Wartime Missions Mentality

The following illustration of the importance of our giving ourselves to the endeavor of missions was given by the missions strategist, Ralph Winter, a number of years ago. It provides for us a great picture of the challenge we received in Sunday morning’s sermon (June 22, 2014) to be a light to the world. Read this and ask yourself the question, “Am I living by a peacetime mentality and acting like we are not engaged in a war for the souls of men, woman, boys, and girls, or am I living by a wartime missions mentality that leads me to make whatever sacrifices I need for the gospel to go to the lost?” After thinking through that question, ask and answer the question, “What must I do in order to live out a wartime missions lifestyle?”

The Queen Mary, lying in repose in the harbor at Long Beach, California is a fascinating museum of the past.  Used both as a luxury liner in peacetime and a troop transport during the Second World War, its present status as a museum the length of three football fields affords a stunning contrast between the lifestyles appropriate in peace and war.

On one side of a partition you see the dining room reconstructed to depict the peacetime table setting that was appropriate to the wealthy patrons of high culture for whom a dazzling array of knives and forks and spoons held no mysteries. On the other side of the partition the evidences of wartime austerities are in sharp contrast . One metal tray with indentations replaces fifteen plates and saucers. Bunks eight tiers high explain how the peacetime capacity of 3000 passengers gave way to 15,000 troops on board in wartime.

How repugnant to the peacetime masters this transformation must have been! To do it took a national emergency, of course. The survival of a nation depended upon it. The essence of the Great Commission today is that the survival of many millions of people depends on its fulfillment.

So, will we transform our lives from the equivalent of a luxurious cruise ship to that of a missions troop transport—utilized to carry people to Christ and win the war?