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The Great Commission

Friday, I went up to the "Fasting and Prayer Mountain of the World" -- which from the title alone screams out Korean owned -- and I'm glad I did.  The night prior, I listened to a mp3 of an Organic Church Conference seminar by Jaeson Ma of Campus Church Networks.  And  Jaeson kept quoting from an article by YWAM's Floyd McClung on "Apostolic Passion."   And WOW.  That article bopped me over the head.   http://www.fluidmission.com/articles.php?id=15

He spoke of how many of us want the fruit of the Apostle Paul's ministry, but few of us want to pay the cost associated with it.  The suffering, the discipline.  That's totally me.  

In addition, he hammered me with this one on prayer: 

"A young man in Bible school offered to help David Wilkerson years ago when he was ministering on the streets of New York City.  Wilkerson asked how much time he spent in prayer.  The young man estimated about 20 minutes a day.  Wilkerson told him, 'Go back young man.  Go back for a month and pray for two hours a day, every day for 30 days.  When you have done that, come back.  Come back, and I might consider turning you loose on the streets where there is murder, rape, violence, and danger.  If I sent you out now on 20 minutes a day, I'd be sending a soldier into battle without any weapons, and you would get killed.'

You can get into heaven, my friend, without a lot of prayer. You can have a one-minute quiet time every day, and God will still love you, but you won't hear a 'Well done, good and faithful servant' on one-minute conversations with God.  And you certainly can't make it on that kind of prayer life in the hard places where Jesus is not known or worshipped.  Here's a challenge for you: read everything Paul says about prayer, then ask yourself, 'Am I willing to pray like that?'  Paul said that he prayed, 'night and day with tears, without ceasing, with thankfulness in the spirit, constantly and boldly, for godly sorrow, against the evil one.'"

My goodness.  Lord, help me to be a good and faithful servant!  This was haunting me that whole day. 

When I was at the prayer mountain, I felt like I had to surrender my desire for feeling significant, for being "effective" and fruitful, and for being "important" in starting movements.   This is hard for me b/c I don't know how to relate to ministry "success."    But I surprised myself when I asked Jesus, "You can keep me hidden for the rest of my life, but Lord, let me experience the beginning and end of the Great Commission.  Let me experience your authority over heaven and earth.  And let me experience your presence with me until the end of my life."  I don't know where these two things came from, but I felt a peace in my heart about it right away.   If I have these two things I will live a happy life.  

I am still processing this, but something seems right about this.  I don't want significance as much as I want to experience intimate life with Jesus in the harvest.  I want to see with my own two eyes and share with my own mouth that the harvest is plentiful, that Jesus does prepare hearts, that entire oikoses do get saved, that entire villages and regions can be saved, and that the Kingdom of God has arrived in power, and this child of the King is swimming in that Kingdom power, presence and authority.  

I don't have to write a book, don't have to be asked to speak at a conference, don't have to be known.  I just want to know Jesus in this way.   

Inspired by Antoine Saint-Exupery

I thought it appropriate to base the title of this on a quote by Saint-Exupery.   

The quote goes like this: "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders.  Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

That's the heart of this space: my longing for the open sea, for the adventure of joining God where He is on the edges and frontiers of Kingdom activity.  

Saint-Ex [as he was affectionately called] had this yearning etched deep into his soul; he's most known -- not for his profound children's book, The Little Prince, but for his contributions in aeronautics.   He flew planes for the experience of finding himself while flying over the Andes, the Mediterranean and the Sahara--  writing books like Night Flight, Southern Mail, Flight to Arras, and Wind, Sand and Stars that detail the spirituality and other-worldliness of flying.  He spoke of flying as passing "beyond the borders of the real world" and wrote poetically of lapsing often into dream-like states while at the controls.   His preference was for flying radio-less and with limited fuel over vast ocean or desert expanses -- buoyed by the risk and undeterred by having destroyed his left shoulder, fractured his skull and experienced a coma in one crash.

Saint-Ex also flew planes for World War II.  And at age 43, with a partially-paralyzed left shoulder, flew on eight missions for the American side in North Africa and Sardinia.  He angled his way repeatedly to stay with the team though a liability at his age.    

His last words written were scribbled on a note to General X: "I do not care if I die in the war or if I get in a rage because of these flying torpedos which have nothing to do with actual flying, and which change the pilot into an accountant by means of indicators and switches.  But if I come back alive from this ungrateful but necessary 'job,' there will be only one question for me: 'What can one say to mankind?  What does one have to say to mankind?'"  

A man with a personal yearning for the open sea yet who understands his duty to humanity.   I admire and relate to this.    

I'm beginning to see that who I am and the experiences in which God has placed me bring me to this place as well: longing for the open sea.  Longing to see where God is at work in the edges of the world -- if it is Indonesia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Sudan, Afghanistan, then that is where I must go.   But it is not about me.   I'm embedded in a whole and am commanded by Jesus to bring others along.

Here I hope to chronicle my journey of longing in the hopes of awakening the same primal longings in many of you.