Whoever does not want to know the will of God is mentally walking a path next to a cliff, and easily falls with any wind. If he is praised, he is proud. If he is rebuked he is angry. If he eats pleasant food, he is drawn into bodily passions. When he suffers he weeps. When he knows something, he wants to show that he knows. When he doesn’t understand, he pretends to understand. When he is rich he puts on airs. When he is poor, he is a hypocrite. When he is full, he is bold. When he fasts he is vainglorious. When he is denounced he loves to argue, while he looks on those who forgive him as fools.
~St. Mark the Ascetic
A few weeks ago, I fulfilled a promise to a friend. In early 2016, Harrison Gonah, the director of Barnabas Children’s Home and Mission School, asked me to come and visit them in Mombasa, Kenya. The school has 300+ students, and an orphanage with 40 kids. Specifically, I went and shared from Romans chapters 1-8 in 12 sessions. I also delivered some desperately needed technology (laptops, projectors, etc.) and consulted on the water supply and drainage for a 2 Hectare farm being developed to provide food for the children.
It was a wonderful time. It was also very tiring, and a little bit dangerous. Why would an American teacher, working in China, with 6 kids of his own, take his Spring Break and travel out into severe poverty, combined with political tension, along with the risk of injury and disease?
Oh beloved, it is true.
We are a people who have been given a Great Commission. It is not a duty. It is a joy. We have, to a person, had the very King of The Universe enter into our pain and death and blindness and grief – and draw us up in His Loving arms.
He set us on a high cairn. Free in the strong-soft breeze of His Spirit. We, in this time, now experience a strength unknown to many. We come to know the joy of His Presence. For any of you who do not know this place (His Presence), any words will not suffice. But, here is a beginning:
Whole
Clean
Real
Safe
Clear
Alive
Free
Strong
Him.
And what comes from this; this living with Him, in Him and Him in us – comes an understanding about the nature of our new existence. We don’t ex-ist. We are united with Him. We are no longer out on the end of some creative endeavor by a Higher Intelligence. We are now, right in the mix. We are one with Him.
Can we see it?
The question of “why do missions?” Or, “what about my own life?” becomes strangely irrelevant for family members of the King of Eternity. What else would we do? We are in the embrace of The One Who has given us everything we were ever looking for, and the supply of His goodness is so overflowing that we are delighted to share it with others.
Pope John Paul II, in REDEMPTORIS MISSIO: On the permanent validity of the Church’s missionary mandate, also gives us more insight. He said, section 87. “Missionary activity demands a specific spirituality, … Being Led by the Spirit: This spirituality is expressed first of all by a life of complete docility to the Spirit. It commits us to being molded from within by the Spirit, so that we may become ever more like Christ.” … And in section 88, “Living the Mystery of Christ,” He says: “An essential characteristic of missionary spirituality is intimate communion with Christ… The mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption is thus described as a total self-emptying … This is an emptying of self which is permeated by love and expresses love.”
So, yes, for some of you dear readers, gazing at more of what this fool of a writer puts down, much of this seems silly. And, maybe you would feel a little bit better to know that i do get it. Going around the globe, and getting down into the muck of people’s lives is a fool’s errand. Obviously, sharing everything while expecting nothing gets us none of what the world can offer…
Exactly.
And, I do it because He has already done exactly the same thing for me. The utter foolishness of what Christ did for me is one of the prime motivations for my own foolish life and living out the gospel in places that few people are willing to go.
So, are you struggling with being a part of the Great Commission? Maybe it is because you don’t belong in it yet. Once you come to know Him, the struggle fades to nothing – and the joy of His Presence pushes into situations we couldn’t even imagine just a little while in our past.
Tonight is your night beloved. Let Him have His way in you.
If missions languish, it is because the whole life of godliness is feeble. The command to go everywhere and preach to everybody is un-obeyed, until the will is lost by self-surrender in the will of God. There is little right giving because there is little right living, and because of the lack of sympathetic contact with God in holiness of heart, there is a lack of effectual contact with him at the Throne of Grace. Living, praying, giving and going will always be found together, and a low standard in one means a general debility in the whole spiritual being.
~Arthur T. Pierson
