Tag: missionary

Categories
Christian Living

I Choose Death (or even “Living as a Dead Man”)

a skull to symbolize "living as a dead man" or choosing deathWhat a morbid title for a post. And no, this is not a post about zombies!

I recently shared that we need to Hate our Families [hyperlink], based on Jesus’ statement that “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,” ending with the idea that we can actually love our families more by loving them less… loving them less than we love God. If we refuse to do so, then God is not the One who is actually seated on that King’s Throne in our life.

But there is something even more likely to rob Jesus of His rightful place than our own family—the love of one’s own life.

So in addition to this hard statement of “hating family,” Jesus added more difficulty with “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.”

Jesus, why do You keep saying such hard things? Don’t you know that I don’t really like these ideas? I want following you to be a bit easier than carrying a heavy, rough cross and constantly having some painful burden on my shoulders.

We haven’t witnessed anyone dying on a cross, so this statement loses some of its meaning for us, but the people in Jesus’ day knew what it meant to “take up” a cross. They knew it wasn’t just a heavy burden to bear for a lifetime (which often is how we view the idea). They saw men bearing their crosses to the places where they were to be executed; they watched these condemned criminals die by crucifixion.

They understood that taking up one’s cross meant to walk to one’s death.

The statement means that one should live in devoted abandonment to Him, such that even death is not too high a price to pay. Those who call themselves Christ-followers are to value Him so highly that they do not count their lives precious to themselves.

To “take up your cross daily” means to die to self daily.

“The cross is always an instrument of death, not just an object to carry around with us for all of life. The Christian is to die mentally and actively – not just carrying the cross as a burden, but marching toward self-death. The Christian is to deny himself daily. He is to let the mind of Christ, the mind of humbling himself to the point of death, be in him and fill his thoughts every day. He is to put his will, his desires, his wants, his ambitions to death. In their place, he is to follow Jesus and to do His will all day long. This is not negative, passive behavior. It takes positive, active behavior to deny one’s self, to take up one’s cross, to follow Christ.” (from POSB Commentary)

Jesus is telling me: In regard to your love for family, your love for Me should make that love look like hate. BUT in regard to your love for self, your love for Me requires that you be willing to sacrifice your entire life. The cross is a means of execution.

When a missionary was heading into an area known to have violent people, the person getting him there by boat said to him – “You shouldn’t do this. Don’t you know that if you try to preach to these people they might kill you? You will likely die here.” To which the missionary answered, “Oh, that’s not a problem. I died before I ever stepped foot on your boat.”

We are to choose Christ. In doing so, we are to choose death.

And so…
I am ready to die – in fact I already have.

Categories
Serving Others

Your Mission, If You Choose To Accept It…

“It is the duty of all men to repent and believe the gospel, therefore it is also the duty of those entrusted with the gospel to carry it to the whole world.” (William Carey)

Have you completed the first duty? How about the second?

(Begin humming the Mission Impossible Theme Song)

Over 200 years ago, William Carey wrote about five main objections that people had regarding missions to the “heathen” lands (today we might call them “foreign” lands). The five main objections people had were:

1. The long distance that must be traveled,
2. The barbaric nature of the native peoples,
3. The danger that would be incurred by those going,
4. The difficulties of raising and maintaining support, and
5. The unintelligible languages the native people would speak.

We might still want to raise some of these same objections as to why we are unwilling to fulfill this second duty or mission of ours. Carey’s general answer to all of the objections: the merchants of his day were willing to take these same risks in the hopes of making money. He said: “It only requires that we should have as much love for the souls of our fellow-man, and fellow sinners, as the merchants have for the profits arising from the sale of a few otter skins, and all these difficulties could be easily surmounted.”

Wow. Exactly.

Many people (including some of us) have been more serious about the mission to make money than we have been about the mission to take the gospel message to those different than us. Willing to face more risks. Willing to tackle difficult obstacles.

God, forgive us for being so willing to overcome many difficulties for our finances (and for our pleasures), while being so quick to give You insignificant excuses for why we won’t obediently take Your message to others.

Help us choose to accept our Mission.

Categories
Serving Others

The Workplace Pastor

I’m gonna spend one more day on this idea of us as workplace pastors, since I think it is so very important. It is necessary that we begin believing that we are called of God to be the chaplains of our offices and companies.

Many people want to feel used by God, but haven’t been freed to understand that their place of employment is the mission field that God has sent them into. It might seem a bit strange, but think about if a missionary or pastor was hired for your office/company – what would they do to meet the spiritual needs of the people there? Pray with people, reach out to them during crises, talk to them about God? What if God has placed you in your office for that specific role? In fact, I think that is EXACTLY what God has done. Let me remind you that after Jesus’ death, the veil of the Temple was torn. No longer does God reside in a building built by human hands where we have to come to Him in one location on earth, but rather He now dwells within each Christian, so that His church is to leave the one location and take Him outside the church building to people everywhere.a church building symbolizing the fact that we need to leave the building and become a workplace pastor

“[We feel] incomplete inside the church walls – we want to be equipped by our church to find kingdom significance and purpose where we interact with culture, outside the church walls…. I’ve come to understand that there are millions of us who feel disconnected from our true purpose at work. Maybe you’ve had feelings at times that are similar. You sense your job or career has something critically important to do with God’s bigger story, and yet no one seems to be there to help you understand how it really works and why it is so biblical.” Have you ever felt like this? Have you ever felt that God wanted to use you, but weren’t quite sure how? Well, the workplace is where you spend a large portion of your day, and He wants to use you there!

“God has placed us into that workplace for a specific purpose. Paul explains that this task is not to be done just on Sunday or a few times a week, but this is a 24/7 ‘all-the-time’ assignment from God.”

“[Too many of us believe that] the pastor, the missionary, and the church staff workers are chosen, gifted, and paid to do the professional ministry…. [We] do not realize that we will come into contact with and influence more people in one day in the workplace than the “professionals” will encounter in a week or even a full month…. Yes, YOU are in full-time ministry for Jesus Christ, but you get your income from your employment in the workplace and not from your church. What a bargain for God’s kingdom work! We are paid by the secular world’s system yet are placed there in strategic positions for His purposes.”

This is the mindset that we must take. Why is this mindset so important? Why does God want us to represent Him in our workplaces to our co-workers who do not know Him? Because “Most of them will not seek out our churches, but every day they are at the next desk to us in the marketplace.” So you have to begin seeing yourself as the pastor there – praying for each person, looking for ways to speak God’s love into their lives.

Look for opportunities to speak God’s life and love into the lives of the people around you at work today. Some of them are hurting and need an encouraging word. Some of them are experiencing crisis and need your prayers. Find ways to meet their spiritual needs as their workplace pastor.

How have you seen people you know be effective in the role of “workplace pastor”?

(Businessman Kent Humphreys wrote a small book titled Christ at Work Opening Doors about us being on mission in our places of employment. The quotes above are from his book.)

Categories
Missions

Distinct Marks of Christians

People who are crucified with Christ have three distinct marks:
      1. they are facing only one direction,
      2. they can never turn back, and
      3. they no longer have plans of their own.
                                                        -A.W. Tozer

Unfortunately I find that too often, I don’t do well at any of the three.

a no u-turn nor left turn sign symbolizing one of the distinct marks of not turning backThough I only face one direction at a time, I sure like to change that direction from one minute to the next. I not only turn back, but sometimes I even run in the wrong direction. And I am quick to ask Jesus to step down off the throne of my life so that I can sit there again and make all sorts of my own plans, even though I told Him that He would be King.

So I need to pray: God, help me to face one direction – toward You. Help me to never turn back, not even to take a quick glance behind. And help me to give up all of my plans for Yours, because Your plans for me are better than the dreams I have for me.

He has told me to have a heart for the lost and be on-mission for Him no matter where I am going. But what I find is that I will never be a missionary until the lostness of another grieves my heart.

I am so glad that my lostness grieved the heart of God and therefore Jesus came to earth to serve, to suffer, to be rejected, to be beaten, to be despised, to be crucified, to die – and to take my place as the substitute for my evil choices.

So now it is my turn to have a missionary spirit because the lostness of others without Christ grieves my heart. I’ve been where they are – without Him – now it is my responsibility to help them come to where I am – saved by His Amazing Grace.

I need God to break my heart for the things that break His heart. That requires me to get rid of selfishness and become selfless – a difficult feat in a society that tells us that the key focus should be on ME.

Tozer also said that the true follower of Christ will say, “This is truth. God help me to walk in it, let come what may!” May this also be my plea.

Are there other distinct marks you would add to Tozer’s list of three?

— brian rushing

Categories
Missions

Missionary Mindset

“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.thorns criss-crossing and choking one another - representing the world that chokes out our missionary mindset

“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