The Mission of GOD in Real Time
June 25, 2010
God willing, we will begin our seven week series on The Mission of GOD this Sunday, in which we hope to walk through the story of the Bible and observe what God is doing in the world and how we engage in his mission. As we anticipate this journey, I want to reflect on last Saturday’s neighborhood picnic to help us identify the necessity of being gripped by the bigger picture of God’s mission in the world.
On Saturday we had an amazing time of celebration, feasting, and play. Few things communicate “We love you and want to bless you” to the dozens of neighborhood children who came more than snow cones, hot dogs, soccer, and a 15-foot tall inflatable water slide. You as a church family were spectacular. You pitched in, you served, and you reached out to the neighbors who came. Your love for one another and for our neighbors was on display throughout the event.
What is the connection between this and the mission of God? Do not organizations have events with snow cones and water slides all the time? Absolutely. Actually, that very fact is the reason why it is crucial to understand the bigger picture of what God is doing and how our labor fits into it.
As we will see over the following weeks, a central component of God’s mission is his drive to make himself known in all the earth. In his unsearchable purposes, he has decided to make himself known through the people he is redeeming and bringing into his family. From Abraham to the present his mission is to bless all the nations through his people, climaxing in the blessing of being enfolded into that people to dwell with him forever.
So when we invite neighborhood children to enjoy a festive event and seek to engage their parents, what we are most interested in them experiencing is the character and blessing of God himself. If God is on a mission to make himself known in all the earth and we are agents in that mission, then the servant hearted, unified blessing you displayed on Saturday is of eternal consequence.
Such bearings can be easy to lose. It is not difficult to enjoy doing an outreach like Saturday’s-or any act of kindness-for its own sake. Yet without the broader bearings in why we are doing this, we can get derailed when we face challenges or even opposition; we can get distracted by other pursuits in this world that capture our fancy; most tragically, we can miss key opportunities to speak of God’s greatest purposes to bless broken sinners by sending his son to redeem them for himself.
My prayer is that our journey through the mission of God would be much more than an academic pursuit. Rather, I hope it gives breadth, scope, and purpose to the work God has already called us to do and that it would propel us into even bolder work as we seek to engage in his mission that cannot fail.
With you in this greatest cause,
Pastor Chris