The Great Commission Is A Mission For All Seasons

If all we do is scroll through FB posts, listen to “Woe is the Church During Covid” podcasts, fail to filter the propaganda our favorite internet news brands want to feeds us, and then buy into all the doomsday predictions swirling around—you just might think that all the church is focused on and obsessing over today is the “to mask” or “not to mask” issue as well as how to keep the government from taking our rights, our guns, our votes, our voice, and of course our money.  It’d be a pretty grim picture indeed.  It’d also be the wrong picture.  

You see, the truth of the matter is that today, even during Covid and the aftermath of a contentious election, far more Bible believing and preaching churches are focused on the mission of the Great Commission than are not.  Oh, I don’t doubt there are a great many churches focusing on the wrong things but that’s because they are not necessarily Bible reading, Bible preaching, and Bible believing churches.  I say this because those kinds of churches who still place a high priority on the Word of God understand that the Great Commission is a mission for all seasons—regardless of who is the president, which political party has control, what the economic forecast looks like, how well our church and personal budgets are faring, and is Covid ever going to go away.

These kinds of Great Commission mindset and focused churches also understand that the fear of future potential loss is not an excuse to slow down, rest, or bail on the mission.  As Peter, our 14 year old, shared with me a couple days ago when we were out walking and talking about his future missional goals—If anything our current situation should cause us to move forward in Great Commission endeavors with much greater urgency—willing to take far more substantial risks than ever before as we see gospel opportunities diminishing.  

Wow, I couldn’t agree more!  And as I reminded Peter, for every believer who rises up, leaves family and familiarity to go to a hard place to live among gospel-hardened people for the purpose of fulfilling the Great Commission, there is a small army of praying, sacrificing, giving, and biblically hopeful believers and their churches who instead of bemoaning their troubles and lack of ability just keep trusting God for more strength, more power in prayer, more funds to give, more gospel influence, and more gospel-investing opportunities.  We think that this aptly describes you all who have our back at Regions In Need as we work to advance gospel influence among unreached people groups by providing training, resources, encouragement, and pastoral care to indigenous churches, pastors, and church planters in select areas of Cameroon, Myanmar, Nepal, and East Asia.  Thank you for still believing the Great Commission is a mission worth sacrificing for, praying about, and giving to even in the midst of serious difficulties and setbacks at home.  

Want to more about us and Regions In Need?  Check us out at:   www.regions-in-need.org

  

I Kissed Retirement Goodbye!

Wow--here's an article that is just too good to not share with whomever may be reading this blog from time to time.  Please read it, take it to heart, and then do something about it--especially if you are in or heading for those often dreamed about and long-hoped for "retirement years".

This article will help you not to waste your life by wasting this retirement you've been anticipating for the last--who knows how many years.  It might just help break you out of that fragility mindset some folks get themselves caught up in where all you think you're good for is sleeping in, visiting the grandkids, and reading them books about Barney.  Now, there is nothing wrong with that at all, but there is so much more you can do with your retirement, your resources, and your life experience walking with the Lord.  So please for the sake of Christ and those He has given His blood to save--Don't piddle your life away in the last lap.  Finish strong and finish well!  

Here's the article, entitled: Kissing Retirement Goodbye by John Ensor, who is the Executive Director of Urban Initiatives for Heartbeat International and author of The Great Work of the Gospel, which is a great read about what God has accomplished for us through the Gospel.

I kissed retirement goodbye—at least the kind traditionally planned for in America. My mother has finally persuaded me that there are better things to do than "just retire" when I reach her age.  

In August, I wrote about caring for family with end-of-life challenges.  My mother, at 78, started to go blind while on a mission trip to Mongolia.  Her sight was saved through high-dose steroids, which tripped other health concerns which were compounded by the discovery of breast cancer.  The subsequent surgery left her fragile.  She fell and added injury to sickness and disease.  We gathered with her in August to discuss how to care for her as she enters what I call “the frowning years.”  Ecclesiastes simply calls them the "evil days", when: 

"the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low—they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets." (Ecclesiastes 12:1-5).

The point of this description is to “remember your creator in the days of your youth” (12:1) while you can taste and see the goodness of God while all your senses are in full function, and your strength is still intact.  Savor him while you can—before your teeth fall out (the grinders cease) and your eyes fail (the windows are dimmed) and your bones ache with every move (the grasshopper drags itself along); before the fears of dying assail you and sap your strength and try your faith one last time before they are swallowed up in victory.  

Evidently, at 78, my mother is still in the days of her youth.  Since August, she has prayed and fought for her health but just last week she left for Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.  She joined a team of trainers for a Leadership Development Conference in which 90 teachers from around the country took their school vacation week to learn to study and teach the Bible through an inductive-study method.  Seven more teachers planned on being there.  But my mother writes, “They did not get here because their charter bus was ambushed by robbers and the driver was killed.”  

In spite of such things, she writes of the thrill of watching the participants learn how to discover the Bible's unsearchable riches.  She concludes, “I have been so blessed to be here, that at times I think I will burst!” 

Evidently, she intends to die with her mission boots on as she faces down those “frowning years.”