“Your mission, should you choose to accept it.” Most of us recognize this famous line from the original Mission Impossible television series and the films starring Tom Cruise. For those who haven’t seen any of the Mission Impossible films, the movies are about a top secret government task force called the Impossible Mission Force or the IMF. The IMF specializes in espionage, the extraction of highly classified intelligence, and the prevention of threats on a global scale. Ethan Hunt, the main character who is portrayed by Tom Cruise, is one of the IMF agents and the agency’s best. He always gets assigned the most challenging and dangerous missions that are considered to be impossible to complete. Despite the overwhelming odds, Ethan Hunt always succeeds in his missions and saves the day in the end. As strange as this sounds, I made an interesting parallel with these films to what God has been speaking to me in recent weeks.
About a month ago, a friend invited me to attend one of the Chi Alpha services on the campus of Texas Tech University. Much to my surprise, I discovered that Chi Alpha was BIG on missions! I have never seen an organization or church so mission-minded to that capacity. Every church I have ever attended throughout the years collected offerings and faith promises for BGMC, STL, and LFTL but their core values concerning missions pale in comparison to the Chi Alpha organization at TTU. I attended a few services and discovered that their entire approach is based on evangelism and discipleship; something that is sadly missing and neglected in many churches today.
As Christians, we have been charged to evangelize and make disciples. Evangelism and discipleship are the two tasks we have been assigned to complete and the mission was given to us before Jesus departed earth and ascended to heaven.
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing 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. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20 NIV
These two verses in Matthew 28 is commonly referred to as The Great Commission. Jesus instructs EVERY believer to evangelize and to make disciples; however, the problem with the majority of Christians today concerning The Great Commission is people falsely assume it only applies to missionaries. The truth is you don’t have to be a missionary living in a third-world country to make disciples. The mission is required to be fulfilled by ALL who profess Jesus as their Lord and Savior and the mission field is everywhere. The mission field is where your feet are!
This might sound like a daunting task or an impossible mission to some but the mission becomes POSSIBLE with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 NIV
The Holy Spirit empowers us to be witnesses but what exactly does being a witness mean? I recently did a hermeneutical study on this verse and broke down the greek words. The greek word that Matthew uses for “witnesses” is the word martys. Martys is pronounced as mä’r-tüs and is defined as “martyr.” Martyrdom was a common fate for most Christians in the early church. Being martyred often meant a gruesome and excruciating death. The enemy of our souls used death as an attempt to scatter the disciples and to thwart the spread of the gospel in the early days of the church but Satan failed miserably. The reason Satan failed is because of what happened on the Day of Pentecost. Jesus knew an ordinary person could not fulfill the mission on their own in the face of death. His disciples needed divine power to overcome the world and that’s what the Holy Spirit did! The Holy Spirit empowers us to fulfill the mission of making disciples in every corner of the world. The Holy Spirit gives us boldness and courage in the face of any circumstance including persecution and death. We see the empowerment of the Holy Spirit at work all throughout the book of Acts. If you recall, Peter had a lot of self-confidence which often resulted in him making a fool of himself. Before the infilling of the Holy Spirit, Peter denied Jesus three times because he feared for his life but when he received the empowerment in Acts 2, we see a completely different person who is fearless. We see the empowerment of the Holy Spirit overflowing from Peter during his sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2:14-41), when Peter and John healed a crippled man (Acts 3), and when Peter and John spoke with boldness before the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:1-22). What a complete turn around!
The Holy Spirit is an amazing free gift for all who will ask but sadly we are seeing a tragic decline in Christians today who are empowered with this wonderful gift! The lack of Spirit-filled empowered preachers, who will make the Holy Spirit a core value in their churches today, have contributed to a culture of timid and powerless people who only practice Christianity within the confines of the building and don’t evangelize or disciple to the lost outside of the four walls. Christians today hold back the gospel because of the fear of being rejected and to avoid offending others. Christians are failing the mission at an alarming rate but the main culprit of failure is the lack of empowered believers who have the infilling of the Holy Spirit. We desperately need this to change!
Another reason Christians are failing the mission is because evangelism and discipleship has been relegated to a cookie cutter repeat-after-me prayer. A lot of churches are only interested in numbers and converts so new believers are led in a sinners prayer and stay infants because the church has failed to disciple them and to feed them spiritually beyond the sinners prayer. In the worst cases, some new believers spiritually die because of poor spiritual nutrition! This can only be avoided with discipleship. The mission isn’t accomplished at the utterance of the word “amen.” The mission will always have two phases. The first phase is evangelism and after evangelism is discipleship. Discipleship must always take place after evangelism. The mission is only accomplished when disciples begin evangelizing on their own to make more disciples. The goal is to make disciples who make disciples. This is the mission!
Several weeks ago, I was reading the parable of the talents. I always assumed the talents represented abilities but the Holy Spirit revealed to me that the talents in this parable actually represent gifts and opportunities to share the gospel with the lost. God has provided us a source of empowerment to reach lost souls. That source of empowerment is the Holy Spirit. If we have that power and we fail to evangelize and make disciples, we are essentially burying the talent in the ground. If there are people that we come into contact with and we fail to share the gospel with them, once again we are essentially burying the talent in the ground. Jesus made it abundantly clear that only those who are faithful in the mission will receive a reward and those who are unfaithful will be punished with eternal damnation. We must be faithful and approach the mission with a failure-is not-an-option mind set!
Not only do we need the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to fulfill the mission, but we also need a genuine compassion and love for the lost. On October 11th, 2017, I had the privilege of serving as one of the prayer partners on the Decision Texas tour with Franklin Graham. As part of the training for the night of the tour, we were required to attend a training course the week before the rally provided by the Billy Graham Association. The course was a few hours long but emphasized salvation through evangelism and godly living through discipleship. In the training program, they showed us a clip from the movie Schindler’s List. The movie is based on a true story about a German businessman named Oskar Schindler who saved 1,200 Jews from the destruction of the holocaust. Despite all of the people he saved, in the end he was remorseful for not doing enough and broke down into bitter sobbing repeating the words, “I could have got one more person!”
That powerful scene demonstrates a love and compassion that we all should have concerning the lost. Do we have a genuine love to save as many as we can? Do we value souls enough that we’re willing to do whatever it takes to win one more for the kingdom? Are we willing to put it all on the line to share the gospel with our lost coworkers, our lost classmates, our lost neighbors, our lost family members, our lost loved ones, the lost homeless person standing on the street corner holding the cardboard sign, the lost person waiting in line at the grocery store checkout, the lost restaurant server, or the lost family sitting at the doctors office? Do our hearts ache with sorrow at the thought of souls forever lost to the eternal flames of hell? Are we willing to do whatever it takes to increase the population of heavens gates?
Lately I find myself praying, “Lord, empower me to fulfill the mission so I do not fail you. Lord, do not let me be distracted by my selfish desires so it doesn’t keep me from fulfilling the mission you have given me. Lord, give me one more.” This is the mission – to evangelize and make disciples. I do not want to fail God and I pray those reading this will be moved to take action. Fellow believers, are you ready to accept your mission?
Joshua Hawk 