The Man On A Mission

"I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do" (John 17:4, NIV).
"However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me..." (Acts 20:24, NIV).  

One thing for sure, Jesus was par excellence the man on a mission from God.  From the very beginning, He sensed His higher calling that the Father had work for Him to do and He must lay down His life--He came to die!  His motto from the outset, when twelve years old, was, "I must be about My Father's business."  This was the theme of His life--to do God's will. You could say He had fulfilled the role of a lifetime:  "Thy will be done!"  And this is the yoke He has given us--to do His will, not to obey the law of Moses, which He fulfilled for us.  His yoke is easy and His burden is light!  One notable thing about Christ on His mission extraordinaire:  He never had "tunnel vision" and could always see the trees and the forest!  His secret was that He never forgot who He was or His mission: to be our Savior first, and then our King in that order.  He never forgot who He was and we ought to do likewise.

It is easy for us to get side-tracked and lose focus of what our mission is and to feel like failures--but keeping our eyes on Christ is a way to stay in touch with His will.  That is one unique thing about our faith:  it has a message for everyone, even failures and people who have messed up their lives, even sinners who have lost it all.  But if we haven't lost God, we haven't lost it all!  With Jesus as our Exemplar, we must not lose focus on the Great Commission and why we are here and that we must live our lives for Christ, not ourselves.

Jesus was on the Green Mile or His road to his (execution) cross and stopped to heal a blind man, never losing His compassion for people in need.  His mission was always front and center, but people mattered and they were never an interruption or inconvenience.  On His Via Dolorosa, Jesus stopped to tell a woman not to weep for Him: Christ was willingly going to the cross and knew what it entailed.  Even on the cross Jesus commended His mother to John and took care of her in her time of need, and the first thing He uttered was a prayer of intercession for those who knew not what they were doing and needed forgiveness--again thinking of others first!  Oh that we should never be too busy to welcome doing God a service or to lend a helping hand, for He has no hands but ours to help with.

As a guiding principle or rule of thumb, the more focused we are, the greater we can accomplish, and the more impact we have.  The problem with some people is that they are trying to do too much at a time, like walking and chewing gum as it were. We shouldn't try to multi-task so much and concentrate on doing God's will first and foremost.  David was known for doing all of God's will and was called a man after God's own heart for it.   It is not always good to have too many burners in the fire.  They are like spinning tops going around and around but getting nowhere!  If you're not going anywhere, it doesn't pay to be in a hurry.  It doesn't pay to be busy if you're going nowhere or have no purpose!

We need patience that our time is in God's hands and He controls the timing of everything.  To everything there is a season and purpose and a procedure, we must strive to do things God's way and in His timing.  In His time, He will make everything beautiful, so it is said in Ecclesiastes.  David prayed:   "My times are in your hands" (cf. Psalm 31:15, NIV).  In the final analysis, we must pray the prayer of relinquishment as Christ did at the Garden and commit everything to His will, not ours, lest He does let us have our way and mess things up--God does have our best in mind and we should know that!     Soli Deo Gloria!

The Generic Atheist

We have atheists, anti-theists, militant atheists, and even practical atheists who believe but live like there's no God and unwitting atheists who don't realize they are.  We see the rise of militant atheists out to eradicate Christ from the public square and public discourse as if they have an animus against a God who doesn't exist and whom they do not know.  It's like being angry at the little green men, though you cannot prove their nonexistence!  

Of course, all logicians know you cannot prove a universal negative:  you can neither prove the existence of God with smoking-gun evidence to the unwilling unbeliever nor disprove Him to the willing believers.  The only way to prove a universal negative is to be God (knowing all and being everywhere present). They don't offer proof there is no God, and evidence is hard to come by, but just offer their objections to Christianity and try to attack its credibility or freedom from hypocrisy. To be sure, no one can deny God due to lack of evidence!

There are plenty of motives to be an atheist: one doesn't have to shun hell, be accountable, regard sexual taboo or restriction, be judged, do the will of God, or worship in organized religion. In short, it's just very inconvenient!   But man is basically a religious creature that will worship someone or something regardless of religious affiliation or not.  Many atheists won't admit it, but they are embittered and believe God has done something unfair to them and they blame Him: the Bible says in Prov. 19:3 that when man ruins his life he blames God, but ironically we know he gives Him no credit for success while thinking he's a self-made man at that!  Why are they angry at Jesus; what did He do?  Even Pilate found no fault in Him!  Jesus died as the innocent Lamb, but His cruel death was not the end of Him--He lives in our hearts through the kingdom of God.

One anecdote has an atheist in Ireland and being asked whether it was the God of Protestants or the God of Catholics that he didn't believe in!  Blame sectarianism! They wondered the same question during the Civil War when both sides claimed to be praying to the same God for victory.  Even during WWI, they had a truce to celebrate Christmas.  How can this be brotherhood when we quarrel and even go to war?  We shall judge the world and angels; how is it we cannot settle petty disputes?  People say they cannot believe in "such a God" or a God who allows such and such a disaster--these are objections, not evidence.  When people say the Bible contradicts itself, it really contradicts them!

I venture to posit that most atheists disbelieve out of ignorance and of rejecting a God they know nothing of or have false impressions of it like erecting straw men in arguments.   In other words, if they knew the One that lightens every man and loves them enough to die, they would change their minds about the only God of love.  Even Napoleon called Christ the Emperor of Love.  Christ wants to conquer hearts through the Spirit and He has commissioned us to spread the Word, the gospel of God that is love.  Even Christians are known to be willing to die for a church they will not attend, much less must be the opinion of the church be to the outsiders--Spurgeon said that it has so little influence on the world because the world has so much influence on the church!

Most Americans don't realize that Buddha didn't believe in God and that Buddhism denies a supernatural Creator-God.  They are basically ancestor and Buddha worshippers.  It used to be that belief in the Christian God was the default position in academia, but now the so-called intelligentsia has succumbed to Postmodernism, New Age thinking, and Secular Humanism as an alternative takes on God and interpretation of reality.  It is generally believed that Darwin killed God and now God is dead and no longer relevant.  But science has not undermined the Bible or Christianity.  Christianity has always succeeded in out-thinking the skeptics and can answer their objections. It is a fact, that after two millennia, no objection is going to bring the downfall of this virulent faith and Christianity's God will not die.

The sad truth is that you must be oriented and aware of the truth to be living in reality and to know how to live.  Truth, according to John Locke, is what corresponds with reality.  The truth is becoming no more relevant as the personification of truth itself, Jesus, is being rejected--now they try to brainwash students into thinking it's only relative or cannot be known.  When we remove God from the equation we lose our bearings on reality and are thrown off course and the foundation of society becomes destroyed.  George Bernard Shaw said that "no society has survived the loss of its gods."

The atheist often attacks believers as having blind faith, but that means not knowing why you believe.  Most atheists have blind faith because it's a bankrupt faith that cannot be proved with sound evidence--and most atheists don't know why they even don't believe, they're just bitter.  John Stott said we must cater to their intellectual integrity [and answer objections], but must not pander to their intellectual arrogance.   Both positions require faith, either in God or in science and man's reasoning.  It's not a matter of faith versus reason, but which set of presuppositions one begins with.    Soli Deo Gloria!