What’s The Meaning of Missions?
I have recently read John Piper’s book Let The Nations Be Glad. It’s a very good book about missions and what it is all really about; full of simple truth, but very powerful!
“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church, worship is. Missions wouldn’t exist if worship did, missions only exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man.” – John Piper
When we get to heaven there will be no missions, there will be no one to win for the Kingdom. There will be one voice, one song of praise, one connection, and one body. But as long as we are on earth with nations that have never heard, and people living and dying without knowing the King we worship - mission’s heart will keep beating, and people will be needed to live for missions (which is our temporary job).
God never desired for missions to exist, it is a job that had to be created to bring people back to the one Person they were never meant to drift from - Christ.
To take this another step, it is our task to bring revelation of Him through relationship with His Son. God is big on community, as He needed it Himself. He, Himself, is Trinity. He craves relationship, He craves community.
God is a relational God – living in relationship with His people who, in turn, reveal His presence as they live in community with one another.
Because worship doesn’t exist as God intended across the earth, missions has to. So the aim of missions, the fuel of missions, is to reveal Jesus to a lost and hurting world; as the God who answers and responds to prayer and who is revealed in the community of His people until they worship Him as Savior and King. Everything is about Jesus.
God needs to be all that we want and all that we need; He needs to be the focus of our lives, our families, our church, our ministries, and our jobs. At His command we go, we see, we conquer, and that is how it should be… Following Jesus to the people He loves in the deepest corners of the earth.
I believe the younger generations are ready to go, they are ready to go out to the nations and get stuck in; they want to be a part of this. They need the older generations to help them make it happen. I think the question is, “Are the older generations ready for the challenge?”