The commission is key. To know we are sent for this specific task.
“Appoint for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
”So Barnabas and Saul, sent out by the Holy Spirit went…” Acts 13:2-4
For if we are sent, then we know we will have everything we need for the task ahead.
In salvation, we must be able to say with confidence, “I know I was called.
In mission, we must be able to say with the same confidence, “I know I am sent here.”
Many ask us, “Why did you choose eastern Washington?” And all we can say is, “The Lord led us here.”
Because in actuality, if it was up to us, we would have chosen so many other places. Paths that seemed right to us, more favorable for what we hoped to accomplish, closer to the people we would prefer to gather together with. We don’t know why, but He has made it clear, “I’m sending you there.”
Some have mistakenly taught, don’t overthink it. God doesn’t have that specific of a will for your life. See a need, fill a need. We already have the great commission, what other direction do we need?
Yet have you not read, “Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia.”
And, “After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them.”
How would we counsel such a person today? Don’t overthink it? The Spirit would not violate the great commission? Of course He wants you to preach the gospel to as many people as possible?
Can we not see plainly how this counsel violates the example of Scripture? For after obeying the Spirit’s preventing, “a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’” (Acts 16:6-10)
Immediately then, they sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called them to preach the gospel to this specific people in this specific place.
We could look also at Jonathan, who consulted the Lord before choosing to go into battle, “Let us cross over to these men, and we will show ourselves to them. If they say thus to us, ‘Wait until we come to you,’ then we will stand still in our place and not go up to them. But if they say thus, ‘Come up to us,’ then we will go up. For the LORD has delivered them into our hand, and this will be a sign to us.” (1 Sam. 14:8-10)
Jonathan knew that if they were sent to this specific battle with this specific people, the Lord would deliver them. However, if the Lord was not sending them, the siege would be a failure.
Though already living under a blanket command to subdue the land and take possession, Jonathan still sought the specific commission.
Even David, in 1 Samuel 23, unsure of what step to take next, inquires three times of the Lord, “Shall I go?” He knew he needed to be sent.
Or I could tell of the story of C.S. Benington, the first missionary to the Lobi tribe in West Africa in the 1930’s. What a great, wide open mission field Africa represented. Unreached tribes everywhere. So many who had never heard the gospel. Just pick a place and go, don’t overthink it. God will bless your efforts. Oh how little we know of the intimate and intricate ways of the Lord.
May his story convict and compel you, as it has me:
He settled among them in 1931, having first gained the cautious approval of the French official, who told him to be ‘extremely careful,’ as part of the tribe is still unsubdued. He made little headway among this idol-worshipping people until the coming of a drought in 1932. The head chief then came to ask, ‘Are you stopping the rain?’ ‘No,’ said Mr. Benington, ‘but it is God’s way of speaking to you.’ A number of the leading men came to see him, ‘suspicious, evil-looking men, every one with bows and arrows,’ while he urged them to turn to God from idols and prayed for rain.
Still it did not come, until finally the chief came to say, ‘The crops are dead.’
Shortly before, Benington had been praying and had received the strange word that the crops would die and that then the Lord would send rain to revive them. So for the last time he told the chief to call the people and made a final appeal, ‘Is there a man here who will take the Son of God as his Saviour and throw away his idols?’ Then the remarkable happened. Two men came forward.
‘The first thing for you to do is to throw away your idols.’
‘We haven’t got any idols.’
‘You must have. I have been all round your village and they are everywhere.’
‘Our house is behind the swamp and we have no idols.’
Then one of them told this story. ‘Eleven harvests ago I was in my house one night preparing for a great sacrifice. I was to be raised in rank as a witch doctor. The heathen doctors were coming early next morning. I went to sleep. While I slept God came to me and picked me up and threw me over the side of my house. Three times He did that and then called me by name. ‘You must throw away your idols. The day of idols is passed, because I am going to send a white man and his wife into your village and they will teach you My way.’
‘Was it a dream?’ asked Benington.
‘No, I saw God. Next morning, when I stepped out and saw my idols, I said, ‘These are the things God has told me to destroy.’ I took my axe and smote my chief idol. The witch doctors caught hold of me and said I had gone mad and that it would mean death.’
The persecution continued. They made sacrifices ‘to try and drive the madness out of his head,’ but God had got hold of him. Then he went round the tribe telling them to throw away their idols and that God had appeared to him. Hundreds of people threw them away.
However, weeks lengthened into months and months into years and they began to say, ‘Why doesn’t the white man appear?’ Then they began to take their idols back again. After a few years only two men remained. They had heard the voice of God and were not going to be disappointed.
They waited for ten long years and then Mr. Benington came.
That day, on the mud floor of the verandah, ‘two strong Lobi men prayed that God would take the blood of His Son and wash their hearts and live in their hearts so that they might walk in His way. I don’t suppose it was ten minutes afterwards, as I was standing outside, I saw big black clouds come up and presently the rain came crashing down. Next morning the chief came to say, “We know God sent that rain. The crops that were dead yesterday are beginning to turn green. They have risen from the dead.”’
God wanted to show them a God that could bring life out of death.
From that remarkable beginning the work steadily progressed, until by 1937 there were 150 converts, the difficult language was reduced to writing and John’s Gospel translated.
—taken from ‘After C.T. Studd’ by Norman Grubb, 1946
Does God change? Has He improved His methods? The One who picks out a single man in the jungles of Africa and speaks to him in such a personal manner and to such a degree that the man is now convinced to wait 10 years for the hope of the coming message, despite intense persecution — and who simultaneously sends the missionary to this specific place and tribe, despite the extreme warnings and dangers — how can we say He no longer commissions with specificity?
Oh friends, there is so much more to life in Christ, led by the Spirit than we know about, myself included.
I’ve written about commission before, doctrinally:
ON OUR COMMISSION AND THE LAYING ON OF HANDS
We believe that when we receive this message through faith, we are receiving both Christ and His call to go into all the world and make disciples. This commission requires us to be His witnesses, tell of what we have seen and heard, and to preach the gospel in and out of season, not through persuasive words of human wisdom but through a demonstration of the Spirit and power. (Luke 11:33, Hebrews 6:2, 1 Cor. 2:1-5, Matt. 28:18-20)
In light of such a commission, we need the laying on of hands — so that we may be empowered for service through the filling, or baptism, of the Holy Spirit. “Then Paul said, “John indeed baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on Him who would come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.” When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.” (Acts 19:4-6. See also: Acts 6:6, 8:14-18, 9:17-18, 13:3, Hebrews 6:2, 1 Tim. 4:14, 2 Tim. 1:6, Gen. 48:13-20, Deut. 34:9)
But we cannot stop at right thinking. We must be a people who put our doctrine into practice. For if we don’t, it can be called nothing other than hypocrisy — a sin I have been all too guilty of.
Wherever you are right now — the job, the location, the friends, the church, the mission field — were you sent there? If not, why are you still there?
Sobering, but let such inquiry lead us to a pleading posture, “Show us, send us, lead us. Don’t withhold Your Spirit from us. Not my will but Yours be done.”
In love,
Derek
As always...wow.
I thank our Lord often for your obedience to listen, learn, and share. May we all call on the Lord for His direction and leading...then, obediently, act on it