Subtle Differences

I have to apologize in advance if my rantings are beginning to sound repetitive, but I am enormously concerned that the Church has been extremely ineffective over the past 2000 years because we do not take the Great Commission seriously, or maybe more accurately, view the Great Commission from the correct perspective. We can float through our lives being tossed to and fro by the urgent, by things that tug at our emotions, etc. - being ultimately diverted from the very purpose God has for us. At the very least, our efforts for Him can become diluted.

Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and secondly, to love others. If we get that backwards, neither is fulfilled perfectly.

Satan does not have the power to take away our faith or salvation, yet I sense he still wields great influence in this world in the areas of health, politics, and all manner of evil in an attempt to divert our efforts and allegiance away from God's ultimate and best purpose for His Church - to bring glory to God. We can become so immersed in the chaos around us or around others we care about - family or peoples - that we simply respond from the "gut"(excuse the language). We work hard to do what we can to offset satan's influences. As one author I read in the "Perspectives" reading put it,"without the news of great hope and full confidence in a completely sovereign God, we will have a sense of missions as an exhausting human endeavor." Is that why after 2000 years, the "nations" are still not reached?

I feel, at times, I am insensitive to the human needs around me as I ponder these things. There are great needs around us and in the world. As one author, Dearborn, stated, "we must confront huge problems and fundamental issues - but in the context of a coming Kingdom, not in the context of ever deepening chaos. Missions should not ultimately be response to human need." Isaiah states it another way when he derides Israel for being so consumed by the "ever deepening chaos" that she did not accomplish what God meant her to do; "As a woman with child and about to give birth wriths and cries out in pain, so were we in Your presence, Lord. We were with child, we writhed in pain, but gave birth to the wind. We have not brought salvation to the earth; we have not given birth to people of the world." Is 26:17-18. (this verse is very interesting for the reason it demonstrates two Godly principles we do not normally attribute to Old Testament times: 1) that God gave the "great Commission long before Matt 28, and, 2.) that "New Birth" should not have been a new idea to Nicodemus - but that is another subject)

Ending with two more quotes from my readings, both from Dearborn; "Missions is ultimately not a human response to a human need - it is the Church's' privileged participation in the actions of a triune God." God will respond to the chaos created by satan in the world and will show us how to come along side - but - don't we need to let Him show us - not respond from the "gut" or emothion?
"It is insufficient to proclaim that the Church of God has a mission in the world. Rather, the God of Missions has a Church in the world."
We can ever more closely be that participant in what God is doing. We can continually become that Church the God of Missions uses to do His purpose.