Have you ever seen a church youth group come back from a mission trip on fire for God? I have seen this happen in youth groups many, many times and wondered why it took a mission trip for that fire to appear. I have also gone on many mission trips myself, personally, and noticed this same phenomenon in my spiritual life. Last February I went to Guatemala and built homes for refugees in the valley of an abandoned coffee plantation named San Ramone. When dedicating and giving the home to a refugee family I was so filled with Holy Spirit I wept uncontrollably with joy. What is it about stepping out in faith to do God’s mission and this fire of the Spirit that wells up in our hearts?

 

In the book of Jonah, we see the prophet Jonah commanded by God to go to the city of Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian empire and the biggest threat to Israel’s existence. God wanted Jonah to leave his home, travel to all the way to Nineveh (modern day Iraq) and preach repentance and salvation to Israel’s greatest enemy! Jonah doesn’t want to join God in His mission and he runs away from God. The Bible says in Jonah chapter one that Jonah went in the opposite direction and away from God by going down to the port city of Joppa and boarding a ship headed to Tarshish (the western edge of the known world). Spiritually and physically Jonah was far from God.

 

We can be like Jonah in our life when we don’t join in God’s mission to share Gospel love with the lost who are so loved by God. We too can experience a distance from God because we don’t join in His mission. By way of example, a husband and wife can experience deep intimacy by loving their children together through all kinds of circumstances. But imagine if one spouse didn’t love the kids. Can there be true, deep intimacy between them in these conditions? This explains why we often experience the intimacy of God’s Holy Spirit when we join God in mission. We are loving those whom God loves. Thankfully God’s grace abounds because we all have often been like Jonah at times. God keeps forgiving us and He keeps inviting us to join Him in His mission to the lost.

 

Our greatest positive example of joining God in mission is Jesus. Jesus was willing to leave the glories of the Father’s side and enter into a world on its way to destruction and in need of a savior. Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of the command to Jonah to go and love your enemies. The Bible in Romans 5:10 states, For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Oh, how amazing is God’s grace! Even while we were God’s enemies Jesus was willing to come to us and reconcile us and save us from our sins so that we can have everlasting life. Thank you Jesus for your grace and love to us! May we follow your example in mission.

 

* Further scripture reading: Jonah 1, Matthew 12:40

 

~ Greg Stamm is the Eurasia Hub Coordinator for Multiplication Network Ministry (MNM). MNM trains thousands of church planters in over 40 countries across the world. Greg works to expand church planting specifically in the Eurasia region which includes all of Russia and many other nations including Latvia, Ukraine, Mongolia, and Azerbaijan. Before being MNM’s Eurasia Hub Coordinator he was a pastor in the Reformed Church in America for twenty years and was involved in planting two churches.

For more information please visit Multiplication Network Ministry’s website.