Naomi Reed writes a regular column in ‘The Pulse’ magazine. The article is called, ‘Pray, Give, Go’. We ought to be praying for mission, we ought to be giving to mission, and we ought to be sending workers into the field.
I think Naomi has missed the most common response to mission. She should consider renaming her article, ‘don’t pray, don’t give, don’t go’. It’s a catchier title which will resonate through larger sections of the Christian community.
Don’t pray because you are not committed to prayer. We believe in the power of the human spirit to dig itself out of a hole and construct a brave new humanity. We believe in spiritual evolution—the ability of the human spirit to defeat the demons that lie within us and evolve into autonomous, rational beings fit to rule the world. We are full of optimism because education is the key to progress. We live in hope that one day we will get the politicians that we deserve.
Don’t pray because life is too busy. Don’t pray because the mortgage demands an extraordinarily long and exhausting day. Don’t pray because quietly sitting down and talking to someone is so ‘last century’. Why isn’t God on Facebook? Don’t pray because well, admit it, that’s taking religion a little too seriously. And definitely don’t pray in your retirement years because God might call you away from the pleasures owed to you after a lifetime in the workforce.
Each month Naomi could catalogue the creative reasons why large sections of the church don’t pray for mission. The list would provide hours of regular and stimulating reading.
Then don’t give to mission because that means you’ve been praying. Greed is good because God wants his people to be showered with every material thing this life has to offer. Buy a larger house, go on exotic holidays, have FOXTEL in every room, air-condition the whole house, drive that bigger and faster car. Then come to church and thank the Lord for such wonderful things!
There are many reasons why we shouldn’t give to mission. The economics is easy: if you give money away then its not yours any more. And now’s here’s the real chestnut, don’t go. Who in their right-religious mind would pack their bags and head off to some ill-forgotten, third world country in a remote part of the globe? Naomi could write about the reasons why staying at home is a far more attractive option. We know that God saves who he wants to save, so why does He need me to sell my house and learn a new language when they should be speaking English anyway.
So a monthly article, ‘don’t pray, don’t give, don’t go’, has much going for it. Most of the Western Church has been doing this for years. It’s a tried and tested formula. We don’t even need to go overseas to experience culture shock. Our culture has shocked us into believing that the psychologists, philosophers and scientists are the evangelists of our time. So already I’m out of a job. Why bother with mission.
What do you think?
When we get our heads into the Bible we quickly see that all those expensive vitamin pills have made us more than a little delirious. Even superficial reading of the Bible tells us that God has a heart for the lost—that he wishes no-one to perish but for all people across all nations to come to their senses and repent of their rebellion. God wishes hell upon no-one, he wants all to have life through his Son. Such is God’s passion for the lost that he engages in fierce conversations with his own people and with the population in the wider world.
Jeremiah is known as the ‘weeping prophet’. We see his passion as he pleads with a rebellious and stubborn Israel. ‘My people are fools; they do not know me. They are senseless children; they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil; they do not know how to do good’ (Jer. 4:22). Can you hear God directly engaging the problem? That’s a fierce conversation. Susan Scott has written a book called ‘Fierce Conversations’. ‘When you squeeze an orange, what comes out of it? Orange juice. Why? Because that’s what’s inside it. When we get squeezed—when things aren’t going well for us—what comes out of us? Whatever’s inside us’.
Jeremiah weeps for his people because God is weeping for his people. ‘Oh my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart! (Jer. 4:19). Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn and horror grips me’ (Jer. 8:21). In times of crisis what comes out of God is what truly lies within him. Here is a plea that his people should love and obey him. Oh how God longed to hear these words from his people, ‘Yes, we will come to you, for you are the Lord our God. Surely the idolatrous commotion on the hills and mountains is a deception; surely in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel’ (Jer. 3:23).
God has a heart for mission.
There is another fierce conversation in Acts 17. Scott goes onto say that ‘a fierce conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves into the conversation and make it real’. Sometimes we can hide behind our words, but in a fierce conversation, we inject our real self into the dialogue. This precisely what Paul does amongst the religious people in Athens. There’s no hiding behind words as Paul proclaims to the Athenians that the God who made them will one day draw them to account. ‘For God has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead’ (Acts 17:31).
God wants us to ‘pray, give, and go’.
So we should be praying for mission. When we pray that God will stir unregenerate hearts we are thinking his thoughts after him. Prayer for mission is petitionary prayer which is rebellious prayer. It is prayer which rebels against the world in all its fallenness, it is the absolute and underlying refusal to accept as normal what is perversely abnormal. Rebellious prayer is the refusal of every agenda, every scheme, every interpretation which is at odds with the norms that God originally established for this world (David F. Wells). Rebellious prayer lifts our minds out of the sewer and raises them toward heaven and then says, ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name […] your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt 6:9, 10).
When we are squeezed, what comes out of us is what lies within us. That’s why prayer is so hard. There are competing voices in our head and aggressive competition for our hearts. What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? Jesus says to us in Matt 6 that the pagans run around after all these things. But for you, ‘seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well’.
As we pray for mission, we will give sacrificially to mission. Giving sacrificially means missing the money you would otherwise have. The Bible has much to say about money—about storing up treasures in heaven and about generously supporting others in need. About going into all the world and that costs money and time. The underlying principle comes to us in 2 Cor. 8:9, ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich’.
When we are squeezed, what comes out of our wallets reflects what lies within us. Give as generously as you can to mission. But we can’t stop there. For there are lots of young men and women in our church family. Surely God is not calling all of us to stay at home! How can this be?
In April 1901, John Mott wrote an article called The Responsibility of Young People for the Evangelisation of the World. It’s one of those in-your-face type of articles. Sometimes we need articles like this. He writes, ‘to have a knowledge of Christ is to incur a tremendous responsibility to those that have it not. You and I have received this great heritage […] to pass it on to others’. Mott goes onto conclude, ‘let us rise and resolve, at whatever cost of self-denial, that live or die, we shall live or die for the evangelisation of the world in our day’.
In this church family we have different groups of people. We have bright young men and intelligent young women completing their tertiary study. We have incredibly capable couples who are blessed with strong ministry skills. We have mature people coming to the end of their working life and who are looking into their retirement years. We have the elderly who have faithfully modelled godliness over a lifetime. And I want to say to all of you, ‘Hear the call of God on your life. Pray, give, go’.
So we close with these words from St Augustine, ‘A whole Christ for my salvation, a whole Bible for my staff, a whole church for my fellowship, and a whole world for my parish’. Let us be satisfied with nothing less as we consider God’s claim on our lives and his call to go into all the world.
