One Saturday morning, several years ago, I decided to board out the floor of our loft and to get our two sons (then aged 11 and 14) to help me. We had a great time as I showed the lads how to use the jigsaw and the power drill, and the three of us set about measuring, sawing, and fastening the boards in place. Every now and then, Sue would appear at the loft hatch bearing big mugs of tea and plates of digestive biscuits. It was a brilliant morning, me and my boys working together. I think I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.
Now, if the truth be told, it would have been much quicker to do the job on my own, but it wouldn’t have been half as memorable. I didn’t need their help to lay the boards on the loft floor, but I wanted to work with them.
Have you ever wondered why God calls us to mission? Why on earth would he put the treasure of the gospel into clay pots? Cracked pots, at that! It isn’t as though he needs us. If all he wants is to see the gospel preached and the Bible translated, he could call on an army of angels who could do the job more quickly and impressively than you or I. God doesn’t need us to reach the world for Christ any more than I needed my boys to help me lay some floorboards, but he wants us to be involved. God loves us so much that he wants us to work alongside him in his amazing work of taking the good news of his Son out to the whole world.
A call to mission isn’t an order that we should feel guilty about; it’s a glorious invitation to join the living God in the most exciting adventure that the planet has to offer. There are many ways to be involved in mission: giving, praying, going or telling your friends about what God is doing. However we are involved, we come closer to the heart of God and he uses our experience to help us grow more like him. God doesn’t just use us to reach out to the world; he is at work in our lives, too; transforming us. God will reach out to the world; the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea, and people from every tongue, tribe and nation will worship the Lamb.
When God calls us to be involved in mission, he invites us to join him on the winning team. You’d have to be mad to turn this offer down!
This is my article for the latest edition of Words for Life, the magazine of Wycliffe Bible Translators in the UK. You can find the whole magazine here (pdf).