Missional living Pt 2
In part one I was trying to express the heart of being missional and the passion that should drive us. I was going to write on Incarnational living next yet felt that missional living needed to be unpacked a bit more.
I see that if we miss what the “Mission” is we may miss our very purpose. This purpose should be a driving force, yet unlike the “purpose driven live”, we need to grasp the big picture as to what we are doing or if one is considering becoming a follower of Christ, what you may be getting into.
In John chapter 20 verse 21, Jesus states our mission. “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” We are commissioned as ambassadors of the Living Christ. In Matthew 28:19 -20 we are told a bit more specific as to what the duties are.
“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, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Yet before we do that there is one thing we must notice… that is in verse 18!
“Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
Jesus said this as some began to doubt that Jesus truly had risen… can you believe that? Here they see Jesus first hand alive and still doubt? Yet Jesus reassures the disciples and tells them that all authority is now been given to Him…
“As the Father sent me, so now I send you.”… This very phrase should echo in our hearts... it should resonate in our very being… We should shake in holy fear over the implications of what Jesus is stating…
All the authority that was given to Jesus is not imparted to us! This will either drop coldly like a rock with you or it will hit you like a train… either response is correct! Jesus is saying that this authority in now in our hands as we are the ones who hold the keys to he Kingdom, entering by Grace, through faith. These keys are powerful and frightening and should be handled with the utmost care. We must see these keys to the Kingdom as the key that literally unlocks the heart of God. These keys in their power place a person in a position to make a choice… to choose life, or death.
So, let’s go back to John 20: 22” And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."
The main part of this mission is to preach forgiveness, yet let us not overlook that it is not just forgiveness but also that the Risen Savior is the one commanding us to “go”. Again, we are born of the Spirit; the very breath of Jesus should bring us back to the garden when God breathed His Life giving Spirit into Adam. I don’t want to go too much deeper in this now because this will be gone over in the Incarnational Living posts I will be writing soon.
This same Spirit that raised Jesus now empowers us, and in that we receive God’s forgiveness and receive His Holy Spirit in exchange for our dead spirit. We receive the same life of Creation, yet, even more, we received now the resurrected Life of Christ. We now who are in Christ have sat at the trunk of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden and eaten of its fruit! We are not New Creations who have Eternal Life… and this is in Christ, and imparted to us as He breathed first on the Disciples in John chapter 20, then poured on all humanity in Acts chapter 2. As we receive the Spirit that is Life now within us, we must as the disciples in Acts 2, preach out of the overflow of the Holy Spirit to all the nations. That was the shadow of the reality that is upon us now… We are the generation that not only will preach to the entire world, but will pour out this same Spirit of Christ as we overflow, to those around us… In a crude way it is like a cold, spread by a single sneeze in a theater, and spread out to all in the theater. Which then is brought out into the different “theaters” of our lives… infecting as we go to those who in turn infect those around them…
Only this is a good infection… the infection of LIFE.
Again, the mode is not important, but the motive of heart will allow the power of Christ to work, in that if God is doing the work, He will complete it… in a sense it is our job to spread the germ of Life, and God will make it grow to make New Creatures in Him.
The most important thing in missional living is to live the Life of Forgiveness… of forgiving others in their hatred of us, to no longer let personal attacks cause us to lose focus on the TRUTH… the MISSION of Life. In that forgive those who trespass against us…
Matthew 6:12 “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” This is the core of Missional living… to forgive… for if we do not live with this as our very heart, I fear one does not have Christ in their heart as many quote the Lord’s Prayer out of memory yet miss one of the most important parts of it…
Matthew 6: 14 – 15 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
If one does not live in the very forgiveness of Christ, one will be without forgiveness from the Father. In that the mission in of itself is a waste and even worse, your own life is wasted instead of being of its purpose of bringing glory to God in Christ. Often we are enamored by the idea of the Great commission, yet unless we bring into our life and implement it, it will remain nothing but words in a book that sound majestic. It must be lived out and that only if Jesus lives it out through us.
As God commissioned Adam to take dominion… as God promised Abraham that he would be blessed to be a blessing… as Israel was commissioned to be a blessing to the nations…. We are now commissioned by that same fulfilled blessing, Jesus Himself to now be a blessing to all creation.
As we are involved in others lives... sharing the Life of Christ, we are relevant and a blessing to that persons life.
Go and be that blessings!
For more resources check out this link.
Blessings,
iggy
Intro
Part 1
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