Jesus Says Go

Jesus said: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. I am with you always, to the very end of the age’. (Matthew 28:18-20)

This book has something for everyone. Yet it is written especially for those who still have most of their lives ahead of them, and who may be facing big decisions about their future. Possibly including long-term mission. Though some of it was written with long-term mission in mind, most of the issues we touch on will be basic biblical truths, relevant to short-termers as well as to long-termers, part of the fibre of the Christian life.

I pray particularly that those serving short-term will find the early chapters helpful, and will make time to engage with some of the questions raised in the chapters further on before they travel.

So you are exploring a possible call from God to serve him in another culture? You will need to face the implications of what that will mean. If that is where you are, perhaps you already realise that such a call can be costly. You may have friends who have taken that path, and you may have seen something of what it has meant for them – financial or career sacrifices, separation from family and friends, and so on.

Jason writes of how he came to explore these matters. With 19,000 others at the Urbana Missions Convention, he heard how God could use him to help pioneer an evangelical student movement in the Muslim world. In discussion with his pastor and older Christian friends, Jason looked at the necessary sacrifices. There were hard questions. He had a degree in Business and Economics and had just secured a job in investment banking. ‘Am I willing to give up my career? Can I bear not seeing my family for two years? Can I say goodbye to my girlfriend?’ Over the next year he saw his father’s opposition change to enthusiastic support. The funding he needed came in. As this book is published he is living under a Muslim government as part of a small team. Through offering friendship and English teaching, he and the others are slowly winning the confidence of students. Progress will take prayer and perseverance, but their sights are set. With God’s help they will establish an IFES movement to bring the gospel of Christ to that country’s students.

The purpose of this book is to explore all these kinds of costs, and their compensations, and to look at them in the light of the Bible.

We need to be realistic. Jesus doesn’t call us to act impulsively or unthinkingly. We should carefully count the cost of Christian discipleship, whatever the path we take. We are to look at the pros and cons with open eyes. There are big issues at stake. There are real costs, but also substantial benefits! If we are serious about following Christ, there can be no doubt about the bottom line: putting him first always gives the best outcome.

These issues raise serious questions for those who live in the West or in countries with comparable standards of living: people from the ‘cultures of comfort’. In the ease and affluence of our lives, making sacrifices can seem unreasonable. The world we live in whispers in our ears that we are entitled to hold on to every comfort – that we have a right to do so. Christians, like everyone else, breathe in this atmosphere and need to be aware that this is happening. We cannot be immune to the influences around us. So we need always to be letting the Bible interrogate our world, and also our own personal patterns of belief and behaviour.

Protecting our rights has been a strong theme in the Western world through the past three or four generations. We see it emerge in all sorts of ways. In political conflicts. In debates on gender issues. In questions thrown up by medical progress. But how godly a theme is it? Any one of these areas can create a mindset that jealously protects our ‘rights’ against God’s authority, and shields us against any calling to make sacrifices; a mindset that challenges Christ’s lordship in our lives.

So why should you follow a costly path – if that’s the way God is calling you? What right have I to encourage you in that? Well, I have no right, but I have a responsibility. You and I stand together under the authority of the Bible, and of the Lord of whom the Bible speaks. And that brings on us a responsibility to help each other in our discipleship and in our obedience to the Scriptures.

This Lord of whom the Bible speaks is the Lord Jesus whose cross is at the centre of our faith. I was struck recently by this remark: ‘We will take sacrifice seriously only if we understand the cross.’ When Jesus taught his disciples that he would have to die on the cross, he gave them the cross as a pattern for their discipleship. (See, for example, Mark 8:31-38.) Christians, then, bear the imprint of the cross on their lives. So we should not be surprised if the Christian life calls for some toughness: he told us it would.

Now let’s turn to the last meal Jesus had with his inner circle of friends before his death. He taught them that, in his death, his body was being given for them. ‘This is my body,’ he said, ‘given for you.’ So as we take part in the Lord’s supper or Communion service, we are helped to see ourselves, as individuals, needing his death for us. ‘He loved me and gave himself for me,’ said Paul (Galatians 2:20).

But in the accounts of both Matthew and Mark, we have a second emphasis alongside that. Jesus gives his disciples the shared cup of wine with these words: ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’ (Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24). Not only for them, but ‘for many’. In the intense privacy of that upper room he directs their thoughts outwards, to the waiting world. They are to think not only of their own needs but also of the world into which he is sending them. Mission is of the essence of the gospel.