Fighting For God or God Fighting For Us: Which Is It?

I just received this from the Abandoned Times newsletter put out by the Student Volunteer Movement. http://svm2.net/abandonedtimes/ I wanted to share the whole article as it is something that I wrestle with constantly and strive to find balance between and want to challenge you with it as well.

Fighting For God or God Fighting For Us: Which Is It?

It is crucial for believers to learn the fine line required in partnering and co-laboring with God. Living the life of spiritual victory and kingdom advancement is a combination of us fighting (spiritually) and God fighting for us. We rely on Him and He requires action on our part as well.

It is common to find believers relying on themselves and their efforts in the Kingdom of God instead of allowing God to take His rightful place as leader and Lord of every spiritual work He has initiated.

Conversely, many find themselves waiting on God to do all the work and don’t step out in faith themselves. Neither stance is the correct, Biblical one.

Those who want God to do everything for them never accomplish anything. Those seeking to do everything themselves, will ultimately fail. It takes spiritual maturity to walk the correct, balanced way between the two.

God has called us to a living, cooperative partnership in the work of His Kingdom. He wants us involved and we cannot attain spiritual success without Him involved.

It is a fallacy to buy into the notion that God doesn’t need us. He has chosen to set up His Kingdom in partnership with true believers. Though we are frail, weak and often untrustworthy, He chooses to mature and develop us, all the while advancing His Kingdom purposes through us, out of incredible love.

It is also untrue that in our ingenuity and human wisdom we can be fruitful for His Kingdom. This is pride and humanism. God requires we give up on the self-life (self-will, ambition, reliance, sufficiency). To be useful we embrace a lifestyle seeking His Kingdom purposes above all else. We deliberately choose His will and receive the inheritance of spiritual wisdom and revelation He has waiting.

To walk this fine line appropriately we need experiential knowledge of God’s ways, wisdom and spiritual understanding. It is not natural to learn the secrets of being yoked with God in His Kingdom work. To do so, we need more of Him available through increased Bible study, prayer and intercession and abiding in His presence.

Though He will do very little to advance His Kingdom outside of partnership with the body of Christ, it is still His power that is the source. He is the one doing the bulk of the work. We are like a baby ox yoked together with a massive, all powerful ox. That big ox is the one doing all the pulling, but we get to be involved in the process too.

And God looks at our part as important. If we fail to do our Spirit-led, God-ordained and initiated part, we are not being faithful to God and His advancing Kingdom.

We need to get rid of the incorrect sentiment that if something is of God it will go smoothly and be free from problems. God’s leadership is perfect but our capacities to follow Him rightly are anything but.

The partnership between the living God and sinful (yet redeemed) humanity is far from smooth. It is always exciting and exhilarating, but fraught with periodic frustration and misunderstanding. The more closely we follow Jesus, the better it will go because we give up on our own understanding and embrace His Kingdom ways.

In the Scripture when God’s people drifted from the correct balance, they were defeated. We join the fight recognizing full well our inability to win the fight if left to our own devices.

Question: Which of the two are you prone to most? What may God be asking of you to become more balanced in spiritually progressing rightly?

Right or left? How would Jesus vote?

With the election upon us, it seems like everyone has an opinion.  There is a lot of mudslinging between the right and the left political wings with very little hope of them coming together in the middle for the common good.  It seems like all parties and candidates really need to let people know where they are different rather than what they have in common.  I know that we need to know the different stances so that we can make an educated decision as to who we should vote for, but the country might be paying a great price for this type of polarization.

I see the same thing happening in the church.  It seems like the conservative and liberal ends of the Christian spectrum seems to be running farther and farther away from the middle and taking very strong, dogmatic stances on most issues and pointing fingers at "the other side" and labeling them as "heretic" or "Pharisee" depending on which side you are on.  Are we shooting ourselves in the foot and hindering the move of Christ around the world by using the same style of politics and arguments that play themselves out in the media and bringing those inside the church and putting Christian labels on them?  Why do the walls of my Christian friends look like a religious version of Fox News vs CNN?

The same thing plays out on the mission field as well.  Some are obsessed with making sure that we don't water down the gospel while others are trying to be as sensitive and relevant to the cultures we are reaching out to as possible.  There are whole books and conferences out there to bash the other side and their stance on everything from Bible translations to contextualization to mercy ministry vs evangelism/discipleship.  It seems like a lot of these debates are hundreds if not thousands of years old.  So, are we just destined to throw down between the right and left year after year, topic after topic, or are there ways to bring things together?


One side is yelling "sound doctrine and right theology" and the other side is yelling "love, tolerance, and grace".  Both would adamantly say their view is "more Biblical" or "more Christian".  Jesus said that "a kingdom divided against itself will never stand."  Is there any chance of the church coming to the middle and focusing on what we agree on...things like the Great Commandment and the Great Commission or a simple slogan like "Jesus is Lord"?  Or have we made some of the minor issues out to be major and any coming together or move towards the middle would be considered "compromise"?

It seems like God was able to take things like wrath and mercy which seem to be polar opposites and bring them together at the cross.  So, maybe there are other things that seem to be at odds with one another that can be overcome in Christ?

Just thinking out loud and trying to figure out if there is any way out of this mess.  What do you think?

Does networking count as missions?

I spend a lot of my time in meetings and in the office doing email and phone calls.  Some days I wonder if all of this admin work and networking is making any global impact and if I should just drop all of the minutia of running an organization and just make disciples of nations.  This week I got to see a glimpse of some fruit from all of this administrative labor and it involved several people working together which wouldn't have happened without a lot of networking and building relationships with different ministries.

On Thursday, I was at a meeting where a lot of the ministries in our local context were sharing updates about what was going on in the community.  One of the leaders expressed concern about an Iraqi family who they have been pouring into for quite awhile who has decided to leave Atlanta and move to Jacksonville.  They were burdened about who was going to follow up on this family.  I told them that we just had two short term mission groups that came from JAX and fell in love with refugees and the idea of reaching out to the nations that have come here.  There is also another ministry that we have built a relationship with there that does a great job of teaching English and sharing the gospel.  So, I shot a few emails out and within 24 hours those ministries had touched base with an Iraqi church planter in the area that was going to follow up on the family.  It turns out that this Iraqi family from Atlanta moved ONE BLOCK AWAY from the Iraqi church planter in Jacksonville and a visit had already been scheduled! 

Now, that's the body of Christ working together for kingdom purposes.  I guess I will continue attending meetings, building relationships, networking with like-minded ministries, sending emails to people looking for direction, answering phone calls and coaching people into next steps for missions.  It seems that part of Paul's apostolic call was to make sure that there was good collaboration between the Colossians, Corinthians, Macedonians, etc. and to ensure that there were always people in place to continue discipleship in all the places where he planted the gospel.  He spent a bit of time writing as well, although most of his was from a jail cell, so I'll find comfort that all of this may be be making an eternal difference and that God is getting lots of glory as we are obedient to Him and people are coming into the kingdom.

What is the greatest mission field?

Some of Jesus' last words were to wait for the Holy Spirit to come and then to be his witnesses in Jerusalem AND Judea AND Samaria AND the ends of the earth.  It isn't an either/or commandment but a both/and proposition.  Jesus wanted his disciples to live out and preach the kingdom in all of those places.  I hear a lot of people say "why go to the ends of the earth when there is so much spiritual need right here in America" and I know us missionary types have been guilty of telling everyone that we all need to focus on the ends of the earth because America at least has a chance to receive Good News.  The truth is that the Great Commission should be translated "as you are going, make disciples...", so all mission fields are valid and important.

It think it really all boils down to intentionality and going where the Father says and doing as the Spirit leads.  I feel like if we were really in tune and listening to the Lord that there would be a lot more than 2% of the mission force working among unreached people groups in the 10/40 window and many more people at home living a missional lifestyle reaching out to neighbors, co-workers, and the foreigners that God has sent to live among us.  What would happen in the US and the ends of the earth if we did what Jesus said and waited for the Holy Spirit to come and then went out witnessing to the world everything we know about Christ and His kingdom in Jerusalem AND Judea AND Samaria AND the ends of the earth?  Let's be missional; the time is short and we only get one life to steward well.

What kind of war are we waging?

I've been reflecting a bit lately on our attitudes towards soldiers in the American church vs. our attitudes towards missionaries in the American church.  This is a bit of a generalization, but I would imagine that our troops get celebrated and prayed for more than our missionaries who are also serving on the front lines.  I am guessing that there are more prayers for bin laden to get taken out than to get saved.  My theory is that the nations that get mentioned the most in our worship times might be the places where we are waging war on terror rather than the places that have the greatest spiritual need. 

Now, lest I come across as sounding like an upset missionary asking for more "air time" at church and for more finances going to the mission field, let me clarify.  My goal in posting this is to ask the question whether America and it's dream may have become our passion rather than Christ.  I wonder if our first allegiance might be to our nation rather than the kingdom of God.  You can often times tell where your heart is by looking at your treasure and also by looking at what you are willing to risk for something or someone.  It seems like Francis Chan, David Platt, and many others are asking the church these same hard questions.

I love America!  I really have never second guessed a soldier leaving his wife and children for up to 18 months at a time to make sure that our nation is safe.  It doesn't seem strange to me for someone to take mediocre pay for a chance to defend our country.  Most parents would be proud to have their children in the military and often times encourage them to do so in place of college.  I applaud someone willing to lay down their life for the cause of freedom.  We know that a lot of these people are going to come back emotionally, physically, and psychologically drained and yet we think that it is worth the risk.  It seems normal because we love, honor, cherish, and respect our country.

Now if someone wanted to make those same sacrifices to take the gospel to the places where it has never been preached, we might consider it negligent, unwise, not prudent, and not worth the risk.  It would be pretty "radical", and definitely not "normal".  That brings me to the questions that haunt me...  What's the difference between the two (war and missions)?  Why is the war on terror more of a cause worth risking everything for than the glory of God among all nations?  Why are our young people that go to Afghanistan celebrated while the ones wanting to go to the mission field discouraged?  Is it possible that we have started loving life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness more than this Christ that we claim to follow?  Why is carrying the American cross more culturally acceptable even in Christian circles than taking up Jesus'  cross? 

Where is home?  I pledge allegiance...

Do we know how to make disciples?

Jesus' last command before leaving this planet was to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey" everything He commanded us.  If I took this command seriously and decided to make one disciple each year and ensured through follow-up and accountability that each of my disciples was discipling one other person, then the whole world of 6.8 billion people would have access to Christ in 34 years.  That's the power of multiplication and exponential growth!

Mt. 13:23 says "But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown."  Farming is a process and takes time, so does discipleship.  Instead of holding a big crusade and trying to do "microwave" missions, what would happen if we focused on a just a few (or one) disciples and do "crock pot" life-on-life discipleship.  It isn't quite as glorious to put in the ministry update/newsletter, but in the long haul it has the potential to produce 30, 60 or 100 disciples in a lifetime which should go out and put into practice everything they saw in your life.  Maybe Jesus was on to something...

Has America been passed over in the Great Commission?

There are actually less American missionaries on the field now then there were 30 years ago.  Is it the economy and people giving less which in turn causes fewer people to be deployed?  Is it that Americans are too comfortable and not willing to sacrifice and go overseas because of our gods of comfort and security?  Have we decided that it is cheaper and more efficient to accomplish the task by "outsourcing" the remaining task to the third world and global south?  Has the huge growth in the short-term missions sector encouraged us to go for a week or month at a time rather than committing to certain areas until the work is done?  Maybe technology is allowing us to share good news in previously closed countries while Google translates for us making it not necessary for us to actually have to move to the Muslim world and learn Arabic to make disciples?

There remain over 6600 entire people groups that are still considered unreached with the Gospel.  What do you think the U.S. role is in this whole endeavor?  Has our time as pioneers passed and now we need to focus more on our role as givers and equippers of others to finish the task?  Or is it time for a fresh new missionary movement to rise up and thousands of new laborers deployed to the hardest to reach final frontiers?  I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments.