• Our hope-filled future is bound up in sharing the story of Jesus, in discipling others, in bringing those disciples together into communities of believers, and in developing and releasing those believers to create other communities... till Jesus the King comes again!

Calling to His mission

Posted on June 6, 2022 by wtdavid

Os Guinness in his book, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, writes this: “Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service.”

That is a mouthful to say the least. However, I believe Os Guinness was putting his finger on something that is central to a focused life and a life where one finishes well.

In terms of a “focused life”, Os Guinness puts our eyes and heart back on the centre of all that there is: God.  Oftentimes, we as cross-cultural workers try to fit our lives into the world in which we now find ourselves living, rather than allowing ourselves to be adapted, molded to the new context in which God has placed us.  Os Guinness puts it this way: “The truth is not that God is finding us a place for our gifts, but that God has created us and our gifts for a place of his choosing – and we will only be ourselves when we are finally there.”  I love final phrase: “we will only be ourselves when we are finally there.”. In effect, Guinness is reminding us that all the joys and struggles of a calling to cross-cultural church planting are part of God’s means to grow us up into Him; to grow us in holiness.

But Guinness also points to calling as a life where one finishes well.  Oftentimes a life that does not finish well is one of forgetfulness and loss of gratitude for all that God has done in our lives.  Doing a personal ministry timeline is one way of seeing how God has worked in our lives over months and years. Calling is first and foremost a calling to Him, to belong to Him. This we must never forget, for it will lead to a parched soul and a complaining heart. 

Calling is a central piece in the narrative of our journey with God. We are where we are because of His call upon our life.  And it’s the One who called us who will keep us where He has placed us to serve Him!

Filed under: Calling, Grace, Thankfulness | 9 Comments »

What keeps you in the work?

Posted on January 11, 2021 by wtdavid

I’m sure that you have either asked yourself the question or been asked the question: What keeps you here?  What keeps you going when life and ministry get a bit tough? 

We’ve all had one of those days when we wonder how we can keep going in this work of cross cultural church planting.  And we’ve all had someone ask us the question as to what keeps us ploughing ahead when the work doesn’t go exactly as planned.

I’ve started reading and studying through Romans again and found the start of an answer in the very first words of Paul: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God” (Romans 1:1).  To put it simply, what kept Paul in the work was a thoroughgoing understanding of God’s grace, and the truth that it was God who had sent Paul into this work.

Paul was a “servant” who served because he recognized the depths of the riches of God’s grace towards him (Paul).  And if God had shown Paul such grace through the gospel, then this gospel was for all peoples, all nations. One writer put it this way: “If we would be used of God, we must have view of the gospel that is as broad as the universe.” 

Paul was also an “apostle”, that is one who is sent.  If we were honest with ourselves, we would admit that we didn’t ‘run into this work’ on our own initiative and effort.  We felt the pull of God’s call upon our heart.  Most of us remember and could put words to that ‘calling’. He was the initiator. And what He did was to send us. 

So, when things get rough, when the work doesn’t progress as we would like, our best move is to run back to the Father.  Ask for Him to restore to us the joy of our salvation, to recognize His grace at work in our own lives.  And then remind ourselves who called us, who sent us to do the work of the ministry.

When I remember that latter piece in particular, that it was God who sent me, it can cause me to see how much more I need to grow in prayer and in ‘believing’.  And it will keep my feet from running from the work, towards engaging even more in the work.

Filed under: Calling, Church planting, Serving, Unreached people groups | 2 Comments »

Calling

Posted on March 6, 2019 by wtdavid

Rebecca and I have close friends that we have known since university days.  Nancy has always been prolific and insightful in her writings.  Monthly emails often contain what I call ‘spiritual gems’.  She has a way of capturing Christ in so much of what happens day to day, and then to use that image as a reminder of our need to ‘speak the Gospel to our hearts’ each day.

Let me quote from one of her emails titled: Calling

“Of all the staggering Scriptures, the verse that most staggers me these days is Hebrews 5:7, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” He was heard. Not saved from death, but heard. Isn’t that enough? To be heard by the God of the universe? If it was enough for Christ, how dare it not be enough for me?

At the recent Together for the Gospel conference, we wore these bands:

10,000 people wore the black bands allowing access to the conference. Far fewer people wore the white bands that allowed access to the speakers. How foolish we would have been to have this gift of access and not use it to get notes from and have conversations with the speakers so we could better serve the main participants!

We still have the bands, but we no longer have access to the speakers. I can’t ask John MacArthur what to say to the students about prayer. Chuck can’t ask John Piper about a thorny paragraph he is trying to translate for seminary. But God has given us better-than-white-bands: unlimited access to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16)!

What thirsty person, tongue brittle as a leaf in drought, has access to a fountain of pure water but crawls past it? We have access to the life-giving fount, but pass by it if we skip or skimp on prayer.”

At first I pondered why she gave the subject line as “calling”.  Then I realized that our calling is first and foremost to God (read Os Guinness, The Call, on that topic) and our main ‘access’ is by our conversation with the Father.

We might say, in other words, that our calling is to bring the nations of the world before the Father’s throne and plead with Him to work in us and through us that many might come to know the Messiah Jesus.

Filed under: Calling, Mission, Prayer | 4 Comments »

Lost people matter

Posted on June 29, 2017 by wtdavid

Have you ever come to the point where you have said to yourself: “I think I’ll just go and get a ‘regular’ job”?  As if to say that letting go of ministry would give you a ‘much easier’ life?

With a couple of colleagues, my wife and I are reading through the book: The Attentive Life.  I stumbled across this quote today in my reading: “The gracious indwelling of God with his people is not an invitation to settle down and forget the rest of the world: it is a summons to mission, for the Lord who indwells with his people is the one who goes before them in the pillar of fire and the cloud.  So the promise of his presence is clinched in the words, “Up, let us go hence.”  There is a mission to be fulfilled. There is a conflict to be waged with the powers of this world.”

Our calling is not one to a ‘cozy time by the fire’, but rather one where a God who abides in us, and we in Him, will cause us to see others as He sees them.  We will see lost people who © Martin Investigative Services, private investigators, www.marmatter to God.  We will see men and women created in His image, yet living broken lives separated from Him.

There are days when our calling wanes.  Those are the days when we need to drive our ‘root system of life’ deeper into Jesus, deeper into His steadfast love and grace.  Yet, it’s easy to tell ourselves we need to do that, but it’s just plain hard sometimes to make it happen.

That is why we need to cry out to God for His help in learning to ‘abide’ in Him; in learning to be attentive to Him in all that happens in our day.  We can remind ourselves of the importance of abiding. Others can remind us as well.  However, God needs to work in our hearts to cause us to draw near to Him and draw from His fountain of grace and wisdom.

Lost people do matter to God.  Abiding in God will thrust us out as cross cultural workers into the world with a renewed heart to share His Gospel.

Lost people matter to God.  Lost people will matter to us as well.

Filed under: Calling, Gospel, Sharing the Gospel story | 4 Comments »

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