Somewhere along the way we have subtly and tragically taken the costly command of Christ to go, baptize, and teach all nations and mutated it into a comfortable call for Christians to come, be baptized, and listen in one location.
Interpretation
Christ's command to spread the Gospel has shifted from active outreach to passive attendance.
David Platt highlights a concerning trend within Christianity where the original mission to go out and evangelize has transformed into an invitation for believers to gather passively for worship and learning. This shift can lead to a stagnant faith that prioritizes comfort over the active spread of teachings, which undermines the essence of Christ's command to disciple all nations.
In practice
In a sermon on community outreach, one might say, 'We must remember that Christ commanded us to go and make disciples, not just to sit and listen.'
So what is the difference between someone who willfully indulges in sexual pleasures while ignoring the Bible on moral purity and someone who willfully indulges in the selfish pursuit of more and more material possessions while ignoring the Bible on caring for the poor? The difference is that one involves a social taboo in the church and the other involves the social norm in the church.
The price is certainly high for people who don’t know Christ and who live in a world where Christians shrink back from self-denying faith and settle into self-indulging faith. While Christians choose to spend their lives fulfilling the American dream instead of giving their lives to proclaiming the kingdom of God, literally billions in need of the Gospel remain in the dark
What if the very reason we have breath is because we have been saved for a global mission? And what if anything less than passionate involvement in global mission is actually selling God short by frustrating the very purpose for which he created us?
A high view of God’s sovereignty fuels death-defying devotion to global missions. Maybe another way to put it, people, and more specifically pastors, who believe that God’s sovereign over all things will lead Christians to die for the sake of all peoples.
[...]there is no injustice in God. The injustice lies in Christians who possess the gospel and refuse to give their lives to making it known among those who haven't heard.
God involves us in his missions not because He needs us, but because He loves us. And in His mercy He has invited us to be involved in His sovereign design for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church... nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that every where I am in Thy Presence
To be Catholic is the only way of being fully and utterly Christian.
Talk to Allah in your own language with your heart fully present. Allah doesn't need you to rhyme or speak arabic.
God doesn't want religious duty. He doesn't want a distracted, half-hearted, 'Fine, I'll read a chapter...now are You happy?' attitude. God wants His word to be a delight to us, so much that we meditate on it day and night.
Ministry in no way is a privilege...it is the core of the Christian life. No Christian is a Christian without being a minister.
None of it gets to be 'old stuff', for it is Christ in print, the Living Word. We wouldn't think of rising in the morning without a facewash, but we often neglect that purgative cleansing of the Word of the Lord. It wakes us up to our responsibility
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