Read an Excerpt from "Godspeed"

John Corrie, in the Dictionary of Mission Theology, said,

In the Incarnation of the eternal Word all false dualisms between the material and the spiritual, visible and invisible, human and divine, temporal

and eternal, this-worldly and other-worldly, finite and infinite, were dissolved in the totally integrated person of Christ.

Jesus was both fully secular and fully sacred, fully man and fully God. This confronts the unbiblical division we make in our lives when we separate the daily from the divine. We know God cares about the "churchy" stuff, and we think He cares about our problems, but that's where many Christians leave Jesus' involvement.

The truth is, God cares as much about our kids' soccer games as He cares about our churches' Sunday gatherings. Does He not care when the sparrow falls from its nest? And the sparrow never even went to church!

God cares about the details. Every detail. And if we truly grasp this fact, it will change the way we live. Life becomes more fun. I've lived both ways to varying degrees: including Jesus in normal life and excluding Him from it as most Americans do. I can hereby testify that life is just more fun with Jesus involved!

I've been trying to lay hold of this concept in my day-to-day life. Recently I went to the park with my dad and two kids, Isaiah and Daisy. We went to the park to fly a little radio-controlled airplane Isaiah got for his birthday. As I sat in the grass watching my family, I let it sink in that God cared as much about that moment as He cares about my moments teaching from the pulpit.

I'll tell you, it made my time in the park that much more amazing. I found myself deeply enjoying the moment, glorifying Jesus, and praying blessings over my family.

As we flew the toy airplane, my dad raced it past a stand of trees, and the thing nearly got stuck in one of them—it's never a good scene when Grandpa loses the birthday present!

Each time the plane launched straight for the treetops, my dad and I called out, "Oh Lord, please no! Jesus, please no!" A little dramatic maybe, but sincere.

And I'm telling you, each time the plane boomeranged around with a swoosh-plop moving away from the trees!

Call me crazy, and some surely do, but the Bible shows us that God cares about these little moments. Jesus, Immanuel, is with us in each of them.

If we grasp that fact, it will change our lives.

It will change family life, community life, and mission.

NOT EVERY FLIGHT

Now I'm going to take some of the pressure off.

Realizing God cares about all the little moments in life can be overwhelming if we start to manufacture mission. If we think that every time we go to our kid's soccer game we need to feed a hungry person on the sidelines or preach to an unrepentant parent in the stands, the idea of mission will feel overwhelming, even debilitating.

You and I are called to imitate and emulate the life of Christ. Part of this, I believe, includes His capacity to enjoy life. Look at what He talked about in the Gospels: the sparrows, the garden, the marketplace, and His interactions with people. Christ was the creator of all things, which God declared good and created for His pleasure. I can't help but think that Jesus enjoyed incarnational life, and that's part of what it means for us to be God's redeemed people.

In the past I put an awful lot of pressure on myself in this area, thinking that every time I got on an airplane I had to share the gospel with the person sitting next to me—or I'd be a failure. There is endless suffering, poverty, and unbelief in the world around us, but every need we see is not an immediate obligation for the Christian.

It's the will of Jesus that dictates mission.

One person posted this on our Missio Christi website: "The goal of my daily life is to listen to the Holy Spirit to discover the mission of Christ."

That's right on target.

If Christ says, "Enjoy this time in the park with your kids," then enjoy time in the park with your kids, and may God be glorified in it. If Christ says, "Minister to the needs of this person" or "Proclaim the gospel to that person," then that is the thing you should do.

To be sent means to do the will, perform the work, and speak the words of the One who sent us. What we see in the Gospels is that Christ did not heal every leper in Israel. When He ascended, there was still sickness and poverty in the land. Jesus didn't cure every blind man nor heal every lame person.

Ephesians 2:10 reads, "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." The will of Christ dictates mission because all mission is Christ's mission!

Part of the challenge and the adventure of the Christian life is learning how to listen to the Spirit so we can respond to the needs around us. We have to trust that the Holy Spirit is already working in the lives of people around us, and we need to pay attention to see how and then cooperate with it. If you shift your ministry to be merely need focused, you'll be ruined, discouraged, and utterly overwhelmed.