Saturday, January 16, 2010

Here am I Lord - Send Moses!

There is no excuse for making excuses. That’s the basic gist of the conversation between God and Moses in Exodus Chapter Four. God had called Moses to a specific task, but Moses spent time laying out his list of excuses as to why he is not the one to lead the people of God out of slavery into the promised land. In the end we’re told that the Lord’s patience came to a limit and His anger burned against Moses (Exodus 4:14). That must have been like a deafening roar of a lion and a terrifying experience, because in the following verses we see Moses change his mind and begin to follow God’s orders.

In the days of Jesus people gave their excuses to put off His call to discipleship. The old chorus “I Cannot Come” lists those excuses: “I have bought a field, I have bought a yoke of oxen, or I’ve just taken a wife” (see Luke 14:15-24). To others who justified their disobedience Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead,” and “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God” (See Luke 9:57-62). It is nothing new that the call to follow Christ was met with excuses.

Things have not changed much. Today when we hear the call of missions and global impact, but we also hear a disheartening number of groups that tell us that we should stop sending Western missionaries. “North Americans are expensive and just mess things up (either culturally or with their sense of superiority),” they say. “Don’t you know about the history of Western missions and their connection with the sins of colonialism?” And then there’s the argument that “it’s much cheaper and more effective to pay for a national worker or evangelist without having to send ‘expensive’ Western missionaries.” Such arguments encourage us to use surrogates that will go in our place, but it’s an example of how we are content to throw out tidbits of cash, but unwilling to invest what really counts; send our flesh and blood to train those national leaders and walk alongside them as living examples of Christ’s love. It’s nothing more than veiled excuses and blatant disobedience to the Great Commandment.

Remember this: Justified disobedience is still disobedience, no matter how good the excuse.

In the past the Church measured its health and zeal by its passion to send out people into the world. People like Oswald Sanders, A.B. Simpson, and many others knew that there was a dynamic link between vibrant spiritual life and personal involvement in Great Commission ministries. If we are honest and look at the Church in North America, we would have to say that world evangelization has dropped a notch or two. In some cases it has been taken off of the agenda, and the excuses listed above are given as a justification. Is it any wonder that the North American church has begun to sag, and now begins to sit sadly on the sidelines as it watches a vibrant missionary Church in the developing world take up the torch?

I’m struggling with this. How can I mobilize a generation and culture that is saturated with comfort and complacency? How do I balance the need for missionary supporters and prayer warriors with the equally weighty need to send out workers into the harvest fields? How do I communicate that the primary motivation to responding to the Great Commission is loving obedience, not guilt or other devices of manipulation? But perhaps the most important question that I must always ask myself is this: Am I obedient to the voice and calling of God in my life, or do I settle for passing this off to another?

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