Yesterday I rode through the state of Maryland with a couple of young men en route to a retreat center north of Baltimore. As we traveled through a rainstorm in rush hour traffic to our more rural destination, the clouds rolled away to reveal one of the most beautiful rainbows I have ever seen. This is an amazing, beautiful world. Sin has brought so much pain and brokenness, separating us from God. But God made a way of rescue through Jesus and His work on the cross.
Yesterday I wrote about the process of sanctification. At the moment we trust Christ alone we experience salvation. In this life we then grow through a process of sanctification, which involves both the demolishing of idols in our lives and our becoming more like Jesus.
But there is a second thing we do to grow spiritually. The mission of God to redeem the world becomes our mission when we become part of the family of God by faith. After salvation we still walk on this earth because God has given us the honor of advancing His mission on the earth. Not only does He rescue us from sin and give us a relationship to follow Him, but He gives us the most satisfying mission we could ever have: to invite others to follow Him as well! Christianity is a movement, one that we get to be a crucial part of advancing from our local communities to the ends of the earth.
Read 2 Corinthians 5:17-21. If you now follow Christ, your life has been changed. You increasingly will see the world from God’s perspective not your own. And you are given the message of reconciliation (the gospel) and you become a minister of reconciliation. This is amazing: you and I as Jesus’ followers are God’s plan A to spread the message of the gospel. He did not give us a plan B. Many people think being a follower of Christ, a Christian, means being a church attender and a moral person. It means so much more. It means we see the world from the view of God’s story, and we focus on fulfilling His mission, called the Great Commission. But even when a believer understands the mission before us, we sometimes fall into the trap of thinking it depends on us, on our skill, on our effort. No, we partner with God in the Great Commission. We do not speak of His love alone. The goal then of life is to help others to see the wonder of God’s story and to help them worship Him as well.
We do not accomplish this by learning a plan of salvation to present to people. No, we learn to converse with people about the reality of the greatest Story ever known, to help people see reality and how God’s Story is actually their story.
In other words, you do not have to be an eloquent speaker or charismatic personality to be on mission for Christ, although God can use that. You do not have to be a pastor. Whether you are a butcher or baker or candlestick maker, no matter your vocation or your location, you can live and share the Story of God with others.
This is how the gospel spread in the early centuries after the church was born. Yes, God used preachers and He still does. But believers of all types simply lived and told the Story in the existing social networks of their lives, and we can as well. You were created by God to know Him, to be a part of the great Story that He is writing.
You are not the center of the Story, He is. But you and I get to play a role, and our role in this Story far exceeds any story we could write on our own. And one day, either by death or Christ’s return, you and I will meet God face to face. This is the End of the Story in this life, but it is actually only the beginning. There will be a new heaven and a new earth that is more beautiful than we can imagine. And we will worship God with no sin, no idols, no evil, no sorrow to distract us. This is called our glorification, when the very presence of sin will be erased, where we will worship God with people from every tribe and tongue. It will be beyond any pleasure, any joy, any experience you have known to this point. Have you been changed by the Story of the gospel? Have you by faith become a follower of Jesus Christ? If so, tell the world. Tell your friends. Spend your life getting this message to the ends of the earth.
If you want to know more about this Story and how to share it with others, go to www.viewthestory.com.
This little 5 session series was intended to encourage you to consider Christ, to follow Him, and to share Him with others. It is a simple little survey of how things should be for the Christ follower. Soon I will write another series, but it will describe how we in the American church have tended to lose our way on this journey.
