Our Lord Jesus Christ was Himself the first missionary. His promise and advent composed the first missionary movement. The missionary spirit is not just a phase of the Gospel, not a mere feature of the plan of salvation, but is its very spirit and life. The missionary impulse is the the heartbeat of our Lord Jesus Christ, sending vital forces of Himself through the whole body of the church. The spiritual life of God’s people rises and falls with the force of those heartbeats. Anti-missionary churches are dead churches, just as anti-missionary Christians are dead Christians. If Satan cannot prevent the great movement of God, his craftiest device is to corrupt the movement. Only might prayer will save the movement from materialism and keep its spirit strong.
-EM Bounds Prayer and Missions
For the next several weeks I would like to reflect on some of my personal struggles with seeing the mission of God take root in my heart and life. The route I am going to take is one I think is often missed in evangelical circles. For all our talk of the “evangel” we have replaced gospel motivations for engaging in mission with motivations that are meager and can never sustain a passionate pursuit of the Christ of mission. So here are some of my struggles with keeping Jesus and His good news central in my heart and life.
Struggle #1: I Am Content With Jesus Being One Of Many Gods
“Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there.” – Acts 17:16-17
One of the missional characteristics I see in the life of the apostle Paul is that he had an unquenchable passion to see the name of Jesus and Jesus alone worshiped as God. In Acts 17 you see this supremely in the fact that “his spirit was provoked within him when he saw the city was given over to idols.” Paul was irritated, exasperated, or more literally, he burned with anger over that fact that God in Jesus Christ was not given central place in lives of the people in Athens. Additionally, this desire to see the name of Jesus hallowed among the people of the city produced in the apostle an intense motivation to communicate the gospel with the people God put in his path.
As I read passages such as this, the Spirit moves me to the ask the question, “Why is this not the case with me?” My city is given over to idols. Maybe they are not idols of wood, stone, or gold. No, they are more “sophisticated” and subtle, but like all objects of false worship they rob the one true God of the fame He deserves and this should motivate me to move. If I am honest, there are underling reasons why this does not move me to act. This problem is essentially a gospel problem! There is something I am missing about the gospel! Namely, that one of the foundational truths of this good message is that it is a chronicle of God incurring the costly loss of His Son to rescue a people bent on bowing to lifeless idols (in former time gods like Baal and Zeus, but in more modern times the gods of materialism, sex, etc) . O how this truth should echo in my mind as I see the people of my city and the people of God themselves handling the vary thing for which Jesus suffered and died to loose from our hands.
How can I be so blind to this? How can I so easily overlook this truth that should produce in me gospel mission? Well, here is what I have examined in myself and I invite you to examine in yourself to see if you see the same thing:
- Living in a place that is saturated with idols makes it easier for my secret places of self-centered worship to go unnoticed. I am content to be in a place where religious compliance is seen as virtue at the expense of gospel transformation.
- Confronting personal idols in my life supremely means the death of self. While I love Jesus, there is real fear of surrounding all of my life to the power the gospel.
- Confronting the idols in the lives of my loved ones and neighbors means I might not be liked. Essentially I fear people more than I fear and revere the name of Christ.
O that Christ would awaken in me passion for the glory of His name.
onlybyHISgrace,
josh
I was in Tampa this past week for the second installment of the Aletheia Network prayer and planning. It was the first time since AP’s moved to Tampa to plant the newest Aletheia Church near the campus of USF that the leaders of our network (Aletheia Harrisonburg, Richmond, and Norfolk) have had a chance to hangout together. It was great to catch up with the leaders from across the network and see how God is moving in the midst of our churches. 
For those of you who are reading this and know first hand the amazing things God is doing through Aletheia leaders and churches, I would ask you to pray! Pray that God would mobilize more church planters, ministry leaders and financial partners to assist in seeing the gospel taken to cities and campuses across this nation. If you are new to this whole Aletheia thing and want to know how you can get involved in what God is doing among college students, hit me up!