Experience God! Get passionate about his mission! Volunteer!
If you could be a contestant on any gameshow, which one would you choose? There is no wrong answer. But I will offer some free pastoral counseling if you said, “The Bachelor”. Yes, there are some questionable shows, but there are also some that would be thrilling to be a part of. There are culinary competitions, obstacle courses, trivia games, fitness challenges… gameshows that appeal to all types of people.
I found some information about what it takes to get on some of these shows. This information comes from BestUSCasinos.org. I don’t endorse gambling. But they know about odds.
JEOPARDY
If you have watched much Jeopardy there was probably a time when you were sitting in your recliner, eating dinner and you were on a roll. You were beating all the contestants. You started calculating how many thousands of dollars you would have right now if you were there.
You don’t get there by sitting in your recliner. You actually have to take a test. The test is given once a year. An average of 80,000 people take the test. You must meet the eligibility requirements which include not being on any other television show in the recent past. Church live stream doesn’t count. About 2,500 of the test takers are invited to the in-person audition with a mock game and interview. In the end only 400 of the eager volunteers get selected to compete in Jeopardy, making the odds 1 in 200.
WHEEL OF FORTUNE
Since 1975 America been watching a few privileged people spin the wheel in each episode of Wheel of Fortune. Wheel of Fortune has lower odds than Jeopardy (you don’t have to be so smart). An estimated 1 million people complete the application each year. About 600 of these applicants actually compete making the odds of getting on the show roughly 1 in 1,667.
THE AMAZING RACE
If I could be selected to compete on a gameshow I would choose The Amazing Race. Contestants race around the world for 1 million dollars. The price would be great, but I would play just for the experience. They get to do some amazing things in amazing places. To be eligible you must be over 21 years old and have a valid US passport and driver’s license. There are approximately 20,000 applicants for each season. They choose partners, make videos, submit pictures, fill out applications, and attend auditions. In the end, 11 teams are chosen, making your odds 1 in 909 to be picked to go on this amazing adventure.
Any of these games could be a great experience but the odds of being selected aren’t all that good. Imagine a situation in which the rewards were larger, the adventure was greater, the experience was richer, and all you had to do to be selected was volunteer. It has happened before.
Isaiah was a guy from Jerusalem, a guy who “heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then he volunteered, “Here I am! Send me.” He was chosen for the most incredible privilege of living for God’s mission. There was no application process, no video, no test. Just an incredible opportunity and an eager volunteer.
Considering the odds of being selected for a game show, Isaiah’s experience is remarkable.
Maybe you have looked at the winner of a gameshow and thought, “I wish I could be that person but the odds are not good.” Or maybe you have done this spiritually. Maybe you have looked at someone who is alive in the mission of God. The Holy Spirit is leading them to be a part of incredible things. Maybe you thought, “I would like to be that person, but the odds aren’t good.” God is actively looking for people to send on into the greatest story ever, you can volunteer and be that person. Our persistent prayer can be, “Here I am, send me.”
You can do an internet search to find the precise details of how to apply for the Amazing Race. How do we engage in God’s mission? We can live as a volunteer for God. But it is not just simply raising our hand. We will look at how Isaiah got sent to learn how we can too!
3 HABITS FOR ENGAGEMENT IN GOD’S MISSION
1. EXPERIENCE GOD!
The mission, the volunteering, and the sending all begin with a glorious God. Try to allow your imagination to fill in the gaps that the limitations of language leaves in Isaiah 6:1-4. Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.” (v. 1). God was in the temple and the train of his robe filled the place. This is describing an overwhelming glory. Isaiah heard one six-winged seraphim call to another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (vv. 2-3). When these words of praise were vocalized the foundations shook, and smoke filled the temple. (v.4). That is the God who has a mission. That is the God looking for volunteers. We have to begin here. The credibility and importance and privilege of missions is the God behind it. It is His mission!
Isaiah volunteered, but only after he experienced the glory of God (verse 1-4). A personal experience with God is the one vital prerequisite for being sent by God on his mission.
Ministry flows out of being!
When I was 18 years old and a freshman at Southern Adventist University I took a class called Intro to Ministry from Doug Tilstra. The class was designed to challenge each students decision to pursue a degree for full time ministry. It’s not for everyone. The class was meaningful in many ways, but there are only two things I can distinctly remember learning in that class.
- At the beginning of each class, Dr. Tilstra would lead us in song. We sang the words of Isaiah 6:8, “I heard the voice of the Lord saying whom shall I send and who will go for us. Then said I, here am I, send me!”
- Dr. Tilsta reminded us nearly every class period that “Ministry flows out of being”. It is not produced out of doing, it flows out of being.
We need to be connected with God in a living experience! This is what ministry flows out of! Helping others know Jesus is the second most important thing you can do! Experiencing him for yourself comes first. The most essential preparation for sharing Jesus is knowing Jesus. The most essential preparation for going for Jesus is being with Jesus.
What do we mean when we use the word, “witness”? It is both a verb and a noun. As a verb, “to witness” is the act of sharing from personal knowledge. As a noun, “a witness” is a person who has personal knowledge of something. So, you cannot witness (verb) unless you are a witness (noun). If a court witness were to take the stand and bear witness about something they never actually experienced they would be lying under oath. So, if we witness about a God that we do not experience it is not a valid witness. It can actually do harm rather than good. To tell of a God we don’t know is to misrepresent him. It is second hand, hearsay. Coincidently, but appropriately, hearsay is a few letters away from being heresy.
Notice from these scriptures that being with Jesus comes first!
Mark 3:13-15 Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. 14 He appointed twelve—designating them apostles—that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach 15 and to have authority to drive out demons.
Matthew 4:19 Jesus says, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”
John 15:5 If a man remains in me and, I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Truly successful mission for God can always be traced to the time we spend with Jesus.
But wait, don’t despair by thinking that you are not qualified to serve God because you have not experienced enough of him. It doesn’t take much experience before you have something worth sharing. It doesn’t have to be a perfect or complete experience, just a real one.
First Disciples- Andrew spent the day with Jesus (John 1:39) and his little experience was enough to witness to his brother Peter, the one who would be a core leader of the early church (John 1:41-42). Then Philip and Nathaniel did the same thing with their limited experience (vv. 44-45).
Woman at the Well– The woman at the well experienced Jesus in the span of time it took the disciples to go get food. This brief experience was enough for her to invite her whole town, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (John 4:1-29).
Demoniac- The demoniac only had one encounter with Jesus but it was a real encounter (Mark 5:2-20). From that one experiences Jesus sent him, “Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” (v. 19).
Here are two balancing perspectives for volunteering for God’s mission, 1) Don’t volunteer without experiencing God, 2) Don’t let your little experience keep you from volunteering.
“These workers can never attain the highest success until they learn the secret of strength. They must give themselves time to think, to pray, to wait upon God for a renewal of physical, mental, and spiritual power. They need the uplifting influence of His Spirit. Receiving this, they will be quickened by fresh life. The wearied frame and tired brain will be refreshed, the burdened heart will be lightened… Not a pause for a moment in His presence, but personal contact with Christ, to sit down in companionship with Him–this is our need.” EDUCATION page 260
If you want to engage in the greatest mission ever you must experience the God of the mission.
Experiencing God gives us a right view of God and a right view of self.
In Isaiah’s experience with God’s glory, he confronted his own brokenness. Have you ever considered that your brokenness before God is something that prepares you to be sent on mission for him?
Isaiah 6:5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
Then Isaiah experienced God’s grace.
Isaiah 6:6-7 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
Experiencing God’s grace is a preparation for being sent by God.
God’s volunteers are not sinless, they are forgiven and empowered. There is humility, and power.
2. GET PASSIONATE ABOUT GOD’S MISSION!
We see that this glorious God has a mission to accomplish when he says, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Where is he sending and for what reason? What is God’s mission?
The mission he had for Isaiah wasn’t easy. He sent him to tell some hard words to the people of Judah and Jerusalem. But in those hard words he shared God’s mission to redeem those broken people.
Living in God’s mission a process of noticing what God is already doing and then joining him.
What is God doing? What is his mission? There are many ways to state the mission of God. What is coming next is a whirlwind of Biblical mission statements, partly to clarify and partly to show the range of answers to the question (What is God’s mission?).
Mission Statements of the First Advent– Why did Jesus come? That question is easy enough to answer. Right? Let’s hear a few of the reasons stated in scripture.
John 18:37
Jesus answered, “For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.”
Mark 1:38
[Jesus] said to them, “Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for.”
Luke 19:10
Jesus said, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Mark 10:45
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
John 10:10
Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
1 John 3:8
“The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”
Luke 4:18-19
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
If the various ways of stating the mission aren’t confusing enough, try this one…
Matthew 10:34-35
Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
Ok, let’s just stick with the “I came that they may have life” mission. But here is the point, there are a lot of different ways of articulating mission.
Mission Statements for the Church
Matthew 28:18-20 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Acts 1:7-8 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Matthew 22:36-40 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.
2 Corinthians 5:17-20
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.
Mission Statements for Eternity
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.
Revelation 3:21 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
So, after all that, what exactly is God’s mission? My goal was not to confuse us but to humble us. There are clearly different ways to state it. The different ways of stating it could give room for disagreement. We could argue and both of us could have the Bible on our side. If one of us believes that mission is holding a Prophecy Seminar that results in baptisms and another feels it is about building relationships though service, and another thinks it is about fasting and praying, they are all correct. Let’s be less dogmatic about the style and form of mission and more passionate about the mission itself.
We don’t perfectly understand what he is up to but there are clear themes in the verses we have read. His mission is about giving life, extending love, knowing God, and making him known.
Any summary is imperfect but if I was to try in one word, I would say “relationships”! In one sentence, the mission of God is to spread life-giving love relationships to everyone.
This is why we baptize and teach. This is why we serve. This is why we preach. So that people can have a life-giving love relationship with God and others.
The God who fills the temple with glory has a mission. And it is not to destroy us! It is to draw people into live-giving love relationships. Here is the question, can you get excited about that mission? You might not be excited about going door to door, or preaching, or hosting a stop smoking clinic, but can you get excited about love relationships?
3. VOLUNTEER FOR GOD’S MISSION
When I ask for volunteers when I work with the students at Amazing Grace Academy, hands go up like crazy. Not the high schoolers, being excited isn’t cool anymore when you hit 9th grade. But the younger kids reach their hands higher and higher, “Pick me, pick me”. They are so eager. When I choose one of them it is as if I am unleashing them for the greatest possible thrill. That is how I picture Isaiah. That is how I want to live. As we experience God and fall more in love with his mission we can live our lives with the eagerness of an Amazing Grace Academy 2nd grader at Friday chapel, “send me God! Send me!” Then God will not just be granting permission for us to serve, he be unleashing passion. It will not be a duty we feel we should do but a privilege that we participate in.
After experiencing glory, brokenness, and grace Isaiah hears this God say, “who shall I send?”. He was eager. If that God had a mission and he was looking for volunteers, Isaiah wanted to be sent. I want to live life with an enthusiasm for volunteering myself to be sent by God.
Volunteer! Not because the task is exciting but because our God is trustworthy. Volunteering takes trust. You might raise your hand when a friend asks for a volunteer. But if I was a creepy stranger you are going to be a bit more reluctant to volunteer. Notice this incredible detail. When Isaiah volunteered he didn’t even know what the assignment was. He just knew the God who gave it. It is only after he says, “send me” that God says “go” and details how he is being sent. I wonder, if we can trust the heart of God to be a mission of love, does it even matter what the assignment is? It is possible to have such an experience with God and such a passion for his mission that we don’t even care what the details are, we just want to be sent!
Living as a volunteer looks like waking up in the morning and looking at your schedule and asking God to send you on his mission in the events of your day. It looks like driving to work and praying, “God whatever it is you’re wanting to do with the people I interact with today, I don’t want to miss it. Send me!”
There are countless formal mission groups to volunteer with. I recommend it. But volunteering is not limited to these groups. It is a lifestyle of being attuned to God’s mission and pursuing it in each moment.
I still look at the contestants on game shows and wish I could have that opportunity. As I worked on this message, I have thought about this. Then I suddenly remembered that I once was on a game show, and I won. When I was a kid I got to go on the Rambling Rod Show and I won the smiling contest. I was that person who had the opportunity others wanted. I was picked!
We can be “that person” in the mission of God. You can live fully engaged in the adventure of what God is doing. Experience God! Get passionate about his mission! Volunteer!
