Often, when believers hear about someone devoting their life to missions, they associate it with a specific and special calling that God has placed on the missionary’s life. We look at their lives in comparison with ours and think things such as “they are called to do missions, I am not.” This is dangerous thinking that we, as believers, must be willing to allow the Lord to shift so that we may be compelled by His heart and desire for our lives.
What if we are all called to, even commanded to, missions? How would this shape our living, our understanding of obedience? Can we allow this to change our perspective on purpose? If we cannot be the ones to physically go overseas, how can we live out this calling? Let us ponder these questions as we consider a mission calling.
The Mandate For Missions
Scripture is full of God’s declared desire for all the nations to be reached with the message of salvation. The pinnacle of this desire is expressed in the Great Commission of Matthew 28. This Commission was not just for a select few, but for every person who has placed their trust in Christ. If we ever should question whether we have been called to spreading the Gospel among the nations, we may look to God’s heart expressed through this passage and know that we are to live in a way that mirrors His desire.
Christ-followers are beckoned into a beautiful invitation from the Lord. We have been asked to join Him to share His glory and salvation among the nations. When we choose to ignore this invitation in our own lives, we miss a significant part of God’s heart and the relationship He desires to have with us. How remarkable is it, that the God of the universe has chosen to invite us into a relationship with Him that partners with him to see His plan fulfilled? If you are someone who has never considered your responsibility to missions, this should not be condemning, it should spur hope in you! There is infinitely more of God’s heart for us to learn, and by valuing missions we may grow in that learning.
The Facets Of Missions
It would be naive to believe that every follower of Christ can go to the unreached to preach the Gospel among them. This is the goal of missions, yes. We live for the spread of the Gospel among every nation and language. But this is not the whole of missions. For missionaries to be sent and the Gospel to be spread, the Church needs people willing to step into distinct roles. For missions to be successful, there must be individuals willing to invest their finances into sending missionaries, their skills in supporting missionaries, their knowledge in mobilizing missionaries, and their prayers for upholding missionaries. As the body of Christ, we all have a part to play in building the church across the nations. Because of this, we can confidently say that we each have a mission calling placed on our lives. As William Carey famously says, “I will go down into the pit if you will hold the ropes.” As you evaluate the mission calling you have by being a follower of Christ, ask yourselves, “If I cannot go, how can I hold the ropes?”
The Job We Have In Missions
The end of God’s grand narrative is that people from every nation and language both know and enjoy His glory. Therefore, this is the goal of missions. As those who have been called into a life on mission, we have been given the gift of sharing the gift we have freely received. This is our job, one that we can do with the utmost joy because it simply entails responding to the desires and love of the Lord. We cannot ignore the mandate to either go or to send. But the response to this mandate must overflow from a place of worship for the One who came to earth and bore our brokenness that we may have life in the Father, now and for eternity.
We have all been called to God’s great mission and we will all be equipped by Him to respond. We have been created to live for the glory of God, and when we do, we will find ourselves experiencing deep joy and abundance. He has invited us in, allowing us to feel the weight of His commission and learn how we can partake in it. Draw near to the Lord and allow Him to lead you into a response that brings His salvation to the lost and His glory to the world!
At Ethnos360 Bible Institute, we take time to learn about God’s mission and our role in it. Want to learn more about how you can be involved in reaching the nations? Request your free information packet today!
