Excerpt from an evening with the church here. We were asked to describe the hearts of some folks we've recently visited on the other side of the world (depending on where you live) , in different places...
As for these folks we've been with overseas ... I don't think there is anybody here that wouldn't be effected by knowing some of these folks. We loved them to pieces! As you felt and saw their zeal and humility in these different places, I think you might be even a tad embarrassed -- which could be a good motivator for further growth. I think you would be spurred on to more love and good works to see what is possible, and how you can take what you've been given and be far more fruitful and passionate about it than you may have been in the past. I don't think there is anybody here that wouldn't catch a little bit of the contagious nature of the fact that these guys really, really cared and weren't afraid to say so and weren't afraid to do whatever needed to be done in response. Whatever they had to do, they would do it. A lullaby is a really pretty song that makes your heart warm, but it also puts you to sleep eventually. I think we each have to decide if "the song" in our spirits is John Phillip Sousa marching orders -- or "Brahm's Lullaby." Which will you hear as the music of the Spirit? There's no doubt in my mind that those guys would, on an individual basis, have a lot of awakening power if you were to spend some time with them. You might be quite shocked at how much you have given away on an individual basis, and where you could be right now. How sloppy, perhaps, you've been with your private time. Like all the times you have slept in and jumped out of the house just at the last minute instead of spending time with God. And how many opportunities you missed to talk to other people, and how many things you let creep into your life on a worldly basis that didn't need to be there. I think some of you would be a little embarrassed at some of the sloppiness and ineffectiveness that has crept in without you really taking it as seriously as you should have.
I also have no doubt that you would respond vigorously and appropriately if you saw that kind of challenge in front of you. I'm sure you would respond. I think I know your hearts well enough to know that. Having said that, and since they're not here, why don't you just go ahead and do it anyway? Is that a good plan?
What more do we need, really, than what God has already done for us? "What more could I have done for My vineyard than I have already done?" I'm sure there will be things that we'll learn as the days go by. Certainly the scrolls will get unrolled a little further as time goes on, too, where there will be things we will have to learn because it's something God is saying now to the churches that He wasn't saying before. That will come up. And yet really, all it does is provide all the more conviction that to those that are given a trust, they just better prove faithful. The more we're given, the more we better be doing something about it.
Another thing we talked about a little bit on the plane on the way back over the pond... what would it be like if you were to realistically follow Paul's journeys around. We know he was no "missionary" as that word is used today. There is no such thing in the Bible. He was an apostle, not a missionary, and that is a MONUMENTAL and essential distinction. And, further, he had no "ministry" as men label such things today. In fact, no one in the Bible had their own "ministry," as religious men function today. The WORD "ministry" is even mistranslated in our English Bibles to the detriment of God's Work. Paul was not a "missionary" and therefore made no "missionary journeys." But that's not the only misconception of what Paul was doing in the years he was given. Take away the stained glass affect, take away all the hype and the fact that it's in the Bible. Just realistically look at what happened, how many people were involved, what the situation was like while he was there, who was with him, and then a year and a half later -- what the situation was like then. The historical record of the church in Thessalonica shows that there were perhaps 70 people that were a part of the church there. If this account is accurate, and if you think about it in practical physical terms, it wasn't very impressive, as men measure. Had you been in Philippi after Paul had the dream of the man calling him to Macedonia, you wouldn't have been very impressed. Paul ran into a few women at a river, and some gave their lives to Jesus. The episode with the jailer was kind of cool, but there were no big numbers beyond a few midnight baptisms. There's nothing really extraordinary about the numbers, and the city of Philippi had no reason to even take notice of it for a long time. They may never have really noticed it in terms of raw numbers and impact in that respect. As Paul himself was to say, "Everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me." And, "I have no one like Timothy. He actually cares for the needs of others." And this was the most active and "successful" of the apostles, from the Bible account. Remember David Livingstone, the guy who affected all of Africa and had cities named after him? He had only two converts in his entire life, by his own testimony! But now, generations later, half of Africa's Christianity can be traced to his efforts. He never saw it. He only had two converts in his life. He was a miserable failure. Or was he?
If you take away the stained glass affect and look at what it means to be faithful, maybe it's not this big old hyped-up "missionary journey" sort of stuff anyway. Maybe it's just being obedient and faithful and doing what you need to do and watching to see what happens in a generation. In a few years and a couple of decades, just see what comes to pass. It might be a lot different than if we are looking for some big show, some great big extraordinary thing. There just weren't very many of those. There was the day of Pentecost, and there was something kind of large, it seemed, in Samaria with Philip. Other than that, you're pretty hard pressed to find very much in 60 years of recorded Biblical history that's all that flashy. Yet here we are 2000 years later and continents away and millions of people involved in the process. But it was really only a relatively small handful of people in Galatia and Philippi and Ephesis. It just wasn't big numbers or a big powerful sort of thing. They all kind of knew each other by name. When Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, he named a bunch of the church there. He knew them because they had just moved from other places or whatever. We're not talking about some millions of people and great revivals. "God, pour out your revival over the nations!" I'm glad for that when it happens, if it happens. Really, I think, even Jesus' life kind of proves that that's not necessarily what God was after anyway. The affect will be there, but it will have no beauty or majesty. And the Work will even seem rejected by God, as the prophesy holds true to this day.
The mark of something God is doing is not what men esteem and are impressed with. That Principle goes all the way back through all of God's History. The mark of something God is doing isn't measured by externals and size. It's measured by that internal glory of responsiveness. Consider again the Thessalonians, and their incredible responsiveness, "with deep conviction" and then change:
"For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of Good News came to you not simply with words, but also with power: with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. ... And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe."
We need to really understand how kind God has been to us, and how faithful we need to be in response to that. Let it cause an awakening in us as individuals when we realize that God's people are seeing some things that they are willing to risk their lives for. They immediately, passionately, want to go do something about it. This was true everywhere we visited, to the praise of His glory. God truly does have a People that care deeply, in many cities and countries. Even a young man in his teens was rejected by his Islamic family for giving up his family's religion after hearing about what the Bride of Christ can and will be. He was thrown out of his home, only to return to his Muslim village and tell a couple of fishermen about Jesus, and how Jesus' Church and corporate Christ-Life can really be... starting what looks like now to be a significant move of God in that village.
We ended the time in Africa two days early, not because we were all worn out and tired or anything, but because the people there decided that they had the marching orders that they needed. And they had now the tools and weapons they needed in order to go back to their cities and get to work. Their wonderful thought was, "Why stay here and talk about it more when we already know what we need to do to obey?" After 48 hours in one city, a Pentecostal congregation had dropped the dividing denominational baggage and had become just Christians. The "pastor" had resigned on the spot to become "a brother amongst brothers" (Mat.23). And, before we had left the area, we had already received reports back from Baptist, Nazarene, Catholic, Anglican, and Church of Christ congregations, all within a stretch of just maybe a couple of kilometers of each other. People were sharing the Good News of the Kingdom all throughout the city, like the woman at the well had done, immediately after Seeing what God had done! They were telling us of people's lives that were already being affected by what happened in this ex-Pentecostal group. Now they were seeing Who the Holy Spirit REALLY is, in power! You could just see the intense hunger and the honesty, coming out as, "This is clearly from God. What are we going to do? We better change, I guess."
It was just that rapid. They weren't negotiating about it. They weren't trying to find a way out. They weren't trying to water it down and find a comfortable way to apply it. They were just doing whatever they had to do because, "Well, this is God and I say I'm a Christian, so I guess I don't have any choice. Might as well just change my whole life." It was just that fresh and that simple of an attitude. You don't have to be around people like that very long before you realize that whatever you think you know about something, you have really come up way short if you don't have that kind of attitude. I think that anyone would be convicted by spending time with these guys from Australia and Africa, and seeing how desirous they were of "following the Lamb, wherever He goes."
We expect that out of our children, right? You're not going to tell them to come to you three times. You might tell them once. But after that, there's an immediate cost for them to ignore your voice. We expect all of our children to come the first time that we call them. When you tell them to be silent, you expect them to immediately be silent. When you ask them to sit down, you don't expect them to keep on roaming around and fussing around-you expect them to sit immediately when you ask them to sit. We expect that of our children. What we saw were people, from a grade school girl all the way up to an 80 year-old, who had that same attitude-just like what we expect from our children. We ask our children to sit, they immediately sit. We expect that of them. We don't expect them to keep roaming around and fussing and then running off and then eventually being wrestled into the chair. I think we have accepted that out of ourselves when we wouldn't accept it out of our children. And we saw 80 year- olds all the way down to 14 year-olds have that kind of response. They didn't know us from Adam. We just show up there. They don't know anything about us, really. And we say things to them, that for some, they have never heard before in their lives. And they're saying stuff like, "This has always been in our Bibles; why didn't we see it?" They're mad at themselves for not being obedient before they ever heard it! I think that is something worth emulating! When we said something that they acknowledged was from God, they said, "Okay. All I need to know is if it's from our God. If it's from God, then sure. Whatever. Absolutely. I'll do it. I'll sell lands and possessions." Like Jesus expected of the rich young ruler, "Go sell your possessions and give to the poor and then come." A child says, "Okay." But somebody more complicated than that, like us, says, "Well, yea, but isn't there another way? And how quick do we need to do it? And aren't there many ways to sell all your possessions? We'll just kind of make it available to God whenever He might need it someday, theoretically speaking." That isn't what Jesus said. He said, "Go sell every bit of it, and then come." Just a real simple matter. And these guys had the child-like attitude where they said, "Okay." And it was very encouraging, to say the least. I would say that's worth learning.
Let's get practical here. How would we embrace, or recover, this fresh simple attitude that we've seen all over the world recently? I can give you a very specific example which will hit home in this room someplace. A little discord took place today in conversation and relationship between two. What's the obvious thought of Jesus? "Lay your gift down at the altar, and go make it right."
Now you have a couple choices of how to respond here. "Well, I just can't...it's not my fault..." And it's all logical. And you can understand where they're coming from. Both sides have their own stories and their own reasons. But I guarantee you that for this entire trip and any country we went in, it was, "Lay your gift down at the altar and go make it right." Boy, that's really hard in view of the immense pain and complication of this whole thing. But, yea, that is what Jesus said, isn't it? Okay. I'll go do that. I don't know how it's going to turn out. But I'm going to find a way to make it right. If that's what Jesus said. Okay. I'll go do it." It was just that kind of simplicity of obedience that didn't care how complicated it was or who was right or what their response might be if you tried to make it right. All these complicated things we've let ourselves get into. "But they wouldn't listen anyway." "But they started it." And all this kind of stuff that we've done to ourselves. But what we saw again and again, to our refreshed amazement, was, "Jesus said it. I know I don't feel like I started it. I don't think it's my fault. I have an idea that they might not be real responsive, but I don't care. Jesus said to go make it right. So, I'm going to find a way to make it right." Jesus said, "Go sell your possessions and give to the poor." And they're response was, "Okay." That's the kind of very fresh obedience that brings pleasure to the Father. It wasn't whether or not it was logical or easy or hard. It was, "Did Jesus say it? Yes or no? If He said it, then that's what I'm going to do. No questions asked. I don't know how it's going to work out. We'll find a way to make it work. I won't second guess everything and think of all the reasons why it won't work and try to find other ways and negotiate with it all." It was a very fresh, instant obedience to some of the hardest things you could imagine, regarding idols, sins, and traditions of men in their lives. But... JESUS was the apple of their eyes, and they showed it!