A Passion for Missions

God be gracious to us and bless us, And cause His face to shine upon us
That Your way may be known on the earth,
Your salvation among all nations. (Ps 67:1-2)

The theme of Psalm 67, like the theme of the whole Bible, is missions! It is a prayer that God would bless us so that through us the nations might come to know and worship Him! From that, I take this important truth: The reason God blesses His people is never just so we can be blessed. It is always so that we might use His blessing to make Him known in the earth!

When God called Abraham, in Genesis 12, He made this promise. He said “I will bless you and you will be a blessing” It was God’s purpose to bless Abraham. Why? Because, He goes on to say, “in you all the nations of the earth will be blessed” In other words, God’s purpose in blessing Abraham was that ultimately through him, a blessing (salvation in Jesus) would go out to the nations! Notice that! God’s goal was the nations. The way He accomplished that goal was through Abraham. So God blessed Abraham and made him a blessing, so that through him, God would be known in all the earth!

That’s what I want our church to understand. I want us to see that that Missions is at the heart of everything God does, which means that missions is at the heart of what it means to be Christian! That means the church that does not have missions at the center of its life and activity cannot claim to be a true church, and the Christian who does not have a passion for missions burning in his/her heart cannot claim to be a true disciple of Christ.

That’s the big picture! This is what God is doing on planet earth right now! He’s raising up a people for Himself, blessing them with joy in His Son, and then sending them out to the nations to might make his glories known! May God bless us and cause His face to shine on us, that His name may be known in all the earth!

In His Mercy
S. Scott Lee