Jesus said to them again, ’. . . As the Father has sent Me,
I also send you’ —John 20:21
“A missionary is
someone sent by Jesus Christ just as He was sent by God. The great
controlling factor is not the needs of people, but the command of Jesus. The
source of our inspiration in our service for God is behind us, not ahead of us.
[…] In missionary work the great danger
is that God’s call will be replaced by the needs of the people, to the point
that human sympathy for those needs will absolutely overwhelm the meaning of
being sent by Jesus. The needs are so enormous, and the conditions so
difficult, that every power of the mind falters and fails. We tend to forget
that the one great reason underneath all missionary work is not primarily the
elevation of the people, their education, nor their needs, but is first and
foremost the command of Jesus Christ— “Go therefore and make disciples of all
the nations . . .” (Matthew 28:19). […] When looking back on the lives of men
and women of God, the tendency is to say, “What wonderfully keen and
intelligent wisdom they had, and how perfectly they understood all that God
wanted!” But the keen and intelligent
mind behind them was the mind of God, not human wisdom at all. We give
credit to human wisdom when we should give credit to the divine guidance of God
being exhibited through childlike people who were “foolish” enough to trust
God’s wisdom and His supernatural equipment.” CHAMBERS
Why did Jesus say He was sent? Why did He say He had come
to the earth? (John 18:37-38) “Pilate therefore said to Him, "Are You a
king then?" Jesus answered, "You say rightly that I am a king. For
this cause I was born, and for this
cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.
Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice." Pilate said to Him, "What is truth?" (John 14:6) “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life, No
one comes to the Father except by Me”
Pilate, apparently did not wait for an answer … and didn’t
realize he was speaking to the answer! In Haiti, the physical needs of the people are
overwhelming. It is so easy to shift
your eyes onto those things and lose sight of why primary motivation for being
in this place. the primary motivation …
for this cause we have come to Haiti, to bear witness to the Truth. Everything else is secondary to that. Yet that is the one thing that we abandon as
we are drawn to meeting the physical needs of the people. We lose our eternal perspective. Jesus did not come to bring riches or food …
He came to bring salvation …. Read the Bible, many people followed Jesus only because
He was meeting their physical needs. When
pressed on the spiritual things, they fell away. We experience the same thing here … and you
will experience the same thing we you are. If meeting physical or emotional needs becomes the most
important thing for you, then you will abandon your primary purpose.
That is not to say that you ignore the physical or emotional needs of
people, God provides resources to meet those needs, often through the same ones
that bring the Gospel. But we must never
abandon our primary purpose. So you might be wondering, “What does this
have to do with me? I am not a missionary.” Well, actually you are. Not in the foreign country sense .. Jesus said
to share the Gospel, to make disciples, in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the
uttermost parts of the earth. (Acts
1:8) Most people focus on the “go” and
don’t think much about the fact that He first, said we need the power of the
Spirit to do what He is telling us to do. Anyone, Christian or not, can hand someone a
cup of water. But only a Christian can
hand someone a cup of living water so the person will never thirst again.
We are in the uttermost parts .. where are you … Have you remembered
your primary purpose or are you too busy with this life to think about that?
Time to refocus, my friend. ELGIN
Bondye Beni Ou (God Bless You)
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