Trust and Striving
Part of coming to Christ is the conviction that there is no righteousness in ourselves at all. Don’t get me wrong, there are people out there who do good things. They help others and sacrifice of themselves. But compared to a blameless, Holy God, there is no one who is truly righteous. Jesus himself said there was only one who was truly good–God (Matthew 19:7).
But a funny thing happens when we give our lives to Christ and join the church. Often, we begin to feel the burden to become the kind of people the New Testament describes. And many take this burden and turn it inward. They try to become the people the New Testament describes through sheer will power. Some call it holiness. Some call it Christ-likeness. Others call it maturity.
And all of these things are virtues that the New Testament encourages. But, what happens is believers learn to live from their human willpower. They become good through their own striving. And they learn to accomplish living out the Christian life in the flesh–through the means that our human soul can make happen.
This works only until we get tired and then everything comes crashing down.
But there is another way.
The same Holy Spirit that softened your heart so you would accept Christ in the first place is the same Holy Spirit that wants to transform you from the inside. He actually is more willing to transform you from the inside than you want to be transformed. He wants to make you willingly–dare I say–happily holy.
Sometimes this is hard to believe because our growth seems to be moving so slowly. But it’s in these times that we must trust that God is doing more than we can understand. Sometimes He moves powerfully and visibly. Other times He is working in the background, setting up events to transform you that you couldn’t possibly imagine.
And it’s in these places that we have to content ourselves with the fact that He is God and we are not. He is the potter and we are the clay. We partner with Him in prayer and abiding. We remind God that there is work to be done in us. But we don’t approach God like we’re orphans. We have the trust of sons and daughters in a Father who has been faithful.
He will transform us. We don’t have to strive. We just have to give our attention to Him and He will change who we are.
So stop striving, loved son or daughter. Trust that the Father is good and has good plans for you. Remember:
If we die with him,
we will also live with him.
If we endure hardship,
we will reign with him.
If we deny him,
he will deny us.
If we are unfaithful,
he remains faithful,
for he cannot deny who he is.2 Timothy 2:11-13
Photo Credit: In God We Trust by Gadgetman42
A Simple Definition of Missional
Lately being “missional” has become the new buzzword in Christianity in the West. We have missional church, missional community, missional bible studies, and even missional worship services.
I love everything that being missional is about. I probably use the term more than most people. But when we use the word missional so much that it can mean anything we want it to mean, I think we start to create confusion that is unhelpful. In some camps, missional has come to mean anything that is new, trendy, or designed to reach a younger crowd. And while missional is new, trendy, and does reach a younger crowd, not everything that does these things is missional.
We get the word “missional” from the Latin phrase “missio Dei” or “mission of God.” The idea behind the phrase is that God has a mission that He has been pursuing from the beginning of time to reclaim humans who have wondered away from Him. God, who is the ultimate missionary, has been coming to humanity to turn them back toward Himself.
God’s mission then, takes its ultimate form when Jesus left Heaven and came to Earth to announce and embody the Kingdom of God and suffer, die, and rise again to purchase our entrance into that Kingdom. Jesus’ leaving the Father’s side and embarking on mission is our key to understanding what “missional” really is.
Missional means we leave where we are to spread the good news of the Kingdom where people are.
The truth is we cannot be missional if we don’t leave and go to people. Missio Dei is also where get the word missionary from. So we shouldn’t be surprised that missional embraces the idea of leaving our home or place of comfort behind. It means crossing boundaries, whether those are our neighbors of another race across the street or they are national boundaries as you enter a foreign land.
But another truth about being missional is that we have to speak and spread the Good news. Certainly Jesus did good works. He healed the sick (supernaturally). He cast out demons. He welcomed the poor and the outcast. All of these were displays of the missional God’s heart of love. But all of these signs pointed to a God who wanted a relationship with humans. Jesus came to proclaim the good news that God’s Kingdom was near.
And so being missional means leaving where we are and going to the lost. It means doing works that point to the Kingdom* and declaring the nearness of God’s Kingdom that people can enter into. It’s both.
But your church isn’t missional if it’s not going to where lost people are. Missional is not waiting for lost people to come to you. It’s going to them. Your community isn’t missional if it’s not talking to lost people about the nearness of the Kingdom, no matter how often you hang out at the bar or the local coffee shop. Your Bible study is only missional to the degree that your group goes and shares Jesus with people far away from him. The other things you add the word “missional” to?
Well…you get the idea.
I’m not arguing you stop being missional if you use the word. Instead, let’s direct our effort to doing the things that are truly going out to where lost people are and doing and speaking the words of Jesus.
That is truly missional.
*I would argue that one component that the “missional movement” typically misses is doing the works of Jesus that way that Jesus did them. Healing the sick typically becomes taking care of their physical needs. Jesus laid hands on blind people and they saw. In my mind, this is truly missional.
Making Missional Decisions
Sometimes in our pursuit of Jesus and the mission of spreading the Gospel, we come to forks in the road where we have make decisions. The hard part about these forks in the road is that they seem rather small, but sometimes have serious implications.
This past weekend I was with a bi-vocational pastor who buys, renovates, and sells homes. We were laughing about a time about 3 years ago when he had a house for sale that was just outside of the mission field God had called me and my wife to. The house was literally across the street.
What was the problem with a house across the street? In many ways, nothing. Except the fact that everyone in my mission field believes that the people who live on that side of that street can’t possibly understand what life on this side of the street is like. In my eyes, that made me a worse missionary to my mission field, so I turned the house down.
This is just one example of several things we’ve intentionally chosen to do for the sake of the mission God has called us to. We’ve had to decide whether to send our kids to a school in our neighborhood or somewhere else. We’ve had to only consider houses with living rooms and dining rooms big enough for a church to meet in. We’ve had to say no to opportunities that have taken us away from our mission field, like board opportunities and ministry trips.
My point is that a life of mission will mean making some very natural choices intentionally. You won’t have to make the same choices we’ve made, but the choices you make will impact the mission you are on. Don’t believe the everyday or supposedly “non-spiritual” choices you make don’t affect the mission. They absolutely do. Make choices in your life by lining up your natural decisions with the call of Jesus on your life. This is what the Bible calls faithfulness.
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 