What Kind of a Missionary Are You?

                      What Kind of a Missionary Are You?

    You notice I didn't ask "Are you a missionary?", that goes without saying. As a follower of Christ we have the Great Commission which says:

      "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matt. 28:19,20

      And we have the Acts 1:8 version of it which goes:

     "  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

    Our  Biblical prototype for the type of missionary we are is seen in this passage in Mark 5:1-20:

 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. ² When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. ³ This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. ⁴ For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. ⁵ Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
⁶ When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. ⁷ He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” ⁸ For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!”
⁹ Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
“My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” ¹⁰ And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.
¹¹ A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. ¹² The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” ¹³ He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.
¹⁴ Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. ¹⁵ When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. ¹⁶ Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man—and told about the pigs as well. ¹⁷ Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region.
¹⁸ As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. ¹⁹ Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” ²⁰ So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.

      I believe this is the only passage where someone asked to follow Jesus and he was turned down! I also believe that this man is the first recorded missionary in the Bible - and where was he sent? He was sent to his own people who knew him, knew what he was, knew his transformation, spoke the same language, and related to the culture.
      All of us are this type of missionary - we have been saved and transformed and we wish we could go to be with Jesus in Heaven but He says to us "No, be my witnesses here." Now that is not to negate the fact that some go to foreign unfamiliar lands if God calls them, but most of us stay.
      We see what type of a missionary we are once we are born again, but the question I was asking is "What kind of a missionary are you?" What I am getting at is are you a good one or a bad one or somewhere in between? Let me get at it this way - I'm sure you all have at some point in your life received a letter from a missionary you are supporting telling of how God is working in their called location or mission field. Pretend that you are a missionary from First Bapist of Paris, France. The congregation has sent you to Duluth, Minnesota (or substitute your home town) to a relatively unreached area to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and are investing in you $50,000 a year. Now it is time to write them a yearly support letter to convince them to keep supporting you. What would you write? What on Earth are you doing for/in the Lord? What difference are you making or have you made in the past year and what are your plans for next year?
      You see, most of us don't go through life intentionally like this or ask the question, "Why am I doing the things I am doing?" We take our kids to school, band or dance rehearsals, sporting events practices and games, go to work or serve at the school, go shopping, go to the gym, etc. all the while without asking, "How am I or how could I be using these things to advance the kingdom or as a missionary?" Instead of saying, "I spend 5 hours of the week taking my daughter to dance practice" our missionary support letter could say, "I am networking with a group of 10 parents of children who dance and I get to spend 5 hours a week with them, none of whom know Jesus, and am getting to know them and their needs. I am daily praying for them and one of them is having some medical problems and I have been able to take her to the doctor several times. We are getting close and she has let me pray for her and she has even agreed to go to a luncheon at our church.Please pray with me for her salvation." You see, suddenly a mundane event like standing for 2 hours watching your kid at soccer practice becomes a mission field. It all comes from living life intentionally with a missionary mindset and might I also add two other things.
       A missionary mindset is not only intentional but urgent. Why does the Bible speak of us being in the "Last Days" even though it was written 2000 years ago? Because God wants us not to get lazy or procrastinate because we don't know how long people have nor do we know how long the Lord will tarry. I remember a short term mission trip to Mexico and there were throngs of patients pushing in line to see me. The career missionary , not urgent because she would be there her whole life, yelled at them all and lined them up and said "If the doctor doesn't see you this time, the next time doctors come they will see you." She made sure we took an hour lunch break and quit right at 4. This drove me crazy because I was only there for 10 days and I wanted to see everyone I could because I wasn't there to rest, I could do that at home. 2 Tim. 2:4 says

    "No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs..."

      which to me means that you are here as a short timer, live urgently. In the example we are using, you have 1 year to make a difference or they will be calling you back to France and send someone else, so each day we need to try to make a difference.

      Lastly, a missionary mindset is that of an alien. 2 Cor. 5 speaks of us as ambassadors which means once we are saved, we are citizens of a foreign country, Heaven, and representing it here on Earth. Most of us in our example are so concerned about trying to make everyone in our town, USA think that we fit in rather than standing out, being different and representing our real home. It would be crazy for a missionary to start building a home and setting down permanent roots when he knows that his term is 5 years. He would use whatever budget he has, not to make himself comfortable but rather to spread the gospel. This is the meaning behind that bizarre parable in Luke 16 of the unjust steward where Jesus uses a scoundrel to portray a principle that money is not an end in itself but rather a tool to be used.
  
      So in conclusion, what kind of a missionary are you? What kind of letter would you write? Would the church back home support you for another year after reading your letter? What would you tell them are your plans for next year?  If you are like most of us, it would be a pretty weak letter but tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life - start now. I challenge you to get out a piece of paper and write a support letter. Be intentional. Be urgent. Be an alien!  

Studies Through 1 John- Lesson 7

            Studies Through 1 John- Lesson 7

                         Satan's Ploys

                                               1John: 2:15-17

     ¹⁵ Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. ¹⁶ For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. ¹⁷ The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

   How do we reconcile vs. 15 telling us not to love the world and if we do we don't have the love of God in us with "For God so loved the world" or God created the world in 6 days and it was good? Obviously it is understood by the different meaning of the word world. (Fortunately it doesn't have as many meanings as the word set) In the first case it refers to the population or people of the world and we are certainly to love them. The second case is the creation and we are definitely to love this and care for it. The meaning of the word world in verses 15 - 17 is Satan's system for opposing the work of Christ on the Earth. Therefore worldliness is being drawn into that system to the extent that you lose your enjoyment of the Father's love and you lose the desire to do the Father's will.

   Before we go into detail describing what these three ploys are, it is important to notice that Satan is using things inside of us - the flesh, the eyes, and our pride so it is probably more an internal problem than an external. Satan knows what is inside of us and from the beginning with Adam and Eve to the temptation of Jesus to our daily temptations Satan uses the same schemes he used 4000 years ago. James describes this in chapter 1 verses 14,15

  "  but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. ¹⁵ Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death."

      I like to picture this as resonance. I learned about this phenomenon in physics class. Check out the videos below;

 

 

Picture Satan holding a tuning fork vibrating the lust of the flesh up to our chest. Inside our hearts the lust of the flesh starts vibrating and it starts us in motion. Jesus talks about this in Matt. 15:16-20 when He says,

 

 “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. ¹⁷ “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? ¹⁸ But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. ²⁰ These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

 

There is something inside of us that irrationally is drawn to these devices of Satan as illustrated by the unexplainable need to go after squirrels in this clip from Up.

 

 

Lust of the Flesh

 

What is the lust of the flesh? First of all let's look at lust - what is this? It is basically an over-desire or a hyper desire usually for an acceptable thing that becomes a passion or something that directs our life rather than what should be which is Jesus Christ. The flesh refers to our lower or baser appetites such as sex, food, thirst, rest, comfort. These appetites are good until they start running our lives. The craving for sex drives us to immorality. The hyper desire for food drives us to gluttony. The over-desire for rest drives us to lethargy and so on. How does this show itself in our world? Have you ever seen a Hardees commercial?! Enough said. How is it demonstrated in the Bible? Probably the poster boy is Samson (Judges 13-16) driven by sex, food, fighting, his body - he reeked havoc on anyone who came in contact with him

 

Lust of the Eyes

 

Did you know the eyes have an appetite? Have you ever heard "feast your eyes on this"? The eyes are more refined than the flesh. They focus on sophisticated and intellectual pleasures. They plunge us into dissatisfaction and covetousness. The modern day examples would be car commercials where suddenly our car is a piece of junk. HGTV, I'm convinced is primarily geared toward this. People walk through houses and say, "Gross, wallpaper" or "Iiiishh, carpet" or, "No gas stove - deal breaker!" All this time we are watching and saying, "Oh no, we have carpeting, wall paper, electric stove and horror of horrors - dark cabinets". The Biblical example of this is Achan (Joshua 7). After being told by God to destroy everything in Jericho, Achan saw a Babylonian garment and 200 Shekels of silver and took them. Why? It can only be explained by the lust of the eyes. After all, he couldn't wear it -"Hey Achan, where did you get that awesome Babylonian garment?" "Umm, I made it?" Or where was he going to spend that money? They just destroyed all the Wal-Marts. It was just stupid but don't we all relate? Why? Because it is inside us all to varying degrees.

 

Pride of Life

 

The pride of life seeks to elevate ourselves over everyone else. I like what Warren Wiersbe says about it in his book "Be Real" a commentary on 1 John which I have gotten many of "my" thoughts from. "The Greek word for pride was used to describe a braggart who was trying to impress people with his importance. Why is it that so many folks buy houses, cars, appliances, or wardrobes that they really can't afford. Why do they succumb to the travel now pay later advertising and get themselves into hopeless debt taking vacations far beyond their means? Largely because they want to impress people with their pride of life. They want folks to realize how affluent or successful they are." Nebuchudnezzer is the prototype of this. One day he looked out on "his" kingdom and stated how wonderful he was and God caused him to crawl around on all fours like a wild animal until he admitted that God was the one in control not him.

 

These three temptations are nothing new; Satan has used them from the onset. In the garden, when he tempted Eve with the fruit in Genesis 3:6;

 

 "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it."

 

You see the lust of the flesh - "good for food", it met the bodily needs.

You see the lust of the eyes - "pleasing to the eyes". It brought dissatisfaction with all the other fruits that they were eating day after day.

You see pride of life - "desirable for gaining wisdom" I can be as wise as God.

 

Also we see it in the temptation of Jesus in Luke 4:3 - 12

 

³ The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
⁴ Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’
⁵ The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶ And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. ⁷ If you worship me, it will all be yours.”
⁸ Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’
⁹ The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. ¹⁰ For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you carefully;
¹¹ they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’

¹² Jesus answered, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.

 

          You see the lust of the flesh - feed yourself

          You see the lust of the eyes - look at all these kingdoms you could have

          You see the pride of life - jump off and show everyone how amazing you are

 

      Lastly, how do we fight against these? With the Word of God. Jesus quoted three passages in Deuteronomy to fight off temptation in these areas. How would one stop the tuning fork in the second video from resonating with the one beaker? Fill it up with water! Change your frequency. Abide in the Word of God and fill yourself up with Him and His truths and the devil's schemes wont have quite the attraction to us.

                            

Teaching Your Kids to Defend the Resurrection

                    Teaching Your Kids to Defend the Resurrection

       Our kids at some point will be released into the wild of College and secular thinking that denies the transcendence and innerency of the Bible, the Deity of Christ, the miracles of the Bible, Creation, the flood, and the resurrection and unless our children are able to defend why they believe what they believe, they will quickly lose their faith. "My parents say it is true" or "The Bible says it" will rapidly be laughed out of existence. To aid you in teaching your kids how to defend the Resurrection, that Jesus bodily rose from the dead, here are 6 easy points that you and your children can use.

   A. Apostles

         All the apostles except John died horrific deaths for proclaiming Jesus rose from the dead. You can make up a story about Jesus rising from the dead but you aren't going to die for it. Charles Colson talks about after Watergate scandal broke, they planned to all keep quiet and deny but within 18 hours everyone was squealing on the others plea bargaining to stay out of jail. Could 12 disciples really keep a conspiracy like that quiet for the rest of their lives and through torture and death. No! These cowards who all fled when Jesus was arrested soon boldly proclaimed the gospel unto death. The reason - they met the resurrected Lord.


  B. Bible

        Now I know I said how do you use the Bible as proof when people increasingly don't believe the Bible to be true. All I can say is that we have manuscripts of portions of the apostles letters that are dated to the lifetime of the people who would have around at the time of this supposed resurrection. What if I wrote a book that Elvis didn't really die because I saw him in Pigeon Forge. I would probably be ridiculed severely because the coroner, pall bearers, his wife, his children would say, "That's not true - we saw his body. We saw him put in the ground and he isn't alive." Now if it was written 100 years from now when all the eyewitnesses are dead, I might have better success. You see, as these letters were circulated about the resurrection, if they weren't true this claim wouldn't have gotten off the ground. People would have said, "No he didn't, here is his tomb and he is still in it.
       One other factor is often used to discredit the resurrection but actually supports it. The four accounts in the gospels all have variances which shows they didn't collaborate to make up a lie. Testimonies that are somewhat different in minor details but are in agreement on the main event are more acceptable in a court of law than testimonies that look like they have been rehearsed, copied, or memorized.

  C. Calendar

       Did you know that B.C. means before Christ and A.D. means in the year of our Lord in Latin. The calendar used by most if not all of the world was rearranged on the basis of Jesus Christ. There have been a lot of famous people to die in history and a lot of people to get killed unjustly or for a noble cause. But only one shaped history so much that he affected time. What was different about him? How about the fact that he rose from the dead. No one else has ever done that. Every great and famous person that ever lived, died and stayed dead.

   D. Dead Body

        Every murder or crime show has a dilemma, what do the perpetrators do with the body? We have a body dilemma in the killing of Jesus, too. Where did His body go? The myth circulating was that the disciples stole the body. How? There were armed guards stationed at the tomb with the royal stamp saying if you break this seal you die or if you soldiers fail your duty you die. As we have seen , the disciples were cowering in fear when Jesus was taken and there is no way they could have moved this huge stone without the guards hearing it. Also they wouldn't start a legend when all that was in it for them was poverty, hiding, and death. What about the Romans? If they took the body they would have just produced it to squelch this new religion which was a nuisance to them. There is no logical explanation for where the body went

    E. Empty Tomb

        All great people of history have grave sites that you can go visit. Jesus has an empty tomb but the surprising thing is that they aren't positively sure this is the right place. Why? Because the point was he was only there for a few days. The grave wasn't the focus because he wasn't there. He was and is alive.

    F. Females

      When you look at the Easter story, women are prominent. They are the witnesses of the empty tomb, they are the first to see Jesus, and they go tell the disciples who don't believe them. Why is this significant? Back in these days women were considered second - class citizens. Their witness was not acceptable in court yet these are the witnesses of the resurrection. If you were making up this, you would have men be the witnesses not women. The only plausible reason for including women is that this is how it actually happened. The only reason that the authors, the founding fathers of the church would have the women as the heroes and themselves as having no faith is that this is what really happened.