Week 44—Monday Psalm 126:5-6
Week 44—MONDAY
WE DO WHAT GOD DID
We ended yesterday with the conclusion that neither command nor concern are sufficient motives for missions or evangelism. But if the Incarnation is a fact; if God has redemptively invaded us; if God has gone to the very bottom of our need, tasting sin and death for us to lift us to a free, full life in communion with God, then that changes the picture. This means that our motive is in God—we do what God did. The cross means God tasting the bitterness of sin and death—tasting what we taste. God “drank our poison that we might ambrosia taste.” If that be true then not to tell it and share it would be the highest sin of ingratitude.
So last command or no last command, marching orders or no marching orders, we must be missionaries of the Good News. The last command and the marching orders are inherent in what God has done in Christ. Wipe out the last command and we would still go—driven from within. An African woman was converted in a mission hospital and in walking back the seventy-five miles to her home she stopped in seven villages, about ten miles apart, witnessed to what Christ had done for her and established seven congregations on her way back. She had never heard of the last command, but she heard from within the imperious drive of gratitude to tell what God had done for her in Christ. A Chinese pastor was not allowed to preach the gospel to the Chinese indentured coolies working in the mines. So he sold himself as an indentured coolie, practically a slave, and worked in the mine so he could preach to them and witness to them as he worked. No last command would make him do that. But God’s doing would make him do it. So our motive for missions is as broad-based as God. If we hold our peace the stones would cry out, the hard bare facts would proclaim the Good News.
O Blessed God, forgive us our guilty silence when we refuse to share what you have done for us. That guilty silence brands us as traitors, makes every one of us a denying Peter and a betraying Judas rolled into one. In Jesus’ name forgive us. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If we are not evangelistic, we will soon cease to be evangelical. If something doesn’t happen through us, something will happen to us.