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Janet Ross: Life in God’s Kingdom (Matthew 4:17–5:8)
Speaking through the rain, Janet Ross, senior adult minister with her husband Reuven Ross at Highland Baptist Church in Waco, told an outdoor gathering of college students she grew up willing to go anywhere God told her to go … except Africa. She ended up being called to South Africa in her early 20s. This required God doing “soul surgery” on her to “cut unhealthy soul ties” to her family she loved deeply. “Jesus became everything for me and to me,” Ross said.
Ross then pointed her hearers to Jesus’ message of repentance and his calling his first four disciples. To be part of what God is doing in the world—including his miracles—a person must repent, which she later called “a lifestyle” for a disciple of Jesus. With Peter, Andrew, James and John as examples, she emphasized the immediacy and extent of Jesus’ call.
Crowds flocked to Jesus as the result of his miracles and teaching, but, Ross noted, few repented. Many are like that today, including in the church, she added. Now as then, people want what Jesus will do for them without surrendering to him and living for him, she declared. “Some people want more,” though, and want a closer relationship with Jesus. “Their prayer boils down to just three words: anything, anytime, anywhere.”
Ross then explained life in God’s kingdom with a study of the Beatitudes recorded at the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
This sermon was delivered March 21, 2023, during the third night of the FM72 annual revival prayer and worship gathering at Baylor University in Waco. The sermon was sourced from The Call to Radical Discipleship written by Ross and her husband and published under their Hebrew names Reuven and Yanit.
A sermon script is available here.
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