Being at the stage of life I am is fascinating. For one thing, I can look back at what things were like for my parents and how they have changed for our children—a span of three generations. Water consumption is one subject I find interesting to compare. Mankind has always known water is important. My parents knew water is important. But over the past couple of decades focus on the amount of water we drink has intensified.
Very few of us are now unaware that we are to drink at least
eight glasses of water a day. It is important for health since our body’s
composition is 50-65% water. When I compare how much water my water-bottle-wielding
adult children consume contrasted with my parents, I conclude that this subject
has gone from being important to being IMPORTANT!
This change in the view of this necessary life-giving liquid
parallels the change I have undergone in my view of the opening up of the tap
so that the life-giving streams of the gospel of Jesus Christ can flow to the
nations. You see, I have always thought missions to be important. We have
always supported multiple missionaries, prayed for missions daily, at times
prayed through older editions of Operation World,
and sought to be encouraging to missionaries supported by our congregation. I have always been convinced it is crucial to
down a few glasses of cross-cultural H2O here and there.
Over the past two years, however, I have come to see the
Bible teaches that the majority of the body of the Church’s purpose is made up
of this missional liquid. So a few glasses will not do. It is not merely
important. It is IMPORTANT!
To change metaphors, making disciples beginning where we
live and reaching to the end of the earth should flow so abundantly through our
veins that if you cut us open missions should gush out in large quantities.
That is a colorful way of saying that missions should fill and direct all we do
as a congregation, as a family, as a married couple, and/or as an individual.
I am now convinced that I did not communicate this to or
model it to my children as I should have. I also believe it has not been the
priority in my pastoral ministry it deserves. Because of this, I apologize to
my family, the churches I have served, and I confess my sin of oversight to
God. But I also remember Paul’s words of Romans 5:20: “Where sin abounds, grace
super-abounds.” I want to move forward in God’s forgiving and transforming
grace to serve the cause of the Great Commission throughout the world. In other
words, I want to make sure from now on I down my eight missional glasses a day!
If you have tracked with me to this point, I hope you are
asking an important question: “How do you know that the cause of missions is to
be so central and important to us?” Let
me provide a small sample of biblical teaching:
- · God created, blessed, and commissioned mankind to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth with God-glorifying God-worshippers. Gen. 1:26-28
- · Over 2,000 years before Christ, when God made a covenant with Abraham, he affirmed his plan has always been to bless all the nations worldwide. Gen. 12:3
- · God’s promises to and his dealings with Israel were designed not just to bless them, but also to create them into a nation that would bless the other nations by showing them the way to the true God. Exodus 19:5-6; Deut. 4:5-8; Psalm 67; Is. 42:6; 49:6; 56:7
- · God’s promises to restore Israel after they faced his disciplining hand of captivity ultimately involved promises that God would bring people from the nations to worship him, the true God, through the teaching and example of his New Covenant people who empowered by the Holy Spirit after being redeemed by the Redeemer. Isaiah 2:1-5; 51:4; 52:7-8, 13-53:12; 56:1-8; 59:19-60:22; 61:1-11
- · God has saved, empowered with the Spirit, and commissioned the New Covenant Church to be witnesses of Jesus Christ to the world—also reminding us that our core involves putting him on display through our actions and our gospel proclamation work. Mt. 28:18-20; Acts 1:8; 1 Peter 2:4-10
- · The net effect of this amazing New Covenant Church era in which we live, a time between the first and second comings of Jesus Christ in which we are especially empowered to go out and make disciples, is that eventually the gospel will go out to all the world, as a testimony to all people groups before Jesus Christ returns (Mt. 24:14). Even more than this, as a result, there will be people from every tribe, language, and people group who will be redeemed and worshipping the Lord for eternity before him (Rev. 5:9-10; 7:9-12).
What we taste in this appetizer of Bible texts is that a large
part of the work God is doing involves spreading the fame of his name through
his people so that someday the entire earth will be covered by his glory and
those who glorify him (Hab. 2:14). All of the other purposes God gives to us in
life (things such as: work, family, marriage, friendship, recreation, etc.) are
ultimately to serve this main end(1 Cor. 10:31).
One last question arises in my mind. How do I go forward
with what God has taught me? Let me share a few thoughts I have had with
the hope that these may help you also.
- · I desire my marriage to be many things (full of love, joy, and to be strong), but I also pray it will ultimately serve the purpose of spreading the fame of God’s name throughout the world.
- · I pray for my children and grandchildren to have strong marriages, families, to do well in school, to have employment, but the ultimate purpose of all these other purposes is that they might glorify God by living, loving, and sharing the gospel with others in a way that God’s glorious grace is experienced by more and more people here and abroad.
- · I desire that my job and my finances will be used not only to support us, but also to mobilize others and to propel the body of Christ out into the streets and the nations with gospel hope.
- · I long that I will not settle for merely the good easy life of retirement here, a life of merely recreating, taking it easy and resting (I have eternity for that!). I want to “leave it all on the field,” to have no regrets when I “walk off this life’s court,” to “run all the way through the tape,” that I might have the eternal joy of knowing my life has counted for the most important and lasting of all purposes—the glorification of God through the redemption of the nations.
- · I am committed to battling in prayer daily for these ends to be realized!
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