Don’t Waste Your Life

“… And as God gives you wings to rise up and see the world the way He sees it, many of you, I pray, will be loosened from your present situation – job, neighborhood, state, nation, plan – and be called to a direct engagement in this great historic, global purpose of God as a goer and not only a sender.  Let no one who is devoted to local ministry or to crucial secular engagement take offense at this plea.  Rather rejoice.  You are free to stay or free to go.  Many of you must stay.  Your staying is crucial for God’s purposes where you are not, but where others may go.  There is no need for guilt or resentment.  There is great need for joyful partnership.

Those of you who stay (the senders) should keep this remarkable fact in mind:  Foreign missions is a validation of all ministries of mercy at home because it exports them abroad.  Planting the church in an unreached people means planting the base of operations for all the mercy Jesus commanded for the poor.  If we don’t let our light shine before the people at home ‘so that they may see (our) good works and give to (our) Father who is in heaven’ (Matthew 5:16), what kind of obedience will we export to the nations?  The Great Commission includes the words, ‘teaching them to observe all that I (Jesus) have commanded you’ (Matthew 28:20).  And what did He command?  He told the story of the desperate wounded man and the good Samaritan who ‘showed him mercy,’ and then said to all of us, ‘You go, and do likewise’ (Luke 10:37).”

Quote from John Piper – “Don’t Waste Your Life”