting allows, wherever there is a need, because I'm a disciple, I am serving. So today I want to ask you, as a disciple of this house, as a disciple of Jesus, where are you serving? Now you might look different for every person. Somehow you will not necessarily serve in every Sunday capacity. Your gift might be a management. Your gift might be in an area of your expertise that you can add that to the church to better that area. Or it might be in something else, but there has to be an element of you serving the house. You serving the kingdom of God. You being a true disciple. Are you with me? And if you're not serving, you have still yet to be a disciple of Jesus, because true disciples, they served. They served. Or you say, I don't need the church. It's just me and Jesus and the world and prayer, and as long as I pray and as long as I read, what I often find out, those people don't read as often as they say they do, and they don't pray as often as they say they do. But we see a true disciple of Jesus. If we study disciples on Jesus, they're not only learned from Jesus, from the word. They're not only learned to pray, but they also served him, served the house. And so today I want to challenge you. We are launching a fourth service. There's many positions that are open from Austrian team, from welcome team, to all the positions that we need to fill in this church, in this main sanctuary, need to be filled in the other place. And so ask the Lord, pray about, let all the Spirit examine your life so that you can be a part of the team that serves. Obviously, you know, you say, I want to also be on Sunday service. There's going to be rotation, so it's not going to be necessary maybe every Sunday. Or if it is every Sunday, one service you sit, one service you serve, whatever it is, but you will be getting both receiving and serving. But you have to have a place where you serve, with your gifts, with your talents, and with your time. That's what marks a true disciple. And the last one is commission, say commission. And Matthew chapter 28, verse 19 through 20, Jesus, he's finishing up, he's wrapping up his discipleship program, okay? And he's about to go and leave his disciples, and he kind of finalizes his thing, and he's making sure that his disciples cut the vision, and that vision is the commission to see people saved and discipled, to see people saved and discipled. Well, I believe that finalizes the stage of this discipleship, or let's put it this way, we never graduate from discipleship, but what solidifies the stage of discipleship is when you begin to embrace the vision of Jesus, and that vision is for the lost souls to be saved. When you begin to step out and invite new people, when you begin to pray for new people to be saved, when you begin to give towards that, begin to fast toward the vision and to see people being saved, and to see people on disciples. This is where you begin to get plugged in in a group and begin to seek to have your own group so that you can begin to disciple and lead others to Christ. I believe you can't be true disciple of Jesus. A disciple of Jesus is an image of Jesus without having the commission of Jesus, the great commission at the core of your heart, to love, to cherish people, and to lead them to Christ and disciple them and establish them a new faith. How does it practically look like in our church? That looks like the discipleship program. The way it looks like if you just started coming and you want to, how do I go from a crowd to being a disciple? Number one is that we have a life class. Life class for five weeks. This one right now is in session and it's full, we can't add any more. I think the sign up for the next one is already up on our website. I encourage you to sign up. It's five classes where we take you through some of the basic things and we get you prepared for the encounter. And an encounter, it's a getaway retreat for two days where we minister to you. Inner healing, healing, deliverance, and we help you to get, we minister to you. We'll help you to get rid of some of the things that you've been carrying. We also have prayer lines like today and the third service. That's also part of that as well. The next, the way it looks like it to become a disciple is get into the home group. Get plugged into the home group. Be a part of a community because this is where you will be strengthened. This is where you're going to be learning God's word. This is where in a smaller setting you're going to be held accountable. This is where people can pray for you and you can be disciples. Bible says iron sharpens iron and this is where we get sharpened and this is where we get prepared for the mission. The way it looks like is then joining a destiny training. Destiny training split into three parts about five or seven weeks each where we begin to take you deeper into the mysteries and the principles of God's kingdom and what it means to live a healthy kingdom lifestyle. And it's also level two, level three begins to prepare you as a disciple begins to instill a vision in you to prepare you for the next stage. That's going to launch in about five or seven weeks and we're going to announce that. So those of you that you say, you know, I'm ready to take the next step as a disciple and you already been established in the church maybe you're still looking for a place to serve or maybe you're serving but you got to go to the next step of a commission. Destiny training would be the next step for you to sign up and be a part of it. Something that we are working toward here within maybe even next year in September if not next year. We're working toward having one year long Hungry Jin Bible school Bible college. Sorry. And we're preparing and working for those people that have gone to destiny training and even already maybe a leaders or helpers of the home group leader but they say, you know, I want to take my knowledge deeper my walk with God deeper. I want to take I want to learn deeper principles of God the mysteries of God so that my life is established and I feel like that I can give more than in a year long process you will be walking with you we're going to be going into deeper things of the word and the ministry so you will feel like you are actually prepared and equipped. And then somewhere down the line we're working with Pastor Bryson and Pastor Rickard and Pastor Vlad to working towards having an accredited Hungry Jin University where people will take a significant time going through it will be trained but the goal is not just to give them accredited get them credits for their theology degree but to empower them and very strategically build future leaders and future pastors that will be planting churches all around the world. Let's put our hands together for Jesus. So that's the practical state and the last stage that every believer should strive to be is a laborer say laborer and we find all of those three in the scripture that we read. That was a crowd that were disciples and Jesus said pray for the laborers so disciples were in a stage where they still being prepped but they were not laborers yet so Jesus says I'm praying for the laborers because my goal is not just to have you as a disciple my goal is to graduate you to the next stage where you become a laborer seeing first two stages as a crowd as a disciple it's mostly receiving you receive love, compassion, freedom, healing deliverance but when you step into the stage of a laborer this is a place where you can begin to give love this is a place where you begin to serve compassion this is a place where you begin to pray for healing and people are being healed this is a place where you begin to move in the gifts of the Holy Spirit this is a place where you confront the demonic and cast it out of the lives of people this is a place where you're not just you're not just coming to church to receive you're coming to church to help, serve, assist but you're going back out and that's where your ministry is at you're a minister of the gospel at that point you're a worker and a kinder of God you're part of a last day army that's pushing back the darkness and capturing territory for Jesus you're the laborer on a field that's harvesting those souls for God and I want to challenge some of you who've been in discipleship stage for a while you're already anchored as a believer you're solid there's a lot of things that the Lord has done in your life he's established your marriage your maybe your financial life life is not perfect but you've been around the block time or two and you're already anchored in the Lord I want to challenge you to move to the next stage don't get stuck there's more grace in the next stage Jesus is moving Jesus is going forward and if you feel like your life has lost purpose lost meaning maybe perhaps because you stopped the discipleship stage it felt good, it felt awesome because you just received there's still quite a bit more about you there's certain areas the Lord fixed up in your life and you're feeling great but this is not the end being a work in his field this is your goal and with each step as we see the crowd is massive, 5000 disciples are only 72, 12 but Jesus says the laborers are even less than that I want us to be different in our church I want us to have this blueprint for our life and it's okay to start in the crowd but don't get stuck there it's okay to be a disciple but there's more for you there is a stage of laboring so I want to challenge you and encourage you today to step into that stage to step into the stage begin to serve how does that look like well that does look like going through all those things that I mentioned going through the discipleship program getting trained receiving the DNA receiving the heart receiving the vision from this house and being plugged in in a group and then striving to become a home group leader's assistant a helper because then once you are faithful in that you learn the ropes you can become a home group leader yourself now if the word leader scares you just think of a home group worker just think of the way Jesus called you a laborer meaning you just love people you care for people you pray for them and you just fellowship with them train them we have this pipeline that's going to be assisting you with discipling them so you don't have to know all the scripture you don't have to know all the principles you're still being trained yourself but you already stepped into the place of laboring for Jesus the way it looks like is that you continue to grow you continue to multiply raise other leaders in your group and release them to start their own home groups so then you become a tribe leader you have meaning you have people leaders that you've released to have their own home groups and if the Lord called you to go even further then to grow and go through the school and becoming one of the branch pastors of Hangu Jain which we're going to have many in the future in Jesus name whether it's another satellite location or maybe that's something God will call you to go to another nation to as a missionary or to go to another city and to start something or be a part of something else but that you grow through this pipeline and I understand that everybody is going to go through a pipeline this pipeline through the end not everybody is called to be a pastor or a minister but to some degree whatever the Lord called you you got to be you got to make it to the stage of a laborer and worker for the kingdom of God are you with me if you're going to clap, let's clap I'm going to finish on this story I remember I remember when pastor Bryce he wasn't a pastor but then he came and he was 13 and he was this timid child boy full of insecurities and different things when he came into church when he was 13 I took him under my wing and was discipling for many many years going through with him through all these waves of discovering who he is his identity then came the stage of dating and he was like oh this girl I'm like no no don't go that way and he would try it and get burned and come back crying I'm like it's okay buddy it's better for you and just going through these stages with him in life and just walking the life of discipleship building him up encourage him speaking into him speaking into his future speaking into his calling when I was telling him that he's going to be a pastor one day he you know I think he was struggling to embrace that because he was just barely trying to be trying to be a leader but time came when he got on staff at church he graduated from not graduated shifted from doing worship to leading an internship that became a very successful program he became an intern director for seven years and made such an impact around the world with those teens and students that came in and now he's shifted from being an intern director into being like an executive director at the church where he on a practical level begins to implement the vision of pastor Vlad and what God wants to do through hungry Jen and I'm looking at his life remembering when he came from from 13 years old starting in the crowd making his way through discipleship and looking how he became a labor for the kingdom of God and I'm proud of that man and I see his parents are here I'm sure they are very proud of him as well and he's impacting people around the world thousands and millions of people through his ministry and this is just the beginning because of what God is about to do through this ministry and I want to encourage you and I look at him and I look at his life and we talk often and just to see how proud and satisfied he is in the process and how fulfilled he is that he is in his calling and the life that he's impacted and each and one of us each and one of you can feel that on your own level in different spheres of life where you live your life on purpose where you live your life with intent where you live your life that you make an impact for eternity as a worker as a laborer for God's kingdom in Jesus' name do you receive that? thank you so much for being a part of this community if you're interested in learning more about Hungry Gen our internship our conferences deliverance and so many other things go to HungryGen.com for more information and as always remember better is not good enough the best is yet to come