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CBC H2Go – Christ: The Joy of Missions

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I’m posting today over at our church’s missions blog:

Habbakuk 3:17-19 “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.”
Strategic Recklessness is really about JOY.  “We forsake our security and comforts in this life to fulfill the Great Commission and to seek our everlasting joy in Christ.”  Christ does give us a superior joy.  Somehow the prophet knew this reality to be true.  Even though everything seemed to be taken away, He still had God and that was the place of joy.  Missions might mean you are inconvenienced, persecuted or even put to death, but having that everlasting joy in Christ means that it will never end.  It’s yours today in Him.  Christ is the joy of missions.  Let Him inspire you to give up all for sake of His cause.

Risk Is Right.

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I’m posting over on our Church’s Mission Blog today…

From John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life (pp.89-90):

Risk is right. And the reason is not because God promises success to all our ventures in his cause. There is no promise that every effort for the cause of God will succeed, at least not in the short run. John the Baptist risked calling King Herod an adulterer when he divorced his own wife in order to take his brother’s wife. For this John got his head chopped off. And he had done right to risk his life for the cause of God and truth. Jesus had no criticism for him, only the highest praise (Matthew 11:11).

Paul risked going up to Jerusalem to complete his ministry to the poor. He was beaten and thrown in prison for two years and then shipped off to Rome and executed there two years later. And he did right to risk his life for the cause of Christ. How many graves are there in Africa and Asia because thousands of young missionaries were freed by the power of the Holy Spirit from the enchantment of security and then risked their lives to make much of Christ among the unreached peoples of the world!

And now what about you? Are you caught in the enchantment of security, paralyzed from taking any risks for the cause of God? Or have you been freed by the power of the Holy Spirit from the mirage of Egyptian safety and comfort? Do you men ever say with Joab, “For the sake of the name, I’ll try it! And may the Lord do what seems good to him”? Do you women ever say with Esther, “For the sake of Christ, I’ll try it! And if I perish, I perish”?

Today, maybe God is calling you deeper.  Christ is that compelling.  He’s calling us to be strategically reckless for Him.  Let’s go to Him, outside the camp and find Him to be all satisfy.

Love and Strategic Recklessness

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Here’s a post I wrote that appeared on our church’s mission blog (the CBC H2Go blog) today:

One of our mission team’s core values is that we’d be strategically reckless:  forsaking our security/comforts in this life for the everlasting joy that’s found in Christ.  It seems we’re giving up so much, but then, again, when we consider what we’re gaining (Christ) it’s really nothing.  I was thinking about how this relates to love.  Love is risky.  Love is saying “no” to ourselves and laying our lives down in service to others.  For this reason, Paul commanded the Romans to “owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves one another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8).  In other words, when we love, we are so in tune with God’s heart that it can be said of us that we are obeying all that God intends for us.  

Love.  It seems so easy, yet is a very costly thing.  Today, how might love inspire your strategic recklessness?  How does Christ’s love compel us to be loving in our actions?  Let’s step out as a strategically reckless people in love. 

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I would add that today the Christian church celebrates Love.  Maundy Thursday is about that new commandment that Jesus gave that we love one another.  This really connects well with this theme I wrote about for the Missions blog.  Hope you’re inspired by the love of Christ, which is controlling you, to be the loving people you’re called to be.