Missions Myth 4 (Missions Series 4 of 6)

A radical commitment to missions will cost you more than it will benefit you.

Missions Myth 4 is that a radical commitment to missions will cost you more than it will benefit you.

It’s common for people to feel pity for missionaries and their families because of the many sacrifices they make. But it’s also common for missionaries to feel pity for those who never make sacrifices for the global cause of Christ’s mission because they know Jesus’ promise, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” (Mark 8:34 

Jesus also said, “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home, or brothers, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age. Homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields and with them persecutions. And in the age to come eternal life.”

One of the primary reasons so many Christians today are suffering with such an anemic, joyless, powerless Christianity is because their lives are not more radically aligned with God’s global cause. The Scriptures teach that God takes pleasure in manifesting his presence and pouring out his power on those who will dare to radically align their purposes with his for the nations.

In 1996, John Piper preached a powerful sermon titled, “Doing Missions When Dying is Gain.” This sermon became a clarion call for followers of Jesus not to waste their lives but willingly embrace suffering and even death to do missions in the hardest places on earth.

Piper’s biblical thesis is that the pursuit of God's glory and the pursuit of our joy are not at odds. Instead, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him and the fulfillment of his mission on earth. This is why we must learn to spend our whole lives being as happy as we can be – in God and in the fulfillment of His purposes for the world through us, even when we suffer for his name.

But we must be careful not to allow a biblical passion for God’s glory and an awareness of how God uses suffering in his global mission to lead us to a naive and romanticized view of suffering, martyrdom, and missions. Yes, we must do missions when dying is gain, but we must also learn to do missions when living is gain.

Sometimes it’s much harder and much more needed for you to live for Christ than to die for Christ. Speaking of his daily suffering for the cause of Christ, the Apostle Paul writes, “I die every day! (1 Cor 15:31).”

But this radical call for you to suffer and even die for the sake of Christ and his global cause is not merely for God’s sake. This is also for your sake. Jesus promises you that the benefits will far exceed any costs.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor hanged for his part in the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler, commented on Jesus’ radical call for all of his followers, not just pastors, to take up their crosses and follow him:

“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our  lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.”[1]

In this call, Jesus reveals that the kingdom of God he is inaugurating is an upside down kingdom. If we want to save our lives, we must lose them. The way up is the way down.  Strength is found in weakness. Wisdom is found in foolishness. To be the greatest is to become the least. To be first is to be last. To live is to die.

The way to true happiness is not to focus on your reputation, your accomplishments, and your plans, but on God's glory, God's kingdom, and God's purposes. It’s no wonder the first-century Christians were described as “these who have turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6).”

The good news is that if you will surrender your life to Jesus Christ and to his purposes for the world, God promises to so reward you that afterwards you will not even be able to speak of having sacrificed anything.

David Livingstone, missionary to Africa, wrote, “If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?” In his message to students at Cambridge about his leaving all the comforts, pleasures, and benefits of England for serving Christ in Africa, Livingstone said,

“For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. . . . Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.”[2]

Your obedience to God’s will and his purposes in the world is a vital part of your experience of truly knowing him and experiencing his presence and power in and through your life. And the core motivation for giving your life to Christ’s mission must not be rooted in guilt or mere duty, but in your authentic passion to commend to others the astonishing love of God in Jesus Christ that you have come to cherish.

In his book, “Let the Nations Be Glad,” Piper writes that this is why our worship should be seen as both the goal and the fuel of missions.” In other words, our goal in missions is to see God work through us to raise up people from all nations who are not only converted, but who become heartfelt worshippers of God who truly cherish and love him above everything.

But worship is also our fuel for missions, meaning that it’s only when we truly cherish God for his amazing love for us in Christ, that we will be empowered to commend him both across the street and around the world. Piper writes,

“You cannot commend what you do not cherish.  We will never call out “Let the Nations be Glad!” if we cannot first say from our hearts “I rejoice in God...I am glad in Him.”  Missions begins and ends in worship...when the flame of worship burns with the heat of God’s true worth, the light of missions will shine to the most remote peoples of the earth. But where passion for God is weak, zeal for missions will always be weak.”

[1] The Cost of Discipleship, p. 99

[2] Cited in Samuel Zwemer, "The Glory of the Impossible" in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, Ralph Winter and Stephen Hawthorne, eds. [Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1981], p. 259. Emphasis added.)