“Please don’t send me to Africa.”
For whatever reason, this silly song stuck in my craw when I was younger. It challenged me with the ending of its chorus:
“I’ll serve you here in suburbia, In my comfortable middle class life
But please don’t send me out into the bush, Where the natives are restless at night.”
At times, I have our church family say: “I Am A Missionary.” God is clear that all of His followers are to be on a task to introduce other people to the salvation offered by Jesus Christ – no matter the cost of doing so. But too often I feel like a seed that has taken root on thorny ground.
“And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.” I find that the thorns grow thick “here in suburbia, in my comfortable middle class life.” Here in suburbia, I find that for me – “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
I want my spirit to drive my flesh, but too often it is the other way around. Pastor John Piper tells me to remember the condition I was in before salvation to provoke within me the missionary spirit:
“Is not our most painful failure…to weep over the unbelievers in our neighborhoods…? In order to grieve [over their lostness], I must believe in my heart certain terrible and wonderful things…. I must feel the awful and glorious truths of Scriptures. Specifically, I must feel the truth of hell — that it exists and is terrible and horrible beyond imaginings forever and ever. I must feel the truth that once I was as close to hell as I am to the chair I am sitting on — even closer. I must feel the truth that God’s wrath was on my head. I must feel in my heart that all the righteousness in the universe was on the side of God and against me.
“…remember, remember, remember the horrid condition of being separated from Christ, without hope and without God, on the brink of hell. If I do not believe in my heart these awful truths — believe them so that they are real in my feelings, then the blessed love of God in Christ will scarcely shine at all. The keener the memory of our awful rescue, the more naturally we pity those in a similar plight. The more deeply we feel how undeserved and free was the grace that plucked us from the flames, the freer will be our benevolence to sinners.”
Our problem is not an inadequate education. It is a rebellious heart. – Ravi Zacharias
We need God to help us to remember our former condition and to grieve over those who do not yet know His Great Love!
Too often I find us missionaries complaining and griping about other people – more irritated than compassionate. How do you keep a compassionate missionary mindset instead of being crotchety like me?
–brian rushing