Luk 10:1-11 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace be to this house!'
And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick in it and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.'
Discipleship Training
Part of the training of the disciples was sending them out into the villages to announce the Good News that the Kingdom had come. This message was confirmed by signs and wonders and miracles. The disciples had witnessed the power and authority of Jesus as he healed the sick, cast out demons and performed miracles. It was not enough for them to simply see what Christ could do in obedience to his father, Jesus wanted them to also have first-hand experience of the same things he did. In order to do this he had to send them out as a small group and later in groups of 2 to the people. They were sent out with very little resources into places they may not have been very familiar. They were being trained, challenged, stretched, tested in order to let them experience ministry now as well as prepare them for future ministry when Jesus would be taken away from them.
The Forgotten/Neglected Discipline
This journey of faith that involves leaving your home, going to another location to carry out the mission God has given us is an important aspect of our spiritual growth. It involves abandoning our present life to experience the new life God wants to give us. It involves leaving behind the familiar and the comfortable. Leaving behind all the aspects of life that we control and the abandonment ourselves completely to the Lord. It is not just for a few to go but I believe every believer who wants to grow spiritually needs to make this journey. It is a forgotten discipline or a neglected discipline for many people. God uses these adventures of faith and obedience to teach us many things, the same things the 12 disciples needed to learn as they were sent out.
When we look at the Great Commission we realize that it was not the first time the disciples had been instructed to go. Throughout their time with Jesus they were being sent out and being challenged to go into a lost world. Though Jesus was sent to the “lost sheep of Israel” his ministry was not limited to the Jews. He ministered to the Samaritans as well as the Gentiles. He was a man for all peoples and the disciples witnessed first hand the compassion he had for everyone. The Great Commission as we call it was really just a final confirmation of what Jesus had been teaching his disciples throughout his ministry on earth. It was not new information, they had experienced being sent out and heard Jesus’ prayer, “so send I you”. The Great Commission was really a Re-Commissioning of the disciples.
The commission to “GO” really means in your going. It is not a one-time event but is to be a constant going as part of our life of obedience to the Lord. To go means we physically move from one place to another. God is calling all of his followers to GO, to constantly be looking for opportunities directed by the Holy Spirit to move from one location to another to reach people with the miraculous power of the gospel message he has entrusted to us.
The vision for World Missions needs to infiltrate the churches of Guatemala. The Assemblies of God is one of the largest denominations in Guatemala but it has only 3 missionaries, one in Costa Rica, one in the USA and the other in Canada. How can this be? It is not only the AG that is not sending out missionaries, other denominations are also not sending out missionaries as they should. One of the things I want to see more of is young Latinos participating in our DTS to give them the training and opportunity to GO and be an example to other young people as well as their churches that this needs to be a priority for the churches and that it is possible. I think God wants to demonstrate his heart to the believers of his great compassion for the lost and the urgency of the church to pray and send out laborers into the harvest field.
I believe God places within our hearts a restlessness, a yearning to GO, a spirit of adventure, that stirs us to leave our present location to go to another place of his calling. Many never respond to this stirring but stay where they are, in the comforts of home, unwilling to step out in faith and obedience to God’s calling. I am thankful for the many opportunities that God has given me to GO to several countries to share the gospel. This restlessness has been a part of my life since my early years. When I was in the military after graduation from high school I was sent to Germany for 20 months. I loved being there and had many opportunities to travel and see Europe as well as Israel. Experiencing new cultures, meeting believers and unbelievers has shaped my life in ways that I do not think I would have experienced had I not taken advantage of the opportunities I was given. This desire to travel has not abated, I have no desire to hunker down for the rest of my life, retire playing golf or idle my time away doing things that really have no impact on the advance of the Kingdom of God. I do not want to waste my life pursing the pleasures of easy living as it is not in the DNA of a follower of Christ.
Why is this so important and what is God trying to build into our lives when we respond to invitations and opportunities to go where he calls us to go?
Our spiritual growth depends on our obedience to the Lord and in our going to new places paves the way for new experiences in our growth. I believe there are things we will never learn if we refuse to go. It was an emphasis in the training of the disciples with Jesus and it is a major component in the training of disciples today that I believe has been deprioritized. As much as we disagree with the theology of the Mormons, one thing they have incorporated into the training of their youth is making a 2 year commitment to go to another country and propagate their beliefs. I would love to see the evangelical churches embrace the same vision of sending out young people to live among the people, learn their language and proclaim the gospel message. I pray there will be a cultural shift among the evangelical churches to capture the need to send out the youth, to support them financially and in prayer to be able to dedicate time to go to another culture and share the gospel.
When we respond in obedience to GO, God will use this experience to develop our character and deepen our relationship with him. There are three things that God wants develop through these journeys of faith.
1. Dependence upon God
Jesus sent his disciples out with few resources in order that they would learn to depend upon God to provide for them. The expectation was that the homes that received them would take care of their needs. They depended on the hospitality of their fellow Jews to help them and if there was no peace when they came to a home to announce the good news they were to leave and find homes where they would be welcomed and received. Jesus sent them out on a short term mission trip that perhaps only lasted a few days but it was an experience that taught them that God would provide for their needs. The emphasis for most missionary agencies today is to gather all the finances needed and then be sent out. This is different than the way Jesus sent out the 12 and the 70, who went with basically nothing. I am not saying that the way mission agencies work today is wrong but there is something to be said about going out in faith and obedience and fully trusting God to take care of your needs through his people or through other means. I know within YWAM there are differing expectations regarding funding the outreach phase of the DTS. Some countries take the philosophy that the host bases or churches will take care of their needs for food, housing and transportation when they come to serve. Other bases raise all the financial support or expect the students to raise all the support they will need to be able to carry out the mission. The bottom line is that in either method, there has to be a dependence upon the Lord to supply for needs. He is our Source and we can be confident that He will take care of us to provide before we leave or in our going.
My experience of God providing has been proving over and over in the years of serving full time in missions. God has been so faithful to supply for my needs as well as the needs of our YWAM base. I know that our staff also has testimonies of God’s faithfulness to take care of their needs. We may not have all of our desires met but God is faithful to supply what we need. There may be times of limited resources as Paul experienced but there are also times of abundance as he also experienced. When we are walking in obedience and faith we can be confident that “my God shall supply all your needs…”
When we respond to the call to GO God places us in situations where he breaks us of our dependence upon ourselves. We like to be in control, to be able to understand what is going on around us and have answers to situations that are confronting us. But when we are sent out to a different country we are confronted with many new customs, a new language, misunderstandings, confusion and often feelings of frustration and anxiety. God uses these times to break us so he can mold us into a vessel that he can use to reach the people. Culture shock is part of the training He gives us to break us of our reliance on ourselves and our way of doing things.
God uses these experiences to help us bond with the people, to understand them, how they think, what they believe and value so we can develop compassion for them and effectively work with them. We come like an infant in many ways who has to be taught a new way of doing things. If we do not allow God to break us we will never be used as effectively as we could be. Often we find ourselves confronted with situations that challenge our faith and our understanding to how God is at work.
2. Brokenness
This past week I was in San Pablo with a group of men building a home for a family who had lost their home in the earthquake last November. One afternoon we visited a 40 year old man riddled with cancer. He had a wife and 2 beautiful children. He has been in bed for 2 years and the cancer is progressing. He has sores all over his body and now has worms in the wounds on his back. He is suffering, his family needs him and there is nothing I would like to see happen more than a miracle of healing to raise him from his bed a live a normal life with his family. We prayed for him and I continue to pray for his healing in spite of my lack of understanding why he is suffering for so long. These situations break us of our need to understand everything and places us in a position of trusting God to be in control of something we wish we could control. It is not easy and we can complain to God about the situation but through it all we need to develop a complete trust and confidence in the goodness of God, that he is sovereign in our lives and his plans and purposes are being accomplished in spite of our lack of understanding.
Rom 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
The murder of Erik who Mark and Dayle have been helping to get his life together and free from drugs is another one of those breaking events that causes us to trust God to be working through situations that seem contrary to what we think is best. When we GO in obedience God will break us so we can be used by him in ways we never thought possible. Sometimes we experience hardships that we cannot understand why they are happening or how God could allow this to happen. One story I read of a missionary to Africa told of her being raped. Why would something like this happen to someone serving God and sacrificing to be working among a different people group? Yet God was able to make all grace abound and used this horrible tragedy to minister to many young girls who had also been raped. Her experience opened a door to minister to young girls whom she may never have been able to reach. As believers we think or at least want to think that we are exempt from sufferings and hardships but this is not always the case. Out of our brokenness we learn how to minister to people who have experienced the same pain that we have. Our failures become our connecting point with others if we are willing to press through the pain and learn from it. If we do not let God teach us through these broken experiences we will not be able to be used by him because we will be stuck in our past pains and live lives of regret. We live in a fallen world and are often subject to the effects of sin that has corrupted the human race. Yet we serve a God who can make all things work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purposes. These experiences break us but God can pour in his healing and use these things to mold us and give us opportunities to minister to others in a way that would not be possible.
3. Humility
Along with brokenness God also teaches us humility as we respond in obedience to GO. Humility is seeing yourself as you really are. God has a way of deflating our ego bubble through other people and circumstances that we face when we are in another culture. We are exposed to our prejudices, our ethnocentric way of thinking, seeing people and judging them by our standards of the way we do things and the way they should do things to be more like us. It is easy to become critical when we compare our way of doing things with the way “they” do things. We have to come as learners not “know-it-alls” as we enter another culture. It is humbling to know that there is more than one way to do things. We have to be careful we do not label things as the wrong way to do it when it is really just a different way to do it.
Humility is also developed when we adjust to the customs and foods of the culture. Our trip to India brought challenges of humbling ourselves to eat with our right hand, eat foods that were different, wear clothing at least for the women that was different and learn how to use the squatty potty. Humility is also developed when we let other people show us how to do things. We allow them to be our teacher and guide rather than try to figure things out on our own and perhaps not get it right. Humility is demonstrated by having a teachable attitude and being willing to lay down our rights to what we think we deserve.
We have to be willing to bond with the people. We have to learn the rules they play by and adjust our way of thinking or we will be forever frustrated and judgmental. Instead of building bridges of understanding we build walls of separation and we lose our opportunity to build relationships. One of the ways God humbles us is through the experiences we have learning and speaking a new language. I have made my share of blunders mispronouncing words or using the wrong word. These experiences should motivate us to work harder at learning the language to improve our ability to communicate. We cannot be satisfied with a “good enough” attitude when Christ calls us to excellence in all we do for him.
Another thing we learn when we go out in teams is how to get along with others and place their needs before ours. Jesus sent the disciples out 2x2 for a purpose. It was not only for encouragement but also to learn how to work together. If we want to have a successful mission, we must learn to die to ourselves and place others needs before ours. We learn that our needs are often petty and trivial compared to the needs of the people we serve or who are serving with us. If we allow the Holy Spirit to work in us he will show us what God sees in the lives of the people we meet. We live in a culture that is focused on self-absorption, what I need, what I want, what I think should be done. When we live in community we have the opportunity to serve the needs of others if we are first willing to get our eyes and our focus off of ourselves. When we take the time to get to know the people we are ministering to we learn of their needs and are challenged to respond to them. When Jesus was in the synagogue he announced the purpose of his mission and people he would target as he was led of the Holy Spirit.
Luk 4:18-19 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
The poor, the captives, the oppressed, the blind were the people he targeted. If we are not targeting these groups we are missing out on the mission that God has for us to get our eyes off of ourselves and focused on the needs around us.
Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest, has spent many years of his life working with the mentally disabled wrote the following:
“Those who are marginal in the world are central in the church, and that is how it is supposed to be! Thus, we are called as members to of the church to keep going to the margins of our society. The homeless, the starving, parentless children, people with AIDS, our emotionally disturbed brothers and sisters-they require our first attention. The church will always be renewed when our attention shifts from ourselves to those who need our care. The blessings of Jesus always comes to us through the poor. The most remarkable experiences of the those who work with the poor is that, in the end, they poor give more than they receive. They give food to us.”
There is such great need in the world, people are hurting and waiting for someone to offer them hope that can only be found in a relationship with Christ. When we were out on the streets in Solala, we stopped at a store to share the gospel with a lady and her 2 sons. When I asked her what was the most important thing that has happened in her life, she replied, “my whole life has been sad.” Tears came to her eyes and ran down her cheeks. I do not know what caused the pain in her life but we offered her hope through a relationship with Christ. She and her sons prayed in the store to receive Christ.
Another young man I talked to in San Pedro La Laguna was working at a store by himself. He worked from 8 a.m. to midnight every day of the week. He told me that he had moved to San Pedro to find a job but since moving he began to run with a different group of guys who were involved in activities that were not good. He lamented that he had turned away from following the Lord as he had been serving in his church prior to moving to San Pedro. He told me he wanted to find a new job so he could start attending church and meet new friends who will encourage him in his journey of faith. I prayed with him and encouraged him and then told a couple of pastors in San Pedro who were attending the seminar of his need.
God uses these journeys of faith to equip us for ministry, to call us to specific ministries that we may have never considered before and help us prioritize our lives. Every believer must GO. It is not optional. It may involve going to another country or simply walking across the street to visit your neighbor.
When we do not GO we miss out on many opportunities to be a blessing to someone’s life and people who need the Lord remain in their sin and the problems it presents.
We do not know the impact we have on people as we go to other countries in obedience to God’s call. One word or one act of kindness may be the turning point of someone’s life to bring them to a greater understanding of the love of Christ. But more importantly is the impact GOING will have on your life if you are willing to allow God to teach you through the experiences he places before you. He wants us to learn to abandon ourselves to him, taking up our cross and following him wherever he leads. He wants us to learn to depend upon him to supply for all our needs and he may use a variety of ways to prove his faithfulness to us. He wants to break us of our pride and develop humility in our lives to give us the proper perspective of what we are really like as he exposes us to our selfishness and lack of compassion. He wants to use us to reach the poor, oppressed, captives, brokenhearted with the good news.
The Journey of Faith must include that little word “GO”. God wants to do new things in our lives, give us new experiences that will train us for ministry both now and for the future. May we never get the attitude of a settler because we are pilgrims by nature. Be open to new places God wants you to go. If you are going to grow, you must GO!
