Thanks to those of you who voted. I’d love it if you would leave a comment today and share some of your thoughts with me, too.
I believe that this Command is given to every one who calls them self a follower of Jesus. And we are all responsible to ask God what part He Calls us to play.
As a teenager, I was ‘called’ to be a missionary – one who is sent out; who goes cross culturally to tell people about Jesus. I believe that every Christian is commanded to ‘Go’. It’s clear to me. Jesus said, “Go into all the world and make disciples…” No one has an excuse to ‘stay home’. I recently read an article By David Sitton, “Don’t Complicate Missionary The Call”. I enjoyed Sitton’s no nonsense approach to “The Call” that Jesus gave all of us.
No aspect of mission is more bogged down with extra-biblical baggage than the “missionary call.” The clear command of Christ “to go” should be, by itself, sufficient to set you on your way “into all the world. . . proclaiming the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). You can’t go wrong by trying to go. Trust the Lord to direct your moving feet. …..Dramatic calls to ministry are the exception.
So, what does going look like?
The first step is to have an Outward Focus.
A key verse for me is John 4:35b, “Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!” A few years ago I was teaching at a camp in Thailand, and the theme was based on this verse. In Thai it says, “Lift up your face…”. If you’re looking down at your own feet, you can only see where your next step is. But when you look up, you see over and above what’s in front of you. You have a better view and you can see more clearly what’s going on around you. In my heart and mind, this verse is linked to Psalm 121. “I lift my eyes up to the hills, where does my help come from? It comes from You, the maker of heaven and earth…” God is saying: Look UP! Look around you. Look at what I am doing. Look to Me and get the Big Picture of My Plan. I am doing something in the people around you. Look up, and partner with Me.
Most of Church Ministry is focused inward. How do we get people into our church building and keep them there? How do we feed our people; how do we get them involved ministry in this fellowship? 80-90% of church programs are focused on maintaining the local fellowship and those who are already members. And outreach efforts are focused on getting more people ‘saved’ and ‘plugged in’ so that they look, act, think and speak just like us. If we have more members, then we can consider ourselves a greater success.
But Jesus said, “GO!” Make disciples. Jesus told us to get out of our comfort zones and love the unlovable, touch the untouchable. Meet people in their messes and in their sin and introduce them to the One who can set them free. He didn’t say, “Tell them to clean themselves up, stop sinning, get your life right, and then maybe you’ll be able to join our club and come to our meetings on Sundays and Wednesdays.”
It’s hard to Go outside my demographic and disciple people who don’t look, act, think and speak like me. It makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes I don’t know what to say, because my life experience is so different. And I’m broken, too. Who is gonna take care of me? What if my sin is exposed and it hinders my witness?
I’ve been on the mission field for 11 years now, and I’ve found that salvation is not an event. It’s a lifestyle of repentance, dying to self, surrendering my will, learning to trust in the middle of the storm. “Work(ing) out (my) salvation in fear and trembling” as God refines me (Phil 2:12,13). Yes, Jesus saved me by Grace. It is Finished. I am forgiven and free. I ‘accepted Christ as my Lord’ at the age of 10. I prayed the ‘sinners prayer’ every night for 1 year, just to be sure that Jesus came to live in my heart. But, it was my parents and my Sunday school teachers who ‘discipled’ me to Christ. I already loved God, already prayed and sought to know His will and His ways, before I ever prayed the “sinner’s prayer” (which incidentally, I prayed with great fear because someone told me “You didn’t do it right, so how can you call yourself a Christian?’). In my teens, God planted me in an amazing church that discipled me to worship, obey and love God, to give Him my all, to serve Him with my whole heart. But they did all that in the hopes that I would stay there, be a ‘pillar’ in their fellowship, raise up the next generation in that church building. To lead them in to greatness…
Jesus said, “Go and Disciple the Nations”. When I read those words, I knew I had to Go. There were dreams that I could have fulfilled if I had stayed where I was. I would have been a good worship leader, youth leader, young marrieds leader… I certainly made a great pillar! But God placed a passion in me, for the Nations, for the peoples of the earth to know him. In This Generation.
It took a lot of time before I actually went – in which time I was able to give and serve in the ‘local church’, a great training ground for the ministry God was preparing me for. I got ‘itchy feet’ at the age of 15, went on my first Mission trip to China and The Philippines when I was 17 (and my feet got even itchier!!). But I finally got on a plane to Thailand when I was 27, and have called this place Home ever since.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. I wanted to share the beginning of my journey in understanding The Great Commission. I will be sharing more in the coming weeks.
In the Greek, that word is “ethnos”, meaning ethnic groups, language groups, tribes and families. It does not refer to geo-political countries as we know them today. In Mission circles, this is pretty well understood. A more common term is ‘people groups’.
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