If we are rightly related to God, the issue of Mission necessarily becomes the all important issue of our lives. When a man comes Face to face with the Lord and surrenders to His authority in every area of his life, he becomes aware of a need, the greatest need planet earth suffers; its need to be reconciled to God.
The late Henri Nouwen said; “When we live our lives as missions, we become aware that there is a home from where we are sent and to where we have to return. We start thinking about ourselves as people who are in a faraway country to bring a message or work on a project, but only for a certain amount of time. When the message has been delivered and the project is finished, we want to return home to give an account of our mission and to rest from our labors. One of the most important spiritual disciplines is to develop the knowledge that the years of our lives are years on a mission."
I agree with Henri Nouwen but there is something more to say along these lines. I am referring to how we should see the earth. I remember a time as a young Christian when I believed that going to heaven was the goal of the Christian. There is a certain amount of truth to that statement but it falls far short of telling the whole story. We can think that heaven is where we belong and miss the part of the Gospel that states that the nations are Christ’s inheritance. I think we can hold a kind of disdain for the earth because it has been the place of our troubles and sufferings.
Psalms 2:8-12 says; Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery." Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
In the first chapter of Hebrews the Word states; In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.
What I am getting at is that we have for far too long overlooked the fact that the earth was created by the Lord and the Father has given all things, the earth and the fullness thereof, to His Son to be His inheritance. To take this a step farther, Jesus said; “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” The Lord’s people, those who are faithful and loyal to the King, are joint heirs with Christ and share in His inheritance. The earth will be theirs to enjoy under the King’s wonderful dominion and leadership.
In recent weeks, I have been preaching and teaching on the fact that Jesus is a sitting king waiting till His enemies be made His footstool. (Psalms 110:1). This is a present day reality. He is now the heir of all things and everything belongs to Him. The earth, the sky, lakes, rivers, oceans, lands, natural resources, the people! Everything is His! (Revelation 4:11). The Gospel is telling us that God has installed His King on Zion! (Psalms 2:6). This is Jesus’ exaltation and glorification.
The Gospel message is simply, “Repent, reconsider your ways, think this over, the Kingdom of God is at hand, coming, and is already here! You must be reconciled to the King! When we were born from above, we became sons of the Kingdom and from everything I can tell from the Bible, the Kingdom will fill the whole earth. The coming ages will take place on the earth and Christ will rule for a thousand years.
In 2002, I went to Cambodia on a missions trip to assist in building a church there. In the Seventies, Pol Pot overthrew the government and installed a reign of terror called the Khmer Rouge. They turned Cambodia into a prison camp and three million people were starved and murdered under the most horrendous conditions imaginable. What happened there was nothing more than horrible. Mass graves are everywhere and the scars of what happened there still remain in the hearts and minds of the people who witnessed and survived it. Everywhere I went, I could not shake the thought that when I was a kid in high school, kids my age were being sent to slavery and to their deaths in the rice fields. I wondered how a terrible thing like this could happen. The same could be said about Russia, China, Japan and Germany. It was hard to feel at ease knowing what had taken place there only thirty years before.
We should not think that the earth is a small thing to the Lord. I like to say that the earth is a really cool place. It’s the knuckleheads that drive me crazy!
What does the earth have to do with missions and our mission in particular? You see, Jesus is more than a savior, He is a great King, the One who will reign and exercise government and dominion over all the earth, and that includes the place in which we live. It isn’t hard to imagine the changes that are coming to your town. The wild ride of Bible prophesy is just ahead. Great trouble first, then a time of unprecedented blessing under the government and leadership of Jesus Christ. The earth is actually groaning in its desire to see the unveiling of the sons of God.
Have you considered that God is expecting us to be something to the place where we live, a people uniquely qualified to open the doors to the Kingdom of God and give access to the people who live in this place? We can go places where terrible things have happened and see them as cursed and forsaken of God. Fear and death reign in such places. On the other hand we can find places of blessing and life, where people feel love, see the Truth, feel secure and can grow and thrive spiritually. For that to happen, it will take people with a vision for the Glory of God to be shown through the Gospel to the people we live with.
Just after I came to know the Lord and was gloriously saved, I made a request that I wanted to do something that would make it possible for other people to find what I had discovered. This was too good to keep to myself. It would be an injustice and a horrific thing not to do everything possible to give people access to the Lord. I didn’t know it then but God was planting the seeds of missions in my heart. For the past twenty years, we have been at Bread Basket, preaching the Word of God, seeking to bring God and people together while we help meet their material needs.
One of my favorite quotes concerning missions comes from John Piper who says; “The goal of missions is to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of the glory of God.” In other words, our goal is to bring people and God together so that worship might happen! If worship happens, God is glorified, a man or woman finds what is infinitely valuable and the Kingdom of God has come to another household.
The Lord is not returning to this earth to take us to heaven. No, the King is coming to possess His inheritance! The question we must ask is this; what will we have to present to Him when He comes? The best gift we could present to the Lord would be the people we were called to reach with the Gospel, having been made ready to see the King of Glory.
A final quote from John Piper on missions. “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church, worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t.” Does it grieve your spirit to see the people around us spend their lives on the superfluous, the temporal, and worst of all, fail to see God and be properly reconciled to Him? It is a tragedy that touches God and man. For a man to miss God, he loses the infinite experience of becoming eternally related to God and the Lord suffers loss over the son or daughter that will not be in His house. Worship will not happen. Love will be lost.
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