The Purpose of This Blog

In response to the challenge by the Southern Baptist Convention that churches take on the task to share the gospel with unengaged unreached people groups, the missions team of Harmony Pittsburg Baptist Association felt the need for a way to focus prayer on the task. This blog is intended to facilitate prayer for those contemplating their role in fulfilling the Great Commission. This on-line prayer guide may prove useful to those exploring a call to missions involvement as well as to those who have sensed a call to pray for those who will go to the front lines.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Another Great Commission -- Addendum

I can't get my mind off of thinking about why we don't naturally talk more about Jesus and why we don't make greater sacrifices to make sure that all peoples get the chance to hear about Him.  I don't believe we can "guilt" ourselves into being more faithful witnesses or missionaries.  My previous examples about topics of conversation we get excited about implied that we are guilty of not being as excited as we should be about Jesus.  However, there is at least one other factor, other than our degree of passion, that influences how readily we speak about something: novelty.  We are more likely to share with others the unusual things we see, hear, or experience.  The old dictum states that "dog bites man" is not news, but "man bites dog" is.

We know that the gospel is "good news," but it is easy to lose the "new" part of the "news."  Our faith walk can lapse into a routine before we realize it has happened.  Psychologists talk about the mind's propensity to habituation, the process by which we grow accustomed to our surroundings and start failing to notice the details around us.  When we bought our current house, we found it to be a frequent source of conversation, especially with people who like us us had bought a century-old dwelling.  Also, I constantly saw things that needed fixing or updating, but now I rarely notice them (even though the repairs haven't been made), and we don't talk about it as much as we used to.  Perhaps a more common example is the young family that has many more pictures of the first born than of the second and often even fewer for subsequent children (unless they have a long-awaited child of different gender).  With the firstborn, every new development -- first word, first step, and so on -- is eagerly shared with grandparents, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers.  But the later children's exploits usually don't elicit the same reaction. The fact is that when things are new we all notice more and comment more.  Allowed to follow our natural tendencies, grow so used to the "new normal" that it fails to evoke a reaction from us any more.

I can't begin to count the number of prayer meetings at which I have invited people to share what Jesus is doing in their lives only to have the congregation sit and stare silently at me or the floor.  I know that Jesus is important to those people.  They are committed to Him or they wouldn't be there on a Wednesday night.  I think it could be that they have lost their sensitivity to the activity of Jesus in and around them.  They are like the people of Nazareth whose familiarity with Jesus had developed into unbelief to the degree that Jesus could do no mighty work among them (Matthew 13:53-58).  I wonder if some of the Nazareth-problem was due to the fact that they stayed in their familiar surroundings.  The disciples who left all to follow Jesus wherever He went were repeatedly amazed at what they saw and heard.

I think I said more than I realized in the previous post when I suggested we should pray for renewal.  We can't expect to take Jesus to the nations if we aren't taking Him to our neighbors.  We need to be re-sensitized.  We need a fresh encounter with Jesus.  I suppose instead of saying we are taking Jesus to the nations I should say we are following Him to the nations.  William Barclay, the great New Testament commentator, frequenly quoted Richard of Chichester's prayer:  "To see Thee more clearly, to love Thee more dearly, and to follow Thee more nearly day by day."  Would you join me in that prayer?

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