Let us, then, go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore. Hebrews 13:13
“To follow Jesus is to be sent. Jesus’ command to every disciple is to “go” (Matt. 28:19). We may not all go overseas, but we are to be going. This means that if you are not going, you are not a disciple; and, church leader, if the people in our churches are not “going,” we are not doing our jobs. A church leader can have a large church with thousands of people attending, but if people are not going from it “outside the camp” (Hebrews 13:13), to pursue the mission and call of Christ, those leaders are delinquent in their duty.
Planting, investing, sending, and sacrificing are costly. It hurts. But the trajectory of discipleship is toward giving away not taking in…Jesus did not say come and grow, but come and die. And He showed us what that means by His own example.
When Jesus laid down His life on that hill in Jerusalem, He had nothing left. Soldiers gambled for His last remaining possessions on earth. Everything He owned had been either given away or taken from Him. But out of that death came our life. In giving everything away, He gained us. In Jesus’ resurrection from death, God brought unimaginable life to the world – to you and to me. Jesus was the first of many seeds planted into the ground to die.
Why would it surprise us that the power of God spreads throughout the earth in the same manner? Life for the world comes only through the death of the church. Not always our physical, bodily death (though it includes that sometimes), but death in the giving away of our resources. Death in the forfeiture of our personal dreams. Death in our faithful proclamation of the gospel in an increasingly hostile world. Death in sending our precious resources, our best leaders, our best friends…
It is not through our success that God saves the world, but through our sacrifice. He calls us first to an altar, not a platform. His way of bringing life to the world is not by giving us numerical growth and gain that enriches our lives and exalts our name. His way is by bringing resurrection out of death. We live by losing. We gain by giving away. What we achieve by building our personal platform will never be as great as what God achieves through what we give away in faith.”
J. D. Greear in Gaining By Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016) 20-21.
My beverage for lunch yesterday was coconut milk, right out of the coconut, hence the new header photo of the beautiful trees of Palawan that are much different than the evergreens of Colorado.
Whether we travel the world or stay close to home, we must live “sent” lives, “going” and making disciples for Jesus “outside the camp” of the church and our comfort zone. Think about this with me over this next week.
I am seeing unimaginable fruit on my trip serving in the Philippines. Thanks for your prayers for me. I pray the same for you wherever God has you serving and sacrificing for our Lord Jesus Christ.