Missio Dei (God’s Mission)

          So, I don’t do this very often, but I am going to start out today with a personal story. This one happens to be a tennis story, and I ask your forbearance with me, and I know it will tie into the message for today.

          When I was a rookie, in fact in my first three professional tournaments, I got to the quarter finals in singles, and in the third tournament got to the semi finals in doubles with my partner Tony Stockman.

          The fourth tournament was held at Mt. San Antonio College, in Thousand Oaks, in Southern California. And, as I was waiting to play my first match, one of the more seasoned tour players came over and started talking to me. He said, “man you’ve come on like gangbusters, where were you before you starting touring?” I replied, “ Northern California”. 

“Wow, we don’t see many rookies come out and get to the Quarters very often, let alone in three straight tournaments. Yeah, rookies just don’t do that. Well, good luck, see you around.”

“Yeah, thanks”, I said.

          I promptly went out and lost in the first round, in my next eight tournaments. I was shell shocked. I lost to a club pro and a Junior College player during that time. My problem was obvious, though I didn’t see it for years to come, I listened to the enemy. That player who came over and talked to me was not my friend, even though he came with a smile on his face and “amazement” at my achievement, he planted the seed in my rookie head that I wasn’t supposed to be doing that good.  But I listened to the enemy; and it worked until it was too late to go back. I never really achieved a great level of success as a professional tennis player, even though in practice I could beat many of them, and I could certainly keep up with almost all of them on the practice court. I let someone get inside my head and I never recovered. My mission (Remember that word, we’ll come back to it in a minute) was to win tennis matches. But I wound up thinking I just wasn’t good enough, even though, I believe now, that God had given me talent and resources to compete at that level, I listened to the enemy. “You can’t do that, you’re not good enough, you got lucky…”

          The word mission comes from a Latin word “missio” meaning “to send”.  When you have a mission you are sent.  Something us pastors discuss often amongst ourselves is the phrase Missio Dei, God’s sending.

Missio Dei – How does it happen? So many people get intimidated by the idea that they are going to talk to anybody about God because they feel unqualified. Eddie Gibbs, a professor at Fuller Seminary who spoke at a conference I attended many years ago said, “I am unqualified for everything I have ever done.”  Actually, he is well qualified, he just feels unqualified. How many of us feel totally unqualified to talk to anybody about God? Well, if that’s the case for you, I have some great news. No one, including God, is expecting you to go out and convert the world, first that is clearly His job, not ours. Sharing your faith is something we should be willing to do, but the results are His and not yours, which should take a lot of pressure off of you. And I haven’t seen anything in scripture where God tells us he would like us to His job, have you?

Second, God knows how off putting it is for someone to go up to a perfect stranger and say, “You better get on your knees and accept the Lord Jesus Christ into your life or you are going to hell”.  That is as off putting as scraping your fingernails on the proverbial Chalk Board, isn’t it? (would you like me to demonstrate?)

Missionaries, people who are sent, do not go into an area and start preaching on the street corner. Do you know what they do? They go into an area and they start living, they start serving the people in that area. Maybe they set up an irrigation system for crops; or a daycare, orphanage or school for the kids. Maybe what they do is go in learn the language and begin writing the Bible in the native tongue.  Maybe they do set up a church, but they always do something that will serve the community in which they are sent. It is like the old saying “People care don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” 

We know, as Christ followers, who have seen and heard about the missionaries, that they are followers of Christ, they love God, they are willing to go to any lengths to tell people of the gospel, etc... But what we don’t often realize is that their telling the gospel to indigenous people in third world countries happens as a result of their serving, not as their primary activity. Folks, we are no different.

I went to Africa last in 2008. You know, right after the Sunday I said from the pulpit I don’t want to go to Africa, I have never wanted to go to Africa, and I am sure God would never send me there because I had no desire to go. Remember that?  Three weeks later, my trip was booked, and five weeks after that I went.  Let me tell you what we really did there. Our team went there with over 700 mattresses and Treated Mosquito Nets to serve orphans and people who lived in the bush. We brought with us 12 Medical Doctors who administered aid in the form of medicine, shots and pills; vaccines and other medical care to over 5000 people during the two weeks. We brought 2,500 pairs of eyeglasses and had trained technicians fit them so they could read and see again. People were in tears because they could read, and some of them cried because we used the Bible as the reading test and they were so grateful they could read their Bibles again. We gave classes to five and six hundred church leaders at a time during the day; they were hungriest people I have ever seen for the Word of God. When we got there with our gifts of service and mattresses, people wanted to hear what the white people from the United States had to say. When we demonstrated the love of God, just for the sake of God’s love for them, they were quite open to hearing what we had to say. I honestly believe had we not gone there to serve they would have politely listened and forgotten about us when we left. Instead, literally hundreds of people accepted Christ during that time when we had the crusade in the evening, the teachings during the day and the one-on-one conversation we had in the bush. 

One very old woman who lived in a dirt floor hut with corrugated tin for walls and a roof got one of the mattresses. I stayed outside while the interpreters went in and told her we had a gift for her and her grandchild. Her husband was dead and her children had also from AIDS. It was just her and a granddaughter, they were so poor they had ZERO money and lived off the garden they had in the small plot of ground in the back, they ate twice a day, almost always the same, potatoes and turnips, and eggs when their hen laid one.

She asked if I would come in because she wanted to thank me, after all I was the only white person there in the jungle, so I must have brought them. I was able to tell her through my interpreter, Grace, that really I had done nothing other than travel there, it was God’s love of her that brought us to her village. I was able to tell her of a God so big that He was able to care for her in her little hut, and a marvelous Son named Jesus Christ.

That night, she came to the crusade. At the end of the preaching, there were two of us speaking that night, we had all the people we had told were receiving the mattress and net come forward to get them. At the end of the ceremony, and it was a ceremony, we asked the audience of three thousand people if they had ever heard the story of god’s love before. Some said yes, and others said no. They are a very expressive people. We asked those who wished to have this Jesus for themselves to come forward so we could pray with them that they might accept this wonderful savior.

          There she was, the old lady I talked to in the bush earlier that day, in the front row of about 35 or so people, with her head bowed, praying the prayer that assure her of being with God when this life is over.

It is up to us to accept the call to be sent to wherever you are in the world. Some go to places like Cambodia; others go to places like the corner drugstore. Some go to Africa others go to the foster kids in their area. Some go to China and others go to the homeless encampments under the bridge of the freeway. No matter where you are sent – just go and don’t be afraid that you will be over your head God will use you with your special gifts and talents to talk with whoever He puts in your way to talk to.

Maybe you do not feel comfortable presenting the gospel to someone. That’s OK, don’t do it. Just tell people what God has done for you. Do you have a different sense of your life since you accepted Christ? Did God touch your heart and give you the desire to stop using alcohol and drugs, maybe get over your anger, stop being codependent to others bad behavior, save you from financial problems?  God is probably waiting for you to invite them to church or a meeting with one of the pastors. Invite them. Call us to come and talk to them, we will most likely be there in a matter of minutes. It will shock and amaze you.

This is not necessarily about an experience where someone was converted to the faith, just an experience when you planted a seed, or maybe watered one. The outcome is up to you, and God will bring about the outcome He wants, in His time, with you or without you, but I have to tell you, when you get to be a part of it, even a little part, it is incredibly exciting to see lives change before your very eyes.

Philip (the apostle), put himself in a place – went where he was sent – and ran into the Ethiopian Eunuch,  Acts 8 here’s the story in The Message Bible.

26–28     Later God’s angel spoke to Philip: “At noon today I want you to walk over to that desolate road that goes from Jerusalem down to Gaza.” He got up and went. He met an Ethiopian eunuch coming down the road. The eunuch had been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and was returning to Ethiopia, where he was minister in charge of all the finances of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. He was riding in a chariot and reading the prophet Isaiah.

               29–30     The Spirit told Philip, “Climb into the chariot.” Running up alongside, Philip heard the eunuch reading Isaiah and asked, “Do you understand what you’re reading?”

                31–33     He answered, “How can I without some help?” and invited Philip into the chariot with him. The passage he was reading was this:

As a sheep led to slaughter, and quiet as a lamb being sheared,  He was silent, saying nothing.  He was mocked and put down, never got a fair trial.   But who now can count his kin since he’s been taken from the earth?

                34–35     The eunuch said, “Tell me, who is the prophet talking about: himself or some other?” Philip grabbed his chance. Using this passage as his text, he preached Jesus to him.

               36–39     As they continued down the road, they came to a stream of water. The eunuch said, “Here’s water. Why can’t I be baptized?” He ordered the chariot to stop. They both went down to the water, and Philip baptized him on the spot. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of God suddenly took Philip off, and that was the last the eunuch saw of him. But he didn’t mind. He had what he’d come for and went on down the road as happy as he could be.

                        What we have in common with Philip is simple, we are believers. God did not send him to do what he could not do. He sent him to do what He was already gifted to do. So it is with you and me. He will not send us to do what we are not capable of, maybe it is simply to go serve at a garage sale, or bring breakfast to the homeless, or volunteer @ the Salvation Army, I really don’t know. I do not think everyone here has to buy into the same mission, though I think if we all get behind a primary mission, we increase our ability to affect change for the good. If we all choose one or two missions as a church “passion” as it were, we might be able to do the most good in the community, because Awakenings Church as a living entity is also “sent”. Here, this valley is where we are sent as a community. Some of us are ALSO sent as individuals, but as a church we must be true to our calling.

                        So, here’s the tie in to the tennis story. Who are you listening to? Are you listening to voice of your own doubts, that just because you don’t feel comfortable with telling someone of the Gospel you don’t go where the other voice, the voice of God is sending you? Do you let the “nay sayers” have their way with you and tell you aren’t good enough? Or, are you afraid that your friends would say, … “you told what, to who?” or are you more like Philip listening to where God would send you so you can serve others on His behalf. It is an old cliché now, but the truth is that you might be the only Jesus someone may see in their lives, or not – if you don’t go.

                        So today I end with a question. If Missio Dei is God’s sending of His followers into the world to serve others. Where has he sent you?