Latest / Reformed Thinking / What It Takes to Be Sent Faithfully

Transcript

What It Takes to Be Sent Faithfully · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reformed thinking. I'm glad you're here.
• 0:02
  We're we're opening our Bibles and our stack of sources today
• 0:05
  to really grapple with some of the heavy stuff.
• 0:08
  We're just two friends here, you know, students of Scripture
• 0:11
  trying to figure out what God actually requires of us.
• 0:13
  And today, today we're tackling a subject that I think the
• 0:17
  church has, for lack of a better word, sentimentalized.
• 0:23
  We're talking about missions. It's so true.
• 0:26
  We've turned it into a genre of like romance novels, almost.
• 0:30
  You think of missions and you picture the pith helmet or the
• 0:32
  jungle hike, or maybe just the humanitarian high of handing out
• 0:35
  rice bags. It's adventure.
• 0:37
  It's travel. Right, It's the Christian
• 0:39
  version of a gap year you go find yourself while you're
• 0:41
  digging a well somewhere. Exactly.
• 0:43
  And that image is a real problem.
• 0:46
  So today we are stripping all of that back.
• 0:49
  We're doing a deep dive into a collection of writings titled
• 0:52
  Biblical Missions, Principles, Priorities, and Practices.
• 0:55
  We've got material here from Ed Burns, Brad Classen, Kevin
• 0:59
  Edwards, Brooks Buzzer and Dave Duel.
• 1:01
  That's a solid lineup. It is.
• 1:03
  And the mission for this session is, well, it's simple.
• 1:06
  We want to look at what Scripture is specifically the
• 1:09
  Reformed biblical understanding of Scripture says about the
• 1:12
  calling, the competence, and the character of the people we send
• 1:15
  to the nation's. And just a heads up to everyone
• 1:18
  listening, this isn't going to be the rah rah pep talk you
• 1:21
  might get at a youth conference. We're going to look at the
• 1:23
  theology of suffering. We're going to look at why God
• 1:26
  might choose a man with one leg to reach China over a college
• 1:29
  athlete. It's it's going to get gritty.
• 1:32
  Yeah, it has to, because the work is gritty.
• 1:35
  The reality is gritty. So let's jump.
• 1:37
  We're starting with the theological identity of the
• 1:39
  missionary. We're drawing heavily from Edie
• 1:41
  Burns here, and he starts with a premise that I think rubs
• 1:44
  against the grain of our modern sort of egalitarian
• 1:47
  sensibilities. He says you have to define the
• 1:49
  work before you can define the worker.
• 1:52
  And he argues that missions involves 2 things that are
• 1:55
  eternal, the word of God and human souls.
• 1:58
  Which immediately raises the stakes, right?
• 2:00
  I mean, if you screw up a plumbing job, you get a wet
• 2:02
  floor, you can fix it. If you screw up missions, you're
• 2:04
  mishandling eternal realities. Burns is very specific here.
• 2:08
  He critiques this whole idea of the missionary as just an
• 2:13
  altruistic volunteer. OK, explain that distinction.
• 2:17
  Because I think most of us, when we think of missionaries, we
• 2:19
  think they're the ultimate volunteers.
• 2:22
  They're the good people who raise their hands and say I'll
• 2:24
  go. They are.
• 2:26
  But what Burns is saying is that willingness isn't the primary
• 2:29
  qualification. It's not even close.
• 2:32
  Just because you want to go doesn't mean you should go.
• 2:35
  And he throws down a gauntlet that I think will make some
• 2:37
  people pretty uncomfortable. OK, he argues that if a
• 2:40
  candidate isn't qualified to be an elder or a Deacon in their
• 2:44
  home church, they absolutely should not be sent to the
• 2:46
  mission field. Whoa, OK, hold on.
• 2:48
  That stops him in my tracks. Think about the average missions
• 2:51
  committee in a church. They're often looking for that
• 2:54
  young, zealous, maybe slightly restless college grad.
• 2:58
  Yeah, full of energy. Full of energy, loves Jesus,
• 3:00
  let's send him. And you're saying if that guy
• 3:03
  isn't qualified to sit on the elder board, which usually
• 3:06
  requires a level of maturity? Deep theology.
• 3:09
  Life experience. He shouldn't be planting a
• 3:11
  church in Sudan. That's the argument, and here's
• 3:15
  the logic, which is hard to refute if you're thinking
• 3:17
  biblically. In your home church, you have
• 3:19
  safety Nets, you have other elders, you have a congregation
• 3:22
  that hopefully knows their Bible.
• 3:24
  You have 2000 years of church history and layers of
• 3:27
  accountability. If a young leader says something
• 3:30
  slightly heretical in Sunday school here, three people will
• 3:33
  probably correct him before he gets to the parking lot,
• 3:36
  hopefully. But now take that same young man
• 3:39
  and drop him into a pre Christian culture.
• 3:41
  He has no accountability. He has very few resources, if
• 3:45
  any. He is the primary theological
• 3:47
  authority for that new group of believers.
• 3:49
  He's is it, he's it. So if he has a wobble in his
• 3:51
  theology, say he wants to make the gospel palatable, so he
• 3:55
  decides to downplay the wrath of God or the necessity of
• 3:58
  repentance. That era gets baked into the DNA
• 4:00
  of that new church. And it doesn't just go away, it
• 4:03
  lasts for generations. It creates A mutated church,
• 4:06
  Yeah, Burns points out. The theological errors in these
• 4:09
  contexts are absolutely devastating.
• 4:12
  So the missionary can't just be a nice guy who wants to help.
• 4:14
  He has to be a theologian. He has to be what Burns calls a
• 4:17
  frontline truth warrior. I like that phrase truth
• 4:21
  warrior, but it sounds aggressive.
• 4:24
  We live in a time that prizes gentleness and dialogue and
• 4:29
  being inoffensive. Is that too combative a term?
• 4:32
  Well, think about what's happening on a spiritual level.
• 4:35
  Evangelism isn't just a sales pitch.
• 4:37
  It's an invasion, Paul says. We're destroying strongholds.
• 4:41
  You are entering territory held by demonic doctrines.
• 4:44
  That's biblical language, and you're liberating captives from
• 4:47
  the domain of darkness. That's a war.
• 4:49
  It's a war. If you go into that thinking
• 4:51
  it's a Peace Corps assignment, you're going to be chewed up and
• 4:54
  spit out. You need to know your weapon,
• 4:56
  which is the word of God. This connects to the calling
• 4:58
  aspect we hear people say all the time, I feel called, but
• 5:02
  feelings can be deceptive. I had a pizza last night that
• 5:05
  made me feel things, but I don't think it was the Holy Spirit.
• 5:08
  Burns looks at Paul in Romans 15.21.
• 5:11
  Yeah, and this is so key. Paul doesn't say I had a dream
• 5:15
  where I just have this overwhelming burden.
• 5:16
  I mean, he did have those things, but that's not his
• 5:19
  argument. His argument is grounded in the
• 5:21
  Old Testament. He quotes Isaiah to justify his
• 5:23
  entire mission strategy. So his motivation was objective,
• 5:27
  not subjective. Precisely.
• 5:28
  It was driven by the promises of God in the text, not just his
• 5:32
  internal emotional state. And that's a huge safeguard.
• 5:34
  Emotions fluctuate, the text doesn't.
• 5:36
  That makes so much sense. If your calling is based on your
• 5:40
  mood, you'll quit when the mood crashes, and it will crash.
• 5:44
  If it's based on the command and promise of scripture, you stay
• 5:47
  put. You have an anchor.
• 5:49
  OK, let's move to the competence piece.
• 5:51
  This is fascinating. Burns uses 2 Timothy, which is
• 5:55
  essentially Paul's death row letter to his apprentice
• 5:58
  Timothy, and he pulls out eight mindsets.
• 6:00
  Now, I don't want to just rattle these off like a grocery list.
• 6:02
  No, let's unpack them. Yeah, they seem to fall into a
• 6:05
  few categories. There's a distinct military
• 6:07
  theme running through a lot of these.
• 6:08
  There is, Paul loved military metaphors.
• 6:11
  You have the soldier, the fighter and the Sentinel.
• 6:14
  Let's look at the soldier first. SEC Timothy 2.3 to a four.
• 6:18
  No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs
• 6:22
  of everyday life. This is what you could call a
• 6:25
  wartime mentality in the civilian world, or the peacetime
• 6:28
  church back home. We can get obsessed with
• 6:31
  comfort. We worry about our retirement
• 6:33
  funds, our streaming subscriptions, our lawn care.
• 6:36
  The small stuff. All the small stuff.
• 6:37
  But a soldier on the front lines doesn't care about the lawn back
• 6:40
  home. He cares about the mission and
• 6:42
  pleasing his commanding officer, Burns is saying.
• 6:44
  A missionary has to cut the cord on those distractions.
• 6:47
  You can't live a civilian life and do a wartime job.
• 6:49
  It just doesn't work. OK, then you have the Sentinel
• 6:52
  at the end of his life, Paul says.
• 6:53
  I have kept the faith. This is so good.
• 6:55
  Think of a Roman guard standing watch over a treasure or a post.
• 6:59
  His job isn't to add to it or change it.
• 7:01
  His job is to protect it with his life.
• 7:03
  Our good deposit. Guard the deposit.
• 7:05
  The missionary isn't an inventor.
• 7:07
  He's not there to remix the gospel for a new generation.
• 7:10
  He's there to guard the Apostolic teaching.
• 7:13
  We see so much pressure today to innovate in missions, to change
• 7:18
  the message so it fits the culture better, the Sentinel
• 7:21
  says. No, my job is to deliver the
• 7:24
  message exactly as the King gave it to me.
• 7:26
  And what about the fighter? This distinguishes the
• 7:28
  missionary from, say, a diplomat.
• 7:30
  It does, and this goes back to your question about being
• 7:33
  combative. Burns is clear.
• 7:34
  This isn't boxing for sport. This is combat against
• 7:37
  ideologies that damn people to hell.
• 7:39
  You have to be compassionate toward the person, but
• 7:42
  absolutely ruthless toward the lie that holds them captive.
• 7:45
  So love the Sinner, hate the sin, but in this case it's love
• 7:47
  the person. Fight the doctrine.
• 7:49
  Exactly. If you love the person, you hate
• 7:51
  the cancer that's killing them, and you fight the cancer with
• 7:54
  everything you have. Then there's a second category
• 7:56
  here that I call discipline. It's the athlete and the runner.
• 8:00
  The athlete is fascinating because Paul adds a really
• 8:03
  specific caveat. He is not crowned unless he
• 8:07
  competes according to the rules. This is a direct shot at
• 8:10
  pragmatism. Define pragmatism for us in this
• 8:13
  context, because in the business world, being pragmatic is a huge
• 8:16
  compliment. That means you get things done
• 8:18
  right. But in the church, pragmatism is
• 8:21
  the belief that if it works, it's good.
• 8:25
  The ends justify the means. So if I use a method that gets
• 8:29
  500 people to raise their hands in an event, it must be blessed
• 8:33
  by God because the numbers are big.
• 8:35
  I see. But the athlete metaphor says
• 8:36
  no. You can run the fastest race in
• 8:39
  history, but if you cut across the infield, you don't get the
• 8:43
  gold medal, you get disqualified.
• 8:45
  So what is cutting the infield look like in Mission?
• 8:47
  Oh, it's everywhere. It looks like bypassing the hard
• 8:50
  work of teaching deep biblical doctrine because it's too
• 8:53
  Western or too difficult for this culture.
• 8:55
  It looks like changing the translation of Son of God to
• 8:58
  something like Messiah or Prophet because the word Son
• 9:02
  offends Muslims. You're trying to remove the
• 9:05
  offense of the cross. You are.
• 9:06
  It looks like counting hands raised aesthetic crusade as
• 9:09
  conversions without any follow up discipleship or church
• 9:12
  planting. You get big numbers, but you
• 9:14
  broke the rules. You didn't compete according to
• 9:16
  scripture. And the runner mindset.
• 9:18
  It's the marathon, not the Sprint.
• 9:20
  We live in a culture of instant gratification.
• 9:23
  We want quick results. We want to see the church
• 9:25
  planting movement that explodes in six months.
• 9:28
  But biblical fruit usually grows on trees, not mushrooms.
• 9:32
  Trees take years. Decade exactly.
• 9:35
  And you have to have the stamina to keep running.
• 9:37
  When there's no applause, no visible finish line and you feel
• 9:40
  like you're going nowhere, that's the runner.
• 9:42
  The last category here is really about work.
• 9:45
  I'm seeing the farmer, the student and the teacher, and I
• 9:48
  want to camp out on the farmer for a second because Burns
• 9:50
  quotes JC Rile here and it is devastatingly funny and
• 9:55
  accurate. He talks about jellyfish
• 9:57
  Christianity. Oh.
• 9:58
  It's a classic rail singer. Yeah.
• 9:59
  He describes the jellyfish floating in the ocean.
• 10:02
  It looks kind of pretty. The colors are nice.
• 10:03
  It expands and it contracts. But if you throw it on the
• 10:05
  beach, what is it? A lump of slime.
• 10:08
  Just a lump of slime. No bones, no muscle, no
• 10:11
  structure. Ryle says they are smooth as
• 10:14
  billiard balls, awakening no Sinner and edifying no St.
• 10:18
  That's the one. And he's critiquing A
• 10:20
  Christianity that has no dogma, no sharp edges, no backbone.
• 10:25
  It's inoffensive, but it's utterly useless.
• 10:28
  And Burns applies that to the missionary.
• 10:30
  You cannot be a jellyfish and survive in a hostile culture.
• 10:34
  You need the backbone of a hard working farmer.
• 10:36
  And farming is not glamorous. It's brutal work.
• 10:39
  It's rocks, it's weeds, it's bad weather, it's long hours.
• 10:42
  There's no glamour in plowing a field day after day.
• 10:45
  It's just hard labor. And that links directly to the
• 10:48
  student rightly dividing the word of truth.
• 10:51
  This implies that the work involves serious mental sweat.
• 10:54
  It's not just physical. It absolutely shames the
• 10:56
  missionary who doesn't study. Again, the modern myth is that
• 11:00
  all you need is love and a guitar.
• 11:02
  But love doesn't translate a Greek verb into a tribal
• 11:04
  language. Love doesn't answer a complex
• 11:07
  theological objection from an imam.
• 11:09
  You need to be a worker who studies the text relentlessly.
• 11:12
  Finally, the teacher. This seems to be the capstone of
• 11:15
  all of it. It is to Timothy 2.2 and trust
• 11:18
  to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
• 11:22
  This is the multiplication model.
• 11:23
  If you aren't doing this, you aren't doing biblical missions.
• 11:26
  You might be doing charity, which is a good thing, but
• 11:29
  missions is about establishing the church, and the church is
• 11:32
  built on teaching. Burns calls people who ignore
• 11:35
  this Christianized philanthropists.
• 11:38
  Ouch. But it's fair.
• 11:40
  If you dig a well but don't teach the word, you've helped
• 11:42
  someone for 50 years. If you teach the word, you've
• 11:45
  helped them for eternity. OK, so we've covered calling
• 11:48
  incompetence. Before we leave this section,
• 11:50
  let's just briefly touch on character burns list, kindness,
• 11:53
  patience and steadiness. But again, these aren't just,
• 11:56
  you know, nice personality traits now.
• 11:57
  They're theological anchors. They flow from the doctrine,
• 12:00
  take steadiness or humility. It's directly linked to Second
• 12:03
  Timothy 2.25 and Huntle prayer that God may perhaps grant them
• 12:08
  repentance. God may grant them.
• 12:10
  That's it. This is where the Reformed
• 12:12
  understanding is so practical on the field.
• 12:15
  If I believe I have to talk someone into salvation, if it
• 12:17
  depends on my persuasive ability, I'm going to be
• 12:21
  frantic. I'm going to be manipulative.
• 12:22
  I'm going to be stressed out of my mind.
• 12:24
  Yeah, the pressure is all on you.
• 12:26
  It is, but if I believe that God is the one who grants
• 12:29
  repentance, I can be steady, I can be patient, I can be humble,
• 12:34
  I can speak the truth, and then I can rest knowing the results
• 12:38
  are in better hands than mine. That takes all the pressure off.
• 12:41
  It lets you sleep at night. It's the.
• 12:42
  Only thing that keeps you sane on the field I think.
• 12:44
  All right, let's pivot. We've been talking principals,
• 12:48
  soldiers, farmers, athletes. These are helpful metaphors.
• 12:53
  But now we need to see this with skin on.
• 12:55
  We're moving to a historical case study presented by Brad
• 12:58
  Classen. We're looking at the life of
• 13:00
  David Brainerd now. I know the name and I know he's
• 13:03
  famous in mission circles, but I think for a lot of us he's just
• 13:06
  a portrait in a hallway. Who was this guy?
• 13:08
  He was a young man from Connecticut, born in 1718, and
• 13:11
  honestly, if you met him, you might have found him a bit
• 13:14
  intense. He was melancholy by nature, he
• 13:16
  was sickly his whole life, but his life and his diary became
• 13:20
  the fuel for the modern missionary movement.
• 13:23
  Before he ever went to the field, though, he had quite a
• 13:25
  spiritual struggle of his own. A profound 1.
• 13:28
  He calls it his Pharisee phase. For years he was trying to be
• 13:31
  holy enough to earn God's favor. He was doing all the religious
• 13:35
  duties, fasting, long hours of prayer, reading.
• 13:39
  But he wrote that he hated it. He was bitter.
• 13:41
  He was trying to climb the ladder.
• 13:43
  To heaven. Exactly.
• 13:44
  It's that classic pre conversion struggle where you realize the
• 13:48
  law demands absolute perfection but you can't provide it and the
• 13:52
  more you try the more you fail and the more you resent God for
• 13:55
  it. Which is a terrifying place to
• 13:57
  be. It's.
• 13:58
  The end of your rope. But that desperation broke him.
• 14:01
  He finally saw that his own righteousness was, as he said,
• 14:04
  filth, and that Christ's righteousness was everything.
• 14:07
  And once he was saved, that intense, focused energy shifted
• 14:10
  outward. He wanted to take that glorious
• 14:13
  gospel to people who had never heard it.
• 14:15
  Which led him to the Native American tribes.
• 14:17
  Yeah, he ended up working among tribes in New York, New Jersey
• 14:20
  and Pennsylvania. Let's.
• 14:21
  Paint the scene of his ministry for a minute.
• 14:23
  This was not a comfortable suburban mega church.
• 14:26
  Pastor it. Not even close.
• 14:28
  Picture the Forks of the Delaware in the 1740s.
• 14:31
  It's raw wilderness. Brainerd is living in a wigwam,
• 14:35
  or sometimes just a lean to he built himself.
• 14:37
  It's freezing in the winter. He's completely isolated.
• 14:40
  Often he didn't see another English speaker for weeks or
• 14:43
  months on end. And he didn't speak the language
• 14:45
  well at first. No, he had to rely on a
• 14:46
  translator who was often drunk and unreliable.
• 14:50
  He was incredibly lonely. You read his diary and the
• 14:52
  loneliness just bleeds off the page.
• 14:54
  And sick, we can't gloss over that part.
• 14:56
  We can't. He had tuberculosis.
• 14:59
  TB is a slow, cruel killer. It's a wasting disease.
• 15:02
  He writes in his diary about riding his horse through the
• 15:05
  woods, coughing up blood, feeling like he was drowning in
• 15:07
  his own fluids. He was in constant nagging pain.
• 15:10
  And on top of the physical pain, the emotional and spiritual
• 15:14
  struggle was immense. He battled deep, dark
• 15:17
  depression. He would spend days just weeping
• 15:20
  in the woods, feeling like he was a total failure, that God
• 15:23
  had abandoned him, that his ministry was fruitless.
• 15:27
  So why do we read his Diaries then?
• 15:28
  If it's just a record of misery and failure, why is it
• 15:31
  considered a spiritual classic? Because of his response to the
• 15:35
  misery. That's the key.
• 15:37
  He didn't curse God. He didn't give up.
• 15:40
  He used the suffering as a lens to see God more clearly.
• 15:43
  He wrote about how his physical weakness made him grateful
• 15:46
  because it weaned him off the world.
• 15:47
  He said it made heaven seem sweeter.
• 15:50
  He realized he had no home here, so he longed for his eternal
• 15:53
  home. It's this raw, unfiltered
• 15:55
  wrestling with God that is so captivating.
• 15:58
  He wasn't putting on a brave face for Instagram.
• 16:00
  He was pouring his guts out to God on the page and yet still
• 16:03
  clinging to him. And eventually God did move.
• 16:05
  There was fruit from all this pain.
• 16:07
  He did. After a long period of what felt
• 16:09
  like failure, revival broke out. It started with the chief's
• 16:13
  daughter. She was skeptical, and
• 16:15
  rightfully so, because she'd seen how white settlers had
• 16:18
  mistreated her people. But the Spirit pierced her heart
• 16:20
  during one of Brainerd's sermons.
• 16:22
  And that was the. Spark.
• 16:23
  It was the spark. Suddenly, the whole community
• 16:26
  was gripped by conviction. Brainerd describes these stoic,
• 16:30
  hardened warriors openly weeping over their sin.
• 16:34
  He couldn't explain it. He knew it wasn't him.
• 16:36
  He wasn't a great order. He was a dying man with a bad
• 16:39
  translator. But God came down.
• 16:42
  He didn't live long to enjoy it, though.
• 16:44
  No, he died at 2929 years old. He died in Jonathan Edwards
• 16:48
  house in Northampton. Edward's daughter Jerusha had
• 16:51
  nursed him at the end and tragically she caught TB from
• 16:53
  him and died shortly after. It's just a heavy, heavy story.
• 16:56
  But his death was a seed A. Massive seed Edwards took those
• 17:00
  Diaries and published them, and they exploded across the
• 17:02
  Atlantic world. William Carey, the father of
• 17:05
  modern missions, read them and said they set his soul on fire.
• 17:08
  He went to India. Henry Martin read them and went
• 17:11
  to Persia. John Wesley urged his ministers
• 17:14
  to read them, and two centuries later, a young college student
• 17:16
  named Jim Elliott read them. Jim Elliott, one of the five
• 17:19
  missionaries martyred in Ecuador.
• 17:21
  The very same. And that famous quote from Jim
• 17:24
  Elliott. He is no fool who gives what he
• 17:26
  cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
• 17:29
  You're saying that comes from Brainerd's influence?
• 17:31
  That quote is pure Brainerd. It's the essence of his life.
• 17:35
  Brainerd gave up his health, his comfort, his future, all things
• 17:38
  he couldn't keep anyway to gain the souls of the Susquehanna
• 17:41
  people and the glory of Christ. He competed according to the
• 17:45
  rules and he finished the race. He was the athlete, the soldier,
• 17:49
  the farmer. That transitions us perfectly to
• 17:51
  our next section. You can't talk about David
• 17:53
  Brainerd without talking about suffering.
• 17:55
  It wasn't an accessory to his ministry.
• 17:57
  It was his ministry in many ways.
• 18:00
  Our next sources, Kevin Edwards and Brooks Buzzer, take this
• 18:03
  from history into the present day.
• 18:05
  And they start by establishing the biblical baseline.
• 18:08
  We have to get sick. Timothy 3.12 into our heads,
• 18:10
  just seared into our minds. Indeed, all who desire to live a
• 18:14
  godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
• 18:17
  Notice the word all. All it's not some or the unlucky
• 18:21
  ones or the ones in difficult countries.
• 18:23
  It's a promise from God. If you were pushing back against
• 18:27
  the darkness, the darkness pushes back.
• 18:29
  It's a law of spiritual physics. So Kevin Edwards lays out the
• 18:33
  macro view, the global reality of this, and we know these
• 18:37
  stories, but we often forget the scale China, India, the Middle
• 18:41
  East. Right in China you have house
• 18:43
  church pastors who know that imprisonment is not a
• 18:45
  possibility, it's an eventuality.
• 18:47
  They have a bag packed. In India, we're seeing a huge
• 18:50
  rise in Hindu nationalism, where converts from Hinduism are
• 18:53
  physically beaten, their homes are destroyed.
• 18:56
  And in the Muslim world, it's often not violent violence from
• 18:58
  the state, but from the family. Which is almost worse.
• 19:01
  It's displacement. Families disowning their
• 19:03
  children, cutting them off completely for converting.
• 19:06
  That's the high level headline grabbing suffering.
• 19:09
  But then Brooks Buster brings it down to what he calls the micro
• 19:13
  level, and this really hit home for me.
• 19:14
  He talks about the accumulation of small sufferings because
• 19:18
  let's be honest, most missionaries aren't facing a
• 19:20
  firing squad every Tuesday morning.
• 19:22
  No, and that's almost harder in a way.
• 19:25
  The firing squad is over quickly.
• 19:27
  Budger talks about the grind, the slow erosion, but he starts
• 19:30
  with a story that is anything but small.
• 19:33
  He calls it the boat story. Yeah, recount that because I was
• 19:36
  stressed just reading it. So Budger is in Papua New
• 19:39
  Guinea. He needs to get to a remote
• 19:41
  island 80 miles offshore. He's in an 18 foot skiff now.
• 19:46
  For anyone who knows books, an 18 foot boat in the open ocean
• 19:50
  is basically a bathtub. It's.
• 19:51
  A tiny. A storm hits a bad one.
• 19:54
  For seven hours they were getting hammered by waves that
• 19:56
  are breaking over the gunnels, filling the boat with water.
• 19:59
  At one point, a child on board gets washed down the deck by a
• 20:01
  wave and the dad barely grabs her by the ankle before she goes
• 20:05
  overboard. 7 hours of thinking, this is it, we're going to die,
• 20:07
  we're going to drown. Absolute terror.
• 20:10
  Cold, wet, exhausted. But when they finally
• 20:13
  miraculously hit the beach on that island, Boozer makes this
• 20:16
  incredible connection to the apostle Paul.
• 20:19
  In Acts 28, Paul is shipwrecked on Malta.
• 20:21
  He's just been in the stormy sea.
• 20:23
  He's freezing. He's just survived a near death
• 20:25
  experience. And what does the tech say Paul
• 20:27
  did the moment he got to shore? It says he gathered a bundle of
• 20:30
  sticks and put them on the fire. Think about the humility and the
• 20:33
  focus of that. This is the great apostle.
• 20:36
  He's the leader of the group. He's the victim of a major
• 20:39
  trauma. He has every right to sit on a
• 20:41
  rock, wrap himself in a blanket and say I'm done, someone bring
• 20:45
  me some coffee. I've had a hard day.
• 20:46
  Yeah, take care of me. But he doesn't.
• 20:48
  He immediately start serving. He goes into the brush and
• 20:51
  gathers firewood for the group. That is such a vivid picture of
• 20:54
  leadership and resilience. It's the definition of
• 20:56
  missionary grit. Because there's point is that
• 20:58
  Paul didn't use his trauma as an excuse to stop serving.
• 21:02
  He didn't let his suffering make himself absorbed.
• 21:05
  He just got the wood. That's the dramatic suffering,
• 21:07
  the big storm. But then Buzzer talks about the
• 21:11
  death by 1000 cuts. This is the day-to-day stuff.
• 21:14
  This is what sends more people home from the field than the big
• 21:17
  crises. It's not the snake bite, it's
• 21:20
  the constant mosquitoes. It's the visa office telling you
• 21:22
  again that your paperwork is lost and you might be deported
• 21:26
  next. Week, the uncertainty.
• 21:27
  Of it, constant uncertainty. It's the language learning,
• 21:30
  feeling like a 2 year old for two 3-4 years because you can't
• 21:33
  express a complex thought. It's the humiliation of that.
• 21:37
  It's missing your best friend's wedding back home.
• 21:40
  It's getting a call that your grandmother died and you can't
• 21:42
  be at the funeral. And Heseltine Judson, one of the
• 21:45
  first American missionaries, she called these accumulated
• 21:48
  sufferings. And she said if she didn't
• 21:50
  believe they were ordered by an infinitely wise and good God,
• 21:53
  she would have sunk under them. And that brings us to the
• 21:56
  theology. How do you handle the boat and
• 21:59
  the visa office? Buster contrasts 2 versions of
• 22:02
  the Apostle Peter. I love this comparison.
• 22:05
  Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane versus Peter in
• 22:07
  Prison in Acts. In Gethsemane, Peter is a wreck.
• 22:11
  He's sleeping, but Luke tells us he's sleeping from sorrow.
• 22:14
  It's an exhaustion born of anxiety, depression, confusion.
• 22:18
  He wakes up and immediately starts swinging a sword, trying
• 22:21
  to fix things himself. He's frantic because he thinks
• 22:23
  everything's out of control. OK, now Fast forward to Acts 12.
• 22:26
  Peter is in a maximum security prison.
• 22:29
  Herod has just beheaded James, another apostle.
• 22:32
  Peter is next on the list. The trial is scheduled for the
• 22:35
  next morning, which likely means execution.
• 22:37
  And what is Peter doing? He's snoozing, sound asleep.
• 22:40
  He's out cold, chained between two guards.
• 22:43
  The Angel has to literally smack him on side to wake him up.
• 22:46
  What happened between the garden and the prison?
• 22:48
  What changed him? Peter.
• 22:49
  Pentecost, for one, the resurrection.
• 22:52
  Yes, but what did that teach him?
• 22:54
  He learned that God is sovereign in the garden.
• 22:56
  He thought it was up to him to protect Jesus and fix the
• 22:58
  situation in the prison. He knew that whether he lived or
• 23:01
  died the next day, he belonged to Christ and God's plan would
• 23:05
  not be thwarted. He was resting in the absolute
• 23:08
  sovereignty of God. That's the pillow he slept on.
• 23:11
  That is the only way to survive the mission field.
• 23:13
  If you think it's up to you, you'll burnout or break.
• 23:16
  If you know it's up to God, you can sleep between the guards.
• 23:19
  Amen. That's the only way.
• 23:21
  OK, We have one final section, and this one, it really flips
• 23:24
  the script. We've talked about soldiers and
• 23:26
  farmers and endurance, and frankly, it sounds like you need
• 23:29
  to be a Navy SEAL to do this job.
• 23:31
  You need to be tough. You need to be physically
• 23:33
  robust. But our last source, Dave Duel,
• 23:36
  comes in and says not so fast. This is the section on weakness
• 23:41
  and disability and missions. And it is so, so important
• 23:45
  because as a church we idolize physical capability.
• 23:48
  We think the ideal missionary is a cross between a theologian and
• 23:52
  a CrossFit champion. Right, someone who can survive
• 23:54
  in the jungle. But Duel argues that Missions is
• 23:57
  actually God's theater to display his power, and he also
• 24:01
  does that best through cracked, broken vessels.
• 24:04
  He starts with a story that is just the ultimate mic.
• 24:07
  Drop George sought. He was a 19th century missionary
• 24:10
  to China. He had one leg.
• 24:12
  He lost the other one in a farming incident as a young man.
• 24:14
  I can just imagine the missions committee today.
• 24:17
  Sorry, George, it's a liability issue.
• 24:19
  Our insurance won't cover it. You can't run from persecutors.
• 24:22
  Exactly, all the reasons why he was unqualified and people asked
• 24:26
  him why would you of all people go to China with one leg?
• 24:30
  And Stotts reply was I do not see those with two legs going,
• 24:33
  so I must. Boom, that just ends the
• 24:36
  argument, doesn't. It it does, the dual gives us a
• 24:39
  solid theological framework. Here he has three determining
• 24:42
  questions. First, has God called and gifted
• 24:46
  them? If we believe First Corinthians
• 24:48
  and Ephesians, the Spirit gives essential gifts to the whole
• 24:50
  body. That includes people with
• 24:52
  disabilities. If we tell them they can't serve
• 24:55
  on the field, we are actually robbing the Church of the gifts
• 24:57
  God specifically gave them. We're cutting off a part of the
• 24:59
  body. The second question is, has
• 25:02
  Jesus commissioned them? The Great Commission, all
• 25:05
  authority in heaven and on earth, has been given to me.
• 25:08
  Go there. Therefore Jesus didn't put an
• 25:10
  asterisk at the bottom that says terms and conditions apply.
• 25:13
  Must be able to walk 5 miles and have 2020 vision.
• 25:16
  He promised His presence to all disciples who go.
• 25:19
  And the third question is the clincher for me.
• 25:22
  Does God display his power in weakness?
• 25:25
  This is the heart of the gospel, isn't it?
• 25:27
  It's 2nd Corinthians 12, Paul's thorn in the flesh.
• 25:30
  We don't know what it was. Maybe poor eyesight, maybe
• 25:32
  malaria, maybe migraines. But it was debilitating and he
• 25:36
  pleaded with God three times to take it away so he could be more
• 25:40
  effective for the ministry. And God said no.
• 25:42
  God said no, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power
• 25:46
  is made perfect in weakness. Dual points to Moses.
• 25:50
  We forget this all the time. Moses had a disability.
• 25:52
  Exodus 4.10. I am slow of speech and of
• 25:55
  tongue. He likely had a severe stutter
• 25:57
  or a speech impediment. And God calls him to be his
• 26:00
  spokesman. Not just any spokesman, the
• 26:02
  spokesman to Pharaoh, the most powerful king on earth.
• 26:04
  Why? So that when Pharaoh's Kingdom
• 26:06
  crumbled, nobody would say, wow, Moses is a really smooth talker.
• 26:10
  They would have to say that was the finger of God.
• 26:12
  God chose the weak instrument to make His own power undeniable.
• 26:16
  Always dual then mentions Tom Brewster, a modern example.
• 26:19
  What's his story? Tom Brewster was a quadriplegic.
• 26:23
  He was paralyzed from the neck down in a diving accident.
• 26:27
  He went on to become a missionary and a global
• 26:29
  consultant for missions, and he said his paralysis was his
• 26:32
  biggest blessing. That sounds insane to the world.
• 26:36
  A blessing. It does, but he said it forced
• 26:39
  him to depend totally on God's leading and on the help of other
• 26:42
  people. He couldn't force doors open.
• 26:44
  He couldn't use his physical strength or his charisma to make
• 26:47
  things happen. He had to pray and wait and
• 26:50
  trust and God used him mightily all over the world from a
• 26:53
  wheelchair. It reminds me of that quote Dual
• 26:55
  uses from John MacArthur. It's a stunner.
• 26:58
  There are many people in ministry too strong to be
• 27:00
  useful. There are no people in ministry
• 27:02
  too weak to be useful. Just sit with that for a second.
• 27:05
  Too strong to be useful? That's haunting.
• 27:07
  It means if you rely on your own competence, your own health,
• 27:10
  your own cleverness, your own eloquence, you're actually in
• 27:14
  God's way. You're stealing the glory, God
• 27:17
  says. I will not give my glory to
• 27:19
  another If you're weak, if you're sick, if you stutter, if
• 27:21
  you're unqualified by worldly standards, you are the perfect
• 27:25
  candidate for God to show off His strength.
• 27:27
  So let's bring all this together.
• 27:29
  We've covered a massive amount of ground here.
• 27:31
  We've seen that the missionary isn't just a well meaning
• 27:34
  volunteer, they are a called qualified officer of the church
• 27:39
  held to the highest standards. We've seen the competence that's
• 27:42
  required, the mindset of the soldier, the athlete, the hard
• 27:46
  working farmer. We've seen the need for deep
• 27:49
  theological roots, not just surface level enthusiasm.
• 27:53
  We've walked through the valley of the shadow of death with
• 27:55
  David Brainard and seen that suffering is the norm, not the
• 27:58
  exception, whether it's the big storm at sea or the lonely
• 28:02
  nights in a wigwam. And then, just when we think the
• 28:05
  bar is impossibly high, we've seen the God flips our
• 28:08
  expectations completely upside down by choosing to use the
• 28:11
  weak, the disabled, and the broken to shame the strong.
• 28:14
  It all circles back to one thing, doesn't it?
• 28:16
  The glory of God. It's his mission.
• 28:18
  It's his power. We are just the tools.
• 28:19
  And flawed crack tools at that. But in his hands, a flawed tool
• 28:24
  can build a Kingdom. I want to leave us with a
• 28:26
  thought as we close up this deep dive.
• 28:28
  We spent this whole time talking about those people, the ones who
• 28:32
  go, the Brainerds, the Busters, the Stotts, and it's really easy
• 28:36
  to listen to this and think, wow, good for them.
• 28:39
  That's an elite class of Christian.
• 28:41
  I could never do that. But that completely misses the
• 28:43
  point of this last section, right?
• 28:45
  If God uses the weak, if he uses the man with one leg, if he uses
• 28:52
  the stutterer, if he uses the guy who was terrified of the
• 28:55
  ocean but gets in the boat anyway, then what is my excuse?
• 28:58
  What is your excuse sitting at home?
• 29:00
  We so often say I'm not ready, or I don't have the training or
• 29:03
  I'm not the spiritual giant type.
• 29:04
  But if George Stott can hobble his way to China, you can cross
• 29:08
  the street to talk to your neighbor.
• 29:09
  You can support a missionary with your finances.
• 29:12
  You can pray for the persecuted church with the discipline of a
• 29:14
  soldier. Exactly.
• 29:16
  We disqualify ourselves because we think it's about our ability
• 29:19
  and it has never, ever been about our capability.
• 29:21
  It's about our availability and His capability.
• 29:25
  So maybe the biggest disqualification for service
• 29:27
  isn't weakness, but self-sufficiency.
• 29:30
  Maybe the most dangerous place to be is sitting comfortably in
• 29:33
  the Pew thinking you're too strong and self reliant to need
• 29:37
  God's power. The irony is, the boat we think
• 29:40
  is so safe is actually where the storm is.
• 29:43
  The safest place to be is out on the water walking toward Jesus,
• 29:46
  completely dependent on Him. That's a good place to end.
• 29:49
  Thank you for joining us for this deep dive on reformed
• 29:51
  thinking. I hope this challenged you.
• 29:53
  I hope it made you a little uncomfortable.
• 29:55
  Go read the sources. They're worth your time.
• 29:57
  Until next time, keep studying, keep trusting, and don't be a
• 30:00
  jellyfish.