Steve Timmis & Tim Chester:

Most gospel ministry involves ordinary people doing ordinary things with gospel intentionality. Whether it is helping a friend, working at the office, or going to the movies, there is a commitment to building relationships, modeling the Christian faith, and talking about the gospel as a natural part of conversation.

But the “ordinary” is only a vehicle for Christian mission if there is gospel intentionality. The ordinary needs to be saturated with a commitment to living and proclaiming the gospel. The gospel is a message, and so mission only takes place as we share that word with people.

Otherwise we simply form good relationships that never go anywhere. We may even hesitate to share the gospel for fear of jeopardizing those relationships. We fear that if we talk about Jesus, people will not want to be our friends, and the relationship will be broken.

Indeed that may happen. And so we need to have the priority of the gospel clear in our minds. This does not mean ramming it down people’s throats at the first opportunity. It does, however, mean aiming clearly to reach a point where we can open the Bible with people.

Bill Clem:

“In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15).

This verse is a favorite of apologists because it talks about being ready to defend your hope with a rationale. Some people forget to see that the trigger to a discussion of the gospel is some- one’s asking about it. In the context of this verse, it is the believer who is suffering without complaint who gets asked about his faith. Enduring suffering well and being questioned can’t be scheduled in a two-day planner.

Many just arm themselves with a defense for their faith whether or not they are asked for it, which feels about like inviting yourself to a neighbor’s house for dinner because you want to change your neighbor’s eating habits. Unfortunately, most defenses of the faith lead with an attempt to convert someone of another faith to Christ without building the friendship that can bear the weight of heavy questions and truth.

Let’s reframe defend in terms of living missionally. How does the opportunity for a defense of your hope arise? You or someone you know experiences a crisis and then the question arises: “Why did God let this happen?” or, “How can you believe in a God that would let this happen?” At this point, the rehearsed or researched answers just come across as too polished; unbelievers questioning the nature of God want to hear what is fermenting in your soul, not lines you have memorized. So it is at this moment the gospel and the kingdom of God are subjected to the volatile context of life for their articulation.

This is what it means to be on mission with God. It was when Jesus wept that they believed he loved Lazarus (John 11:35). It was when he calmed a storm in the midst of the disciples’ terror that they worshiped him as God (Luke 8:22–25). It was at midnight when cells opened and life was at risk that a jailer asked Paul, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:25–40).

Every Christian knows they have some kind of obligation to reach out. To evangelize. To witness. To proselytize. And that’s exactly what it feels like – an obligation. A duty.

Every time a preacher brings it up (like I did on Sunday), you feel a little twinge of guilt, and you respond in one of two ways: 1) You successfully push down the guilt, and go on with your life the same way you always had before; or 2) You say, “That’s right – I should reach out more. Tomorrow, I’m going to see if my buddy at work wants to go out for lunch, and I’ll invite him to church.”

The lunch comes, and the invitation goes out, and then when you get back to your office you go, “Phew. I’m glad that’s over. And then you go on with your life the same way you always had before.

For most Christians, God’s mission is an event. It’s something you DO. It’s going to Africa to build a school. It’s going down to the park to feed the homeless. It’s inviting a friend to church.

But when God came to earth and took on flesh, he showed us that his mission is not just about an event (although its focus is centered in the event of the cross), it is about an identity. He permanently became one of us, so he could redeem us, adopt us, and conform us to his likeness.

Which means when we join his mission, he’s not calling us to an event. He’s calling us to an identity which will influence every aspect of our lives. The mission field becomes everywhere we are.

Your marriage is a mission field.

If you’re married, then you’re married to a sinner who needs God’s grace. It doesn’t matter if you have the sweetest, most servant-hearted wife in the world, she’s still a sinner.And God wants to give his grace to her through you.

For some people, it might be the toughest mission field you ever encounter. Some men will say, “My wife doesn’t respect me! How can I minister to her, if she doesn’t let me take the initiative?” Some women will say, ”My husband doesn’t love me the way I need to be loved! How can I give him God’s grace if he doesn’t appreciate it?” That’s not your concern. God is already working as a missionary to your husband or your wife, and he’s just asking you to join him in what he’s already doing. Let him worry about the results.

Your family is a mission field.

Deuteronomy 6 says,“These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

Your kids need you to be a missionary to them, and teach them about God’s glory and holiness and justice… and also about his grace and mercy and love. When you’re in the car … when you’re at the dinner table … and when you’re planning family worship times to bring it all home.

Your community group is a mission field.

There are people trying to survive in this crazy world, and they need you to share God’s grace with them by sharing your life with them. Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 2 … “Being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.”

I’ve talked with a lot of people who became part of this church, and part of a community group… and realized that they weren’t saved! They saw a group people relying on God’s grace week by week, and realized they themselves were relying on their own morality and righteousness. They realized they had never really accepted the gospel of God’s grace before.

The church is a mission field.

We need greeters, to help new people feel the love of God in a handshake or a hug. We need hospitality people, to help people experience the love of God in a homemade muffin, and some good strong coffee. All of these roles are crucial to the mission!

Your neighborhood and your workplace are mission fields.

Paul worked as a tentmaker, and it wasn’t just so he could make money. It wasn’t even just to raise money for ministry. It was a place of ministry.

In Acts 18, it says that he was working with some tentmakers named Priscilla and Aquila, and he led them to Christ. And pretty soon after that, they were two of his primary ministry partners. By the end of the chapter, this couple is teaching preachers how to preach!

Maybe when you’re at work, you’re mostly just focused on getting through the day. Just get the work done, and get home. But what if you saw your workplace as a mission field? What if you were praying every day for God to give you opportunities to talk to people who are neck-deep in the tohu vabohu mess of this world, and offer the love of Jesus Christ?

The world is a mission field.

Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” John Piper said, “Go, send, or disobey.” Each of us has the opportunity to pray for and financially support the local church-planters and cross-cultural missionaries around the world who are taking the light of the gospel into very dark places. Some of us will be able to join them for a short or long trip. Go!

Timothy Lane:

Meaningful relationships require work, sacrifice, humility, and selflessness. While the idea of loving another person taps into something inherently human, it also exposes our sinful self-centeredness.

In It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian: How the Community of God Changes Lives, Tod E. Bolsinger observes:

More than any before us, an American today believes “I must write the script of my own life.” The thought that such a script must be subordinated to the grand narrative of the Bible is a foreign one. Still more alarming is the idea that this surrender of our personal story to God’s story must be mediated by a community of fallen people we frankly don’t want getting in our way and meddling with our own hopes and dreams.

At one level we want friendships. At another level we don’t want them! In creation, we were made to live in community, but because of the fall, we tend to run from the very friendships we need. Quite often, our longing for them is tainted by sin. We pursue them only as long as they satisfy our own desires and needs. We have a love-hate relationship with relationships!

The Bible recognizes this profound tension, but still places our individual growth in grace in the context of the body of Christ. The Scriptures call us to be intimately connected to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Our fellowship is an essential ingredient for lasting change. The work of redemption involves our individual relationship with Christ alongside our relationships with others.

We were created to be in community, the same way we were created to drink water. God invited us into the fellowship of the Trinity, and established human relationships to mirror that community:

God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” … So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  (Genesis 1:26-27)

Our relationships with others are meant to be a picture of the deep, intimate relationship within the Trinity. That’s the image of God in us. But many Christians avoid those kinds of relationships. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Apathy toward sin.
We just don’t think we’re all that bad. We’re pretty content with the status quo, and we don’t feel the need for the help of other people. But according to Scripture, Satan isn’t apathetic. He’s prowling around like a lion, waiting to devour us. We’re in a war, whether we understand it or not. If we’re not fighting with some fellow soldiers by your side, we’re going to lose.

2. Indifference toward others.
We always have one more project to finish around the house, one more shift we could take at work, one more sport we could sign our kids up for. We’re too busy for deep relationships.

But there are people in the body of Christ who are hurting and suffering, and need us to love them and encourage them. There are people who are struggling with sin, and need us to love them enough to ask them tough questions. There are people in our neighborhoods who need to experience Christ’s love, and need us to introduce them to his family.

3. Fear of man.
Many people think to themselves, “If I open myself up to other people, and let them know the junk I’m dealing with, they won’t like me anymore. Maybe they’ll even use it against me.”

Guess what? You’re right/ That might happen. Because we’re all sinners just like you, and we do stupid things just like you do. But what did Jesus say in Matthew 10? … “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

In other words, “What’s the worst that other people could do to you in a community group? Kill you? That’s all? That’s nothing! Don’t fear them. Fear God. He’s the one who created you to be in community, just like he is.

Even a community full of fallen sinners like us. Because even these imperfect communities are going to be used by God in some amazing ways. Like what Paul promises God will do in the community in Ephesus:

To him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. (Ephesians 3:20-21

“You’ll never hear us use the term, ‘Unpack that thought.’ We’re sure it’s packed away for a really good reason.”

Jerry Bridges:

The success of our struggle with sin begins with our believing deep down in our hearts that regardless of our failures and our struggle, we have died to sin’s guilt. We must believe that however often we fail, there is no condemnation for us (Rom. 8:1).

William Romaine, who was one of the leaders of the eighteenth-century revival in England, wrote, “No sin can be crucified either in heart or life unless it first be pardoned in conscience…. If it be not mortified in its guilt, it cannot be subdued in its power.” What Romaine was saying is that if you do not believe you have died to sin’s guilt, you cannot trust Christ for the strength to subdue its power in your life. So the place to begin in dealing with sin is to believe the gospel when it says you have died to sin’s guilt.

Warring against our sinful habits and seeking to put on Christlike character is usually called sanctification. But because the term definitive sanctification is used to describe the point-in-time deliverance from the dominion of sin, it is helpful to speak of Christian growth in holiness as progressive sanctification. Additionally, the word progressive indicates continual growth in holiness over time. The New Testament writers both assume growth (see 1 Cor. 6:9-11; Eph. 2:19-21; Col. 2:19; 2 Thess. 1:3); and continually urge us to pursue it (see 2 Cor. 7:1; Heb. 12:14; 2 Pet. 3:18). There is no place in authentic Christianity for stagnant, self-satisfied, and self-righteous Christians. Rather we should be seeking to grow in Christlikeness until we die.

This progressive sanctification always involves our practice of spiritual disciplines, such as reading Scripture, praying, and regularly fellowshipping with other believers. It also involves putting to death the sinful deeds of the body (see Rom. 8:13) and putting on Christlike character (see Col. 3:12-14). And very importantly it involves a desperate dependence on Christ for the power to do these things, for we cannot grow by our own strength.

So sanctification involves hard work and dependence on Christ; what I call dependent effort. And it will always mean we are dissatisfied with our performance. For a growing Christian, desire will always outstrip performance or, at least, perceived performance. What is it then that will keep us going in the face of this tension between desire and performance? The answer is the gospel. It is the assurance in the gospel that we have indeed died to the guilt of sin and that there is no condemnation for us in Christ Jesus that will motivate us and keep us going even in the face of this tension.

We must always keep focused on the gospel because it is in the nature of sanctification that as we grow, we see more and more of our sinfulness. Instead of driving us to discouragement, though, this should drive us to the gospel. It is the gospel believed every day that is the only enduring motivation to pursue progressive sanctification even in those times when we don’t seem to see progress.

The gospel is not just the ABC’s of Christianity, as Tim Keller says, but the A-to-Z. The gospel isn’t just the first step we need to take to enter God’s kingdom, it’s the fuel that empowers us to grow every day in the kingdom.

Every day a Christian will see more of God’s glory, more of his sin, and more of God’s grace that bridges the two. Greater awareness leads to greater gratitude, which leads to greater openness to God’s work, which leads to greater Christ-likeness.

Justin Anderson offers this powerful analogy in his new book Gospel Wakefulness:

Imagine you are driving down the road and your car stalls at a railroad crossing. You are understandably nervous as you try to reignite the car’s engine, but you become even more so when you see a train turn the corner in the distance and begin quickly closing the gap between it and you. The train engine’s horn is blaring and the engineer has thrown on the brakes, but you are too close and he’s coming too fast. You move from trying to get the car to start to trying to unfasten your seatbelt, but fear has made your hands stiffen and shake. You can’t get your seatbelt unfastened. The train is rushing toward you, and you know you’re going to be hit. And you are. Suddenly and from behind. A man in a truck behind you has decided to ram into your car and push you off the tracks, even as he is destroyed by the impact in the very spot you once occupied.

You get out of the car, shaken and still frightened. You are terrified by the gruesome scene, in shock over your rescuer’s sacrifice. You are grateful in a way you’ve never been grateful before. You wish you could thank the driver of the truck for saving your life. Even in your terrified awe, it feels good to be alive. You feel woozy, so you sit down on the trunk of your car, and as you’re trying to retrieve your cell phone from your pocket to call 911 and marveling at how little damage the violent shove did to the rear bumper, you hear a whimper from inside.

You didn’t know that before you’d left the house, as your kids were playing hide-and-seek, your youngest son decided to hide in the trunk of your car. As you open it up frantically and discover that he is miraculously unharmed, you suddenly realize the total greatness of the loss you almost suffered. Your gratitude, your amazement, your new outlook on life takes a giant leap forward.

John Piper:

What I would like to do here is to try to persuade you to set aside time each week in the coming year to plan—and specifically to plan your life of prayer and devotion and ministry. The bulldozer of God’s Spirit often arrives at the scene of our heart ready to begin some great work of building, and he finds that due to poor planning there are piles of disordered things in his way. We’re not ready for him.

Proverbs 6:6–7: “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her food in summer, and gathers her sustenance in harvest.”

The ant is an example not only because it works so hard, but also because it plans ahead. It takes thought in summer that there will be need in winter, and this forethought provides its needs in winter.

Proverbs 14:15: “The simple believes everything, but the prudent looks where he is going.”

The difference between planning and not planning is whether you look where you are going in the future or whether you focus all your attention on the immediate right in front of you. If you are not a planner, then you will be at the mercy of others who try to give you counsel about how to act now so as to be happy in the future.

So “the simple believes everything, but the prudent looks where he is going.” He considers the days to come and what they are bringing and thinks about how best to prepare for them and use them to accomplish his purposes.

Proverbs 15:22: “Without counsel plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed.”

Here the wisdom of planning is taken for granted, and the writer simply gives us advice for how to make plans that succeed. He says, Don’t be so independent that you think yourself above counsel. Read the wisdom of others who have gone before you. Talk to experienced and wise people. Watch the way others do things and learn from their mistakes and successes.

Proverbs 16:3: “Commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established.”

Again planning is taken for granted and the issue is: How can you plan in such a way that what you produce will have abiding value and not just pass away overnight? Answer: Commit it to the Lord. That is, always seek the Lord’s guidance and strength in your planning. Trust his wisdom and not your own. Then your plans will bear fruit that stays.

Proverbs 24:27: “Prepare your work outside, get everything ready for you in the field; and after that build your house.”

This probably means that it is important to be able to support yourself by the productivity of the field before you establish your own household. Perhaps we would say to a young person today: get a job before you get married. Or at least plan how you are going to support the new household you are establishing.

Proverbs 31:15–16: “She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and tasks for her maidens. She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.”

Here the model homemaker is a model planner in two ways. She gets up early and assigns tasks to her maids. You cannot assign tasks to your maids if you have no plan about what you would like to be accomplished that day. And she considers a field and buys it. What does she consider? She considers how it will fit into the plan of the household.

Conclusion from the Proverbs: Careful planning is part of what makes a person wise and productive. Not to plan is considered foolish and dangerous. This is true even though the Proverbs teach that we do not know what the future may bring. “A man’s mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). The fact that the Lord is ultimately in control of the future does not mean we shouldn’t plan. It means we should commit our work to the Lord and trust him to establish our plans according to his loving purposes.

Speaking of planning, here are some more ways to join us for the One-Year Bible Challenge that started yesterday:

• Email (have each day’s readings sent to you)
• Blog (and RSS feed imported to Google Reader, etc.)
• Podcast (each day’s readings in audio!)
• Mobile (each day’s readings formatted for your phone)
• Calendar (each day’s references imported into iCal, Outlook, Google calendar, etc.)

Harbor is reading through the Bible in a year so we can better understand the story we’re living in. This is called “biblical theology” – the study of how each part of the Bible fits into God’s overall plan. As you begin the challenge, here are some helpful hints from Leadership Resources on how to put each book of the Bible into its proper place in the story:

Biblical theology is a way of looking at the Bible that sees the big picture of its overarching story and how each part connects with the rest. It sees how God’s plan unfolds to reveal Himself and His purpose – all with its focus and fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

How the Story Ends and Begins
The closing pages of the Bible in Revelation 21–22 help us to see what the Bible’s story is all about. They reveal how God will ultimately fulfill his purpose and plan. When we compare the ending (Revelation 21–22) with the beginning (Genesis 1–3), we begin to see the important connections and significant ideas in the opening pages that help us understand the story as a whole. We also see the tragedy and loss that make everything written in the pages in between so crucial and necessary.

The Promise and Person that Connect It All Together
The thread that connects the beginning and end of the story and holds it all together is the promise of God that is fulfilled in Jesus Christ – in a word, it is the gospel. The promise of God is an unfolding one. God, in His grace, gave the first promise of salvation in the Garden in the face of judgment and death after Adam and Eve’s disobedience. The storyline moves forward as God, throughout the Old Testament, gives His promises to Abraham, King David, and the prophets. Finally, God’s promise is fulfilled in Jesus Christ – in who He is and what He came to do. Seeing Jesus as the focus and fulfillment of Scripture gives us the interpretive key to unlock its meaning. The task of Biblical theology is to see how Christ fulfills God’s promises in the Bible.

How God’s Revelation “Grew Up”
We can think of understanding the Bible the way we might think of knowing a person. Think of your life in three stages – infancy, childhood, and adulthood. Who would know you the best? The person who only knew you as an infant? The person who only knew you as an adult? The person that would know you best is the person who has known you at every stage—from a baby to a child to who you are today as an adult. They would know the history of your beginnings, your development as a child, and the reality of who you have come to be.

Understanding God’s promises and plan in the Bible works much the same way. We might think of the first stage as the first five books of the Moses, the second stage as the writings and the prophets, and the final stage as Jesus and the New Testament. What is there in the first five books in its infancy is developed and explained through the writings and prophets. Finally, it is fully developed and realized in Christ. In Him everything is fulfilled, and the New Testament explains that.

The person who looks at a promise or some significant Biblical truth only from the Old Testament does not see the full reality of it. At the same time, the person who looks at that significant idea only from the New Testament doesn’t see the fullness of it either, because he doesn’t see its beginning and how it has developed through the Old Testament. Through Biblical theology, we want to know a truth from God’s Word all throughout its development – from beginning through its fulfillment.

Christopher Wright in The Mission of God’s People:

What compelled the first followers of Jesus, Jews as they were, to make the world their mission field?

“Jews as they were” – I slipped that in because it is the key to the answer. That is, those first believers knew the story they were in. And they knew the story because they knew their Scriptures. They were Jews. They knew the story so far, they understood that the story had just reached a decisive moment in Jesus of Nazareth, and they knew what the rest of the story demanded.

In fact, when the first missionary journeys produced a sudden influx of “pagan” converts (let’s call them Gentiles, or people from the non-Jewish nations from here on), and when that in turn produced a big theological problem for the Jewish Christians, how was the problem resolved? They met in Jerusalem in the first council of the Christian faith, and the event is recorded in Acts 15. As an aside, it is worth noting that the first Christian council was called because of the problems caused by highly successful Christian mission. It would be wonderful if all church committees, councils, conferences and congresses had the same cause!

The problem was solved not by referring to the command of Jesus. One could easily imagine Peter standing up to say to the critics, “Listen, friends, Jesus told us to go and make disciples of all nations and that is what Paul and Barnabas are doing. So back off!” But instead, James settles the matter by reference to the prophetic Scriptures. He quotes from Amos 9 and affirms that what the prophet foresaw is now happening: the house of David is being restored and the Gentile nations are being brought in to bear the name of the Lord. That’s where the story pointed, and that’s what was now happening.

Or come with Paul to Pisidian Antioch in Acts 13. It was a Gentile city, but Paul went to the Jewish synagogue on the Sabbath, as he usually did. What did he do? He told them their own story (the Old Testament narrative) as a prelude to telling them about Jesus and then adding “the good news: What God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus” (Acts 13:32 – 33). The story led to Jesus, Messiah, crucified but risen.

But the story went further. For when some of the Jews rejected the message while Gentile “God-fearers” (converts to Jewish faith) accepted it, Paul had an Old Testament passage for them too, to justify his missionary appeal to them. He quotes Isaiah 49:6 and applies it to himself and his missionary colleagues:

“For this is what the Lord has commanded us:
“ ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’ ”
When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. (Acts 13:47 – 48; italics added)

Once again, Paul could easily have said, “Jesus commanded us to bring this good news to you Gentiles.” He could even have referred to the specific missional command that he, Paul, had personally received in his conversion-commissioning encounter with the risen Christ on the way to Damascus. But instead, Paul points to the Scriptures and the story they tell – the story that leads inevitably to the gospel going to the nations. And he took that “story-yet-to-come” aspect of the words of the prophet and heard in them a command from the Lord himself.

This is why we’re reading the whole Bible in a year. Join us!

Harbor’s elders are challenging the church to read through the entire Bible in a year (Old Testament once, New Testament twice). This is a big commitment, and it comes with plenty of dangers.

In spite of those dangers, there are also some great blessings that come (in addition to our main goal of seeing the big picture of the gospel):

• Spending more time in the Word. Many Christians only read a verse or two from Scripture, whenever they remember to do it. Others spend more time each day deciding what to read than actually reading. This commitment makes it easy to just start reading, and keep on reading.
• Seeing the value of all Scripture. Many of us have favorite passages and books that seem to speak most loudly to us, and we have an unspoken belief that other sections of Scripture are less valuable. This commitment will challenge that tendency. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work”(2 Tim 3:16-17)
• Having a base for family discussions. Parents can choose one chapter a week to use for family worship times. If your kids are old enough to make the full commitment, daily conversations around the dinner table can include the day’s reading.
• Deepening fellowship in the church. Community groups can discuss what they are learning from their studies. Friends can encourage each other with things the Lord has impressed on them from his word.
• Being strengthened for missional conversations. Most believers are hesitant to share their faith because they’re afraid about questions they might be asked. After reading the entire Bible, you’ll feel much more confident in your ability to answer questions about particular passages or ideas, and how they fit into the overall message of the gospel.