Is God Taking You Places?

Sam Rainer

Is God taking you places? If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you are called to go. The Christian life doesn’t come with a list of options. It is an imperative to win a world for Jesus. So go where you may say? Pray for opportunities and be amazed at what God will do.

When I become pastor of my church, I told them about my vision for missions. The church grabbed the vision and made it their own. Thanks to the great administrative abilities of my associate pastor and the power of prayer, in just seven months we have sent 35 people on one international mission trip and two here in the states. We are not a large church, nor one blessed with an overabundance of affluence. We simply asked God to take us places; He did.

In that timeframe three men within our church have expressed that they are called to the gospel ministry. As we continue looking outward, I suspect that God will call more.

We all place too many hurdles up in our race that we are to be running for the Lord. This race is one of endurance. We are to run a disciplined race. A call to missions is like running a race. But we are in a marathon, not a sprint. Look too far ahead, and you become disillusioned at how far is left to go. Look down, and you never go anywhere fast since you are watching your own feet. The trick to running an endurance race is to keep your eyes on the next marker just ahead of you. When that goal is reached, you look to the next one. Each church should be winning a world for Christ one person at a time.

I am getting a degree in missiology (the study of missions) at the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth. While I understand the technical nuances between missions, evangelism, and church growth, they all direct the church to the same end point – enlarging the Kingdom with discipled believers.

We as Christians have three options with missions: go, help send, or disobey.

It is my prayer that every church will catch the revival fire of missions. Vast sections of the world do not know Christ. The world map of lostness looms dark. But as my music minister (he’s a proud product of the 1960s) will tell you tongue-in-cheek, “It only takes a spark to get a fire going.” All 60s cheese aside, he’s right. One church, one-at-a-time, each building an insatiable appetite for missions could spark a worldwide evangelical revival. May we all pray for God to continue to take us places.