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The Church has an awesome task in these last

days. We have a mandate from God delivered personally by Jesus: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."

The operative words here are every creature. That means people outside the Full Gospel, Pentecostal, Charismatic circles. It means people in different denominations; people of different color; people who differ politically, doctrinally and economically. We are called to preach to the Jews and the Arabs; to the Buddhists and the Muslims; to the Hare Krishna, and to all the nations.

The Church has never been better equipped to fulfill God's call. We've been given apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers and pastors. We have the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the presence of the Holy Spirit. We have jumbo jets that will deliver us around the world in hours. We have books, teaching tapes and satellite dishes. We have radio and television. Yet there is one thing lacking.

The Church will never fulfill God's commission until we stop burning bridges, and learn to build them. What kind of bridges? Bridges that span the chasm of custom, tradition, prejudice and opinion.

So how do we burn bridges?

Opinion
One of the quickest ways to ignite a bridge and burn it is through your opinion. That's right. Opinion.

Opinion is the greatest stumbling block to the worldwide plan of God.

Opinion is a dangerous thing. It is nothing more than a transitory form of thought floating on the surface of life. And it is subject to change with every wave.

When you're faced with a sensitive situation, the first thing you'd better crucify is your opinion. Let's face it, your opinion doesn't hold water—God is going to do what He wants to anyway.

"God would never call me into that place." Oh yes He would! God is moving you out of your old concept of Christianity into "Never, Never Land."

Speculation
The second way we burn bridges is through speculation. The devil uses speculation in the Church to tear down instead of build up. Speculation is not a spiritual quest for Truth (John 14:6). It arises from the soulish realm and produces suspicion, criticism, and malicious talk.

Speculation is a poor substitute for prayer. It presumes to know what God would or would not do based on, "I have never!" Everything Jesus did offended the customs and traditions of the religious establishment of that day.

Prejudice
The third way we burn bridges is through prejudice. Prejudice is a terrible thing. Racism in its purest form is Nazism. Nazis declassified Jews, cripples, and retarded people and said they weren't human. They classified them with rodents, rats and roaches.
"Oh, Brother Jesse, we're Christians. We'd never do that."

No? Well, think about prejudice for a moment. Prejudice always divides. Whenever you see division in the Church, you can always trace it back to opinion, speculation and prejudice. The end product is always divisionnever unity. That's why God is looking for people who will build bridges instead of burn them.

Man's prejudice has divided us again when it comes to the knowledge of God. We've been divided into Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Assembly of God, Church of Christ, Church of God and Full Gospel to name a few. Yet God said we are One Body, One Church. God never said we were many bodies! That is man's prejudice.

You see, the size of your vision will reflect the size of your faith. If you see yourself a member of Jesus' Body on the earththat vision will reflect the greatness of your faith.

On the other hand, if your vision is limited to your denomination, or worse, to your local church, you've dwarfed the Body of Christ. And your faith will be dwarfed as well.

To overcome prejudice, we've got to go back to the beginning. See, this is what happened. God knelt down in the dirt to doodle. Does that surprise you? It shouldn't. Jesus liked to doodle in the dirt too because He was like His Father. When you see kids doodling in the dirt, they're just acting like their Daddy.

So God played in the dirt and formed someone that looked like Him. It was just a bunch of dirt until He breathed in it, and with that breath, came life. Adam opened his eyes. From Adam, God formed Eve. That means we all have the same mother and daddy.

Why do we look so different? Because God used all different colors of dirt. He used black dirt, white dirt, yellow dirt, red dirt and brown dirt. It's hard to be prejudiced when you realize we are nothing more than bags of colored dirt with God's breath inside.

Prejudice isn't just about denominations and color. There's prejudice in the Church over the clothes we wear, the length of our hair. It's about what one person considers sin. If God spoke to certain women and told them to go put make-up on their face, they'd react just like Peter.

"Not so! I have never! My mother said it was sin. My daddy said it was sin. My grandpa said it was sin. I never have and I never will!"

Prejudice is so widespread in the Church that people will ask, "Are you Pentecostal or Charismatic?"

"Well, what's the difference?"

"The Charismatics sort of hop and kick when they dance. The Pentecostals dance with a jerk."

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you did the James Brown shuffle? I can tell you. There would be an outcry, "Flesh! Flesh!"

Why would people consider that flesh? Because, "I have never!" It starts with opinion and progresses to speculation. The final product is prejudice.

The Church must build a bridge over prejudice. God is speaking the same words to us that He spoke to Peter, "What I call clean, do not call unclean."

There is a difference between holding a truth and being held by it. Think about that. The world is looking for people who are superior to power, instead of people driven by power.

Jesus could have said to the soldiers that came to arrest Him, "Don't you know I could call twelve legions of angels and wipe you people off the face of the earth? One angel has been known to knock off one hundred eighty-five thousand people. If I call these twelve legions down here, they could knock off twenty billion, four hundred million men in one lick. Don't mess with me."

But Jesus wasn't driven by that power. He was superior to it. He said, "For this cause, I have come. Crucify me. Destroy this body, and I'll raise it up in three days."

The Church needs people who are superior to power. We can't preach to people if we aren't willing to humble ourselves and cross the bridge of prejudice.

"Isn't that dangerous?" Of course it is! True Christianity has always lived dangerously. Beware of the deadening influence of routine and its twin brother, the enslaving power of custom. It was those two things, routine and custom, that caused Peter to argue with God Almighty!

"Not so, Lord! For I have never!"

People walk into churches around the world and pick up a bulletin. The service is already planned. Service starts at 9:45, Sunday School at 9:50, Worship service at 10:30, offering at 10:45, message at 10:52, benediction at 11:20 and cafeteria at 11:30. What is that? Routine.

Don't start forming opinions about those people, because a lot of spirit-filled churches do the same thing. We're gonna sing three or four songs, dance a little bit, stop for a minute and wait for a word...ho boba you bobba la ya...the Word of the Lord says...Stop and sing. Preach, bow your heads. The only difference is we don't print it up on the bulletin. We walk out of our power-packed Holy Ghost churches with the same problems we walked in with.

If we don't adapt ourselves to change, we're going to lose our opportunity to touch this world.

Since God has been teaching me to adapt to change and build bridges, the strangest thing has happened. He's opened doors for me to preach in all different denominations, non-denominations and inter-denominations.

I've preached in Catholic churches, Baptist churches, Lutheran churches, Assembly of God, Full Gospel, and Episcopalian. I just go right up those stairs into that little pulpit thing, close the door and say, "Glory!" I kick the back off that door and start preaching.

Diplomatic adjustments of ecclesiasts will never win the world and will not bring together the great branches of the Church.

God created a bridge when He sent His Son Jesus that would span the gap between Himself and a fallen world. When that work had been accomplished, and the Holy Spirit given to the Church, He set out to do the second greatest work in the book of Acts (see Acts 10: 1-48). He built a bridge to span the chasm between God's chosen people and the world.

What did God do here? He moved the newly formed Church beyond their concept of Christianity. That's exactly what He wants to do with you and me—expand our concept of Christianity so that we can build bridges. So how will we bridge the gap? The same way Cornelius and Peter did.

If you read the tenth chapter of Acts carefully, you'll see a common link.

Cornelius was praying. Peter was praying.

Cornelius was fasting. Peter was fasting.

United prayer and fasting softens prejudices and widens sympathies. Prayer and fasting softened two men from opposing cultures and politics, and helped them build a bridge. It worked for Peter and Cornelius, and it'll work for you and me.

When that starts to happen, watch out. God will move you out of your comfort zone into "Never, Never Land." He'll call you to places you never would have gone. To people you never would have loved.

He'll bridge the gap to spread good news to every creature in a dying world.

Then He'll take us home.