GYC 2012 Acts: The Revolution Continues

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2012 Seminar: Mission - The Unmistakable Mandate

Marc Coleman

Big Problems, Real Solutions

This message was presented at the GYC 2012 conference in Seattle, Washington.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

So today we're going to be talking about missions.

Why would anyone choose to become a missionary?

Now over the course of this seminar, the 6 sessions, We'll be every day discussing or answering 1 key question.

Today is, why would anyone choose to be a missionary?

We'll talk about the next session, which I guess is tomorrow morning, will be, who?

And then after that, we'll talk about how.

How to be a missionary, how to prepare to be a missionary.

Has anyone ever done mission service here before?

Short term, long term, how many have done long term?

And has anyone been on a short-term mission trip?

And so we'll talk about why today, what, where.

We'll talk a little bit about where to be a missionary and you'll see why the why is connected to the where.

It's a funny sentence but we'll see the answer to that in a minute.

And then finally the sixth session we'll talk about the what.

What is it that we work for as missionaries?

We'll look at the second coming of Christ from the perspective of a cross-cultural missionary.

I think it'll be a little different, and hopefully it'll be a blessing to you.

And I hope that this seminar is a blessing to any of you who are considering making mission service a part of life, maybe a career choice.

Do you still make career choice to be a missionary?

But before we go any further, let's have a word of prayer.

I guess I'm kind of bound to this podium here for today.

So excuse me that I'm above you here, and let's have a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we thank you for the privilege of looking at the needs around the world for missionaries.

I pray, dear Father, that you'd move me out of the way as we discuss together, as we talk.

We pray that you would guide our minds, and I pray that you would inspire each of us with what we can do, even now, to share the gospel with those who need it most.

Well, here at the outset, I guess I should say that, as you know, this is essentially about foreign missions, But I think you know that the principles we'll talk about here should be applicable wherever you are in ministry.

Every year, a couple of organizations and magazines do a study.

They index all of the states in the world, according to 10 or 12 different measures.

And a failed state is considered a place or a country where the government's having trouble taking care of its people.

You know, do people have enough to eat, you know, a lot of issues that deal with, I guess you could say, the humanitarian side of human life.

Now, the people who do this are not necessarily Christians.

They're just studying what the world is like and how people, the quality of life people have.

So the failed state index, you know, you might find a country that's presently at war.

In an area of the world where poverty is extreme, you might find that at the top of the failed state index, the country has failed to be able to take care of its people.

But what's very interesting is if you look at the failed state index, and this is what really got me to thinking, you look at that, the critical places in the world, the dark red are the most critical, then the orange are fairly highly critical.

According to this index that has countries in crisis, is centered mostly around what area of the world?

That area of the world where most of the unreached people live, where all of the resistant religions in the world live or inhabit, and where there's highest incidence of poverty.

The interesting thing here is, that You know, you look at these maps, these are not Christian people that do this.

But if you look at this, this map does not show, it's just, you know, to us it's just colors, pictures on a page, but there are real human stories there of suffering, physical suffering, familial suffering.

Well, you may say, wait a minute, Mark, there's suffering here, there's suffering everywhere.

Yeah, there is, but we're gonna get to that point in just a minute.

But I think what is the most striking is the spiritual suffering that people have where they don't know Christ.

And what we have lived and what we've understood from having lived in a cross-cultural mission setting where people don't know about Christ for many years is the spiritual misunderstanding of God augments or adds to or worsens the other types of suffering that people endure.

For some people in the world, you know, everybody in the world is trying to figure out why is there suffering in the world, why is there such pain, What is the world coming to?

And you and I possess the answers in the Bible.

But in many places of the world where people don't have this orientation to the Bible, don't understand Christ, don't know that Jesus is coming soon, don't know the hope that we have, people are trying to figure out what's happening.

You know, people don't really worry about, well, they're worried about the large issues, why is there suffering, why is there sin, why is there trouble?

But many people are trying to figure out, why is it that my uncle is sick and can't get better?

I had 1 young man tell me 1 time that where in his people group, he said when someone dies, when we put them in the coffin, we put a knife in their hands.

We put a knife in their hands because we want them to go in the afterlife and get the person who's done this to them.

So the worldview increases the suffering because here are people trying to figure out what's happening in the world, major problems in life, and because they don't have an understanding of the Bible, understanding of God, and understanding of Christ, they do the best they can to explain these things.

So, he said, we put a knife in their hands because we know that this person has died because someone's done something to them.

Another type of suffering that we've lived with and seen, we lived in a Muslim country for many years, a decade, And I don't know that I've ever seen a family that practices polygamy that's happy.

There may be some that have a semblance of outward peace.

But it's hard to describe to you when you go, we had friends that lived in a village.

And every mother has her little brood of children.

It's just like the story of Jacob all over again.

You remember the competition in the family and the strife, mothers competing, you see the same thing.

Suffering, you see the same thing today in polygamous families, suffering because of worldview.

Now what's very interesting is the suffering doesn't just end with the competition and the strife.

We remember in this 1 family, this particular family I'm telling you about, the family was the village.

There were a few other families in the village, but the main part of the village was this family and the father was the village chief.

But I remember, we remember 1 day, 1 of the young ladies in the family had a terrible case of malaria.

She'd gone to the local clinic, the local hospital.

They told us, come pick her up and take her, they couldn't take care of her, she wasn't responding to treatment.

We kept telling the older brother, who's the responsible 1 in the family, now remember, this is a family with 33 kids, but this is 1 of the main, the older brothers in the family he's looked to, just below the father.

And we said, go visit your sister in the hospital, take some things to her.

Then we finally figured out the reason he didn't do that was because of this competition and strife and struggle.

A Rebel, a Road, and a Revolution

It's a privilege to share with you again today.

Today we're going to be talking about the who, who God calls to mission service.

And You may be a little surprised with the conclusion we come to.

God always does surprising things, does he not?

Yesterday we talked about why would anyone want to be a missionary, and we saw that 1 main reason that 1 would potentially be a missionary is because God's, number 1, commanded us to go.

Number 2, to end the suffering in the world that God has given us the capacity through cooperation with him to bring this scene of suffering in this world to a quicker end.

And today we're going to go back in missions history a bit and study a couple very interesting stories.

I think some things that you'll find absolutely fascinating.

And some of you may say, well, if God's calling me to be a missionary, I don't know that I could really do that, just go and live out in the jungle or in the desert or with people who are so different than I am.

If you think that, or might be tempted to think that, after today's presentation you'll see that this 1 particular person could do what he did.

You'll probably never face anything as hard as this individual faced.

But before we go any further, let's pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you again for the privilege to consider the unmistakable mandate that you've given us to go to the very farthest ends of the world to share the gospel.

I pray that you'd bless us today, Lord, help the teaching to be clear, help it to come right to our hearts, help us to understand what you may be speaking to each of us individually.

Before we get into the historical part of today's lesson, We do have some handouts.

They weren't printed yesterday, but you'll find yesterday's on there.

I'm going to ask my wife to go ahead and pass them out.

And they're just some notes taken from the Book of Acts on the topic of missions.

Each of the first 5 is on there, and then number 6 is a special 1, so we'll save that for the last day.

And today's study is called A Rebel, A Road, and a Revolution.

And the lesson, the Bible lesson is taken from Acts chapter 9 verses 1-7.

And if you have your Bibles, I'd like you to turn there with me.

And we'll start there and look at how God calls who.

We'll look at who God calls and how he calls the who he calls.

Acts 9, 1-7, this is a story that you know very well, but we'll start there and then go through these notes fairly quickly and then get right into the meat of the lesson for today.

The Bible says, Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus in Syria, so that if he found any who were of the way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

As he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven.

Then he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Then the Lord said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

It is hard for you to kick against the goads.

So he, that is Paul trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what do you want me to do?

Then the Lord said to him, Arise and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.

And the men who journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no one." If anyone were to say before, when they knew Saul, that he would be the greatest missionary in the history of the church, they would say, no way.

There is no way this guy could be a missionary.

Think of the most radical, extreme, religious zealot who's not a Christian, maybe 1 of the resistant religions of the world today, who's breathing hatred against Christians.

I was in 1 country when the news went out that Bin Laden had been killed.

My father called me from here in the States to give me the news.

I was in an area where that news would not have been received with open arms.

So I mumbled into the telephone and said, okay, dad, I'll talk to you later.

Hung it up and put it back in its holster.

And then the news came on the radio in the taxi.

And I remember the taxi driver saying, we're going to get that back, we're going to pay that back.

And the other guys in the taxi saying, that's right.

And then I thought, wow, I'm living, or I'm here working for these couple of weeks or a week or so among zealots, who if they knew who I was, and a missionary in fact had lost his life in that country not long before, and most left the country.

And so you can imagine someone like this, Paul was someone like this, who had said, you know if I find these Christians.

And the thing is, he thought he was doing God's will.

There are many people in the world, in the resistant religions, who feel the very same way.

They feel they're doing God's will to kill an infidel.

And Jesus said, I've chosen him to be a missionary for me.

God chooses the unlikeliest of people to be missionaries at times.

Why is it that God would consider you or me?

Well, I think it was said so well the first day there in the big meeting, God does not call the qualified, he qualifies the called.

Some may say this morning, Well, am I called?

But if that is not enough, if that were not enough for you or me, God gives us specific calls.

I want you to be a missionary to X people.

But say something happens in the country where you're to be sent, as it did to Paul.

Saul, when he became Paul, after he was converted, and he was beaten and thrown out of places.

So if something happens, we have, in fact, missionaries now in parts of the world where we know that very soon they'll have to leave because of unrest, because of war, because of extremism that is taking over whole countries.

The question is, does the call to serve God as a missionary depend upon where I am.

So the call is at once very general and intensely specific.

So Paul's rushing to Damascus in Syria on business, on his personal business, but he's got a letter from the high priest in Jerusalem and he's going to go arrest these Christians and Jesus confronts him on the way.

He often confronts us in life with truth.

And 1 truth is the world is in need of people who will share the gospel with the unreached.

In fact, Jesus said he could make the rocks themselves cry out, but somehow he's chosen people like you and me to share the gospel.

Is it fair that we can sit here today and turn on our radios, flip on the internet, do whatever we want, go to our hotel rooms, pull open a drawer, and have access to the Word of God, while whole countries know nothing about Him.

Jesus confronted Paul on that road to Damascus, and he said, why are you persecuting me?

And maybe we're not persecuting Christ this morning, but he says to us, why are you sitting on your hands and the world is dying outside?

Maybe I'm not saying that to you, maybe it's not talking about you, but sure enough it's talking to our culture.

So God confronts Paul and Paul says, whoa, and the pen of inspiration says that all of a sudden all of these dots begin to connect in Paul's mind and he's beginning to understand and see the providence of God in his life.

He's beginning to see the prophecies that he thought didn't talk about Christ.

In fact, it says that he thought Christ was an imposter.

Now all of a sudden, in just a few seconds, all of these things are going on in his mind.

And the pen of inspiration says, when I was studying, preparing for this, I didn't realize it before, he actually saw Jesus.

They heard a voice, they couldn't understand what was going on, so here's this general call.

But when God speaks to the individual, don't expect people around you, even people of faith, to always understand.

I remember that the first time I sensed the call to be a missionary, I called my mother.

And you know what her first response was?

Arnold Hooker

Doing My Part, Preparing the Heart

All right, let's go ahead and get started.

We only have, we have less than an hour now, so I'd like to get started.

My colleague Arnold Hooker will share something in just a few moments.

But Before we get into today's study, I mean to this session's study, which will be a little shorter than the last 1.

No, just hold it, because that's going to be for him.

Okay, so before we get started, I'd just like to know, are there any questions?

Maybe on what we studied just this past session.

There was some other interesting information I wanted to share but I think you got the gist of it.

I saw someone do like this, time, and that kind of threw me.

So let me just say, the conclusion is this.

And God qualifies us when we respond to the call.

He does not ask us, there is no perfect missionary, there is no personality type that God cannot use.

And you know, if you're not a public speaker, ask God to use you in some other way, but there is room for everyone in mission service.

You don't have to be a pastor to be a missionary.

Willing to be used by God, willing to be shaped by God, and honest before God as were the men that we saw today.

I mean brutally honest and willing to let God mold them.

So the surprising conclusion is that God can use even me.

No matter where I've been, what I've done, if I'm willing to let him mold me, when he confronts me with the truth, will I respond?

Now You don't have to be a doctor or a PhD or a linguist.

Some of the most gifted language learners have never gone to school.

Trust me, I've lived with them and worked with them in Africa.

People speak 345 languages and cannot read a letter because God has given them that gift.

So God has a place for you, is God calling you.

Is there another question or 2 before we go into this session study?

Well, I'm going to turn it over to Arnold and he's going to talk a little bit.

This is how to prepare to be a missionary.

This is going to be less theoretical, less about ideas.

Well, there will be ideas, but more about practical things, about how to prepare to become a missionary.

It just so happens that this GYC takes place in Seattle.

And I grew up in a little town called Renton about 20 miles from here.

And my father owned Golden Stitch Furniture Factory in Seattle here.

And my brother Ken owned Seattle Furniture Factory.

And when I graduated from high school, I started what I called Master Stitch Furniture Factory.

And so, when I went to the mission field, I was asked to make jobs for people.

I remember my father at Golden Stitch when I was a young man, 16 years old, making right arms on a sofa.

And I said, please dad, no more right arms.

And he said, okay, make left arms, which is the mirror image of the right arm.

I can make about 10 different styles of furniture with my eyes closed, literally.

And I remember A young man came up to me and he said to me, Mr.

Because that was the way I learned how to make furniture, repetition.

And my grandfather went to about the third grade.

My father went to about the ninth grade and I never finished high school.

I'm not telling you that because I'm proud of it.

I'm telling you that if God can use me in the mission service, He can use you.

And I'm going to tell you, any kind of information you can put into your mind that is godly, that is worthwhile.

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