Mission Field

Mission Field

11/6/18

What do our minds and hearts quickly think about when the words “mission field”rattle our ears?  That is an easy question to answer, or so it would seem.  But is going overseas or to a land away from your abode necessary all the time to be considered the mission field or can it be presented right across the street from your home or even at your workplace or clients that you do daily business with?  It is easy to get caught up in the concept of seeing the overseas mission field as the only portion that needs to be filled, then appropriately send enough money to them so that they may are able to get the job done for God.  Is that what God wants for you and your purpose in life, just to send money to a faraway land even though you have the ability to walk across the street with a pie or cake to the hurting widow?  It is time we take another look at these fields of lost souls and re-evaluate what Jesus meant when He said that the fields are ripe for harvest.

I remember spending a good amount of time walking up and down the halls of my dad’s churches and looking at all of the missionaries that the church gave money to.  I also remember that my parents’ church would regularly host a mission’s conference and have numerous speakers from around the globe come and directly communicate about what God was doing in their part of the world and in their ministry.  On regular occasions, my father would have the missionaries that the church sponsored, speak for a service or two and recommit its support for the ministry that these wonderful servants gave to those who needed God in the most humble and complete way.  While my parents loved to host and to hear from these mighty people of God it was not until my parents began to travel overseas personally that their lives changed and they found the true understanding about what Jesus meant concerning the fields being ripe for the harvest AND seeing those fields with their own eyes.

I have not been on too many trips that I could consider being missionary work, Haiti and El Salvador being the ones that readily come to my mind.  I have traveled to Cote D’Ivoire with a group back in 1997 but it was a conference instead of a missionary trip but what I learned and saw with my own eyes there was remarkable and many of the sights and sounds are still burned within my heart, places, and people that I shall never forget.  Haiti and Cote d’Ivoire are the two places that changed my heart in many ways and set into motion a pattern of learning about God and His Kingdom that my life has been a part of ever since.  Approximately seven years ago now my biological family found me and our communication and love has continually grown ever since that time, and when I put all of what God did in my life on these trips and then add the story of my biology to it, I cannot explain exactly how God molded such a masterpiece into motion but He knew exactly what my heart was saying to those around me and gave me the ability to witness to many people who might not have understood the traditional minister.  To this day, the ministry that God has given me is not one of traditional methods or ways but God is not a traditional God either, for His Ways are unique as each individual person and for that individuality, I say thank you to Him by writing what He commands me to tell you.

My favorite songwriter left this world back in the mid-1980s when the small plane he was riding in crashed on July 28^th, 1982, his name was Keith Green.  The reason that he became my favorite songwriter was the fact that he was bold in his words and uncompromising in his commitment to God and Jesus his Savior.  He made no bones about his faith and proclaimed that he wanted nothing more than to know as much as possible about God and the plan that He had for his life.  Keith once said in a teaching session at one of his concerts that “God can’t cash out-of-state checks in Heaven, He needs you”.  It is this phrase of Keith’s that has stuck in my heart ever since I first heard it used on one of his records and it has defined what I consider to be the one and only command Jesus gave to us as the Church and that is to personally go and tell everyone that we come into contact with that Jesus died for their sins and that He loves us eternally.  It is not the monetary status that God needs for He already owns all monetary values, for He created them He needs the one thing that He cannot control and that is the choice of your heart to serve Him and to fulfill His Son’s command to His Church.

The passage of Scripture that we are going to use today has been previously mentioned in some of the articles that God has given us over the past, but there are an issue and a further detail about this passage that we need to understand and it has to deal with the commitment of the heart when it comes to the ripened fields that Jesus was looking at and talking about.  John 4:35 and it states as follows: “Say not ye, There are yet four months, then cometh harvest?  behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.”  This verse tells us a lot about what time of the year this passage actually transpired but what many of us have missed is the detail about our eyes looking on the fields and how personal this verse Jesus made it.  If your life does not represent and fulfill as the mission field is presented to you then you can represent nothing more than an out-of-state check-in God’s eyes.  It was this point that Jesus was telling His disciples for they could not believe that He had stopped and was conversing with a hated Jewish enemy that they considered to be on the same level as a dog.

We cannot forget that this verse is one that Jesus is talking and He is talking to His disciples about what they had witnessed when they saw Jesus witnessing to the Samaritan woman.  How could Jesus talk to such a low life, a dog, a person who is inferior to their way of life?  Their questioning of Jesus’ actions clearly defines what this topic of this article is asking us, because what they publicly displayed that day was their understanding that it was just okay for them to write out an out-of-town check to the mission field that Jesus had been talking about with others and personally living over the past few years.  Now, I do not expect the disciples to know every small detail about what Jesus said and did to be instantaneously remembered but this is a huge aspect of what Jesus had been showing these twelve men for quite some time, and with the reasoning they approach Jesus with allows everyone to know that they were not getting it.

According to the answer Jesus gave them sums up the difference of those who only see the physical versus those who operate in the spiritual.  Jesus brilliantly answers them by pointing their attention to the fields that had some type of physical field that in about four months would be ready for workers to work and harvest what had been planted.  This answer is purely one on the physical level and to the disciples made perfect sense to them and the manner in which they looked at the field.  But Jesus places an addendum on His statement to them for He claims that the harvest is already ready and that the need for workers is now, not four months later.  It is this difference in the heart of Jesus from the hearts of the disciples and the knowledge of what harvest really needs tending.  When our hearts are in the physical it is logical that we see things on a timetable that has its peak or its culmination at a distance, but the spiritual is now and it is personal and needs to be attended to as soon as one comes into contact with it.  It is this reason that Jesus talks with the Samaritan woman for He sees the opportunity and uses it to complete the work that He is fulfilling and will give to those who follow Him to do.

What Jesus says is for the disciples to physically look at the fields that are in front of them, not the fields far off in the distance or in another land that they could not see with their eyes.  What this says to us is that it is not always a good thing to sit back and hear the missionaries speak about the wonderful amounts of people who have come to know Jesus where they have been ministering at, but for us to actually understand that the need for our testimony and witnessing to people is needed right in front of our eyes.  If this is not the case then why are there more missionaries coming to America than ones going out of America?  Why is it that many church buildings in small towns sit closed up or become second-hand stores?  How come the youth groups are huge in numbers but so anemic in spiritual growth that NONE of their regular attendees have any ambitions or desires to enter the ministry?  And, dear Lord, why is that many of those You have called into the ministry has fallen away and fell into the arms of the world?  It is because their eyes are on the timetable of the physical and they refuse to look and to live in the spiritual and your actions prove to be a worthless out-of-state check to God.

It took a few minutes for Jesus to get His point across to His disciples that He was not there to bring in a physical harvest but His single entity for harvest is the human heart.  Jesus had just spoken to a lady who was considered an enemy or a lower citizen that was condemned to an isolated area of the same region and the disciples had to be shown that she, her family, and town were the harvest that was ripe and ready to be told of the truth.  The home mission field is the core value system in serving the Kingdom, the problem is, that many people who call themselves followers of Christ have become crossed in their wiring and through this confusion have fallen for the fact that some of those walking around them are bad enough that they believe that they no longer have the responsibility to be a witness to them on holy biblical terms.  The disciples demonstrated these exact same concerns when they saw Jesus conversing with the Samaritan woman, but Jesus – the True Word of God – had His eyes on the eternal harvest and not the physical.

When we continue to live in the physical alone we cannot help but act in the physical and through this type of single-heartedness cannot see what God really wants us to do with those who are dying and do not know Him.  We may have good intentions at the beginning of our walk with Christ but if we do not allow God to clean out our hearts and make our hearts right before His eyes it will be no time before our eyes and heart wander away back to the holdings of the world; remember we were born into sin and that means it would be a natural process for us to return to the “easy aspect of our lives” instead of working that evilness out.  When we do not stick with God and turn from our ways then it becomes clear to our enemy that it is okay that he has residence within our lives and this gives him permission to invade our lives and for him to bring his buddies along with him.  Oh, Satan will let you attend church services, be a member of any denomination and he will even allow you to be leaders in churches, even pastors or priests for he does not care because he has your heart and he knows that eventually your physical mentality will shine through and plant another seed on stony, thorny, or on the roadside someplace.  This is not in the best interests of the fields that are ripe and ready for harvest, this action only represents us walking by and looking at the fields and continuing on our journey arguing that no one has come to work the field.

When we witness to our friends when they open up their hearts to us, we better be listening with our spiritual ears for there is a reason they are hurting and it is our responsibility to tell them that God has the perfect answer for their troubles.  It is our duty to show kindness to the poor and needy and to even be a witness to our enemies.  Do you see the Church being witnesses to those who stand against their positions today?  No, because first of all the Church cannot even grasp the concept of what life means enough to take a stand for it.  Secondly, we have become so mute on the truth that e have forgotten what the truth is, and honestly, when you combine these two aspects together and run them in tandem, we do not have any foundation to believe in much less stand upon.  This is the consequences of having the out-of-state check mentality and heart for when we can sit back and watch others and do nothing directly, our smiles shall be no larger than ever before.  WRONG!!!  What you are doing is forcing Jesus to once again remind us that our purpose in life is about winning the lost for God and if we are not doing that first at home and then around the world that we are worthless to Him and He shall spew us and our out-of-state checks from His mouth.

Many of us have the notion that the Bride of Christ is going to be this pretty little figure all dressed in white with her nails and hair all perfectly groomed with her makeup on just right.  This belief too is WRONG!!!  She will be bloodied and scarred from head to toe with bruises on her entire body from the work that she has been doing for God’s Kingdom and then receiving from Satan’s kingdom in return.  She shall know, understand, and witness to the fields that are in front of her eyes and her heart bursting with compassion for them even if they reject what she has to say to them.  Through this detailed passage of John 4:35 we learn so much about where our hearts should be and at the same time we see exactly where our hearts are at as well.  Where is your heart?  That is the question that God is asking us today for where your heart is that is where your eyes are located as well.  The mission field could be the little lady across the street or the gentleman that you run into almost every week at the grocery store or it could even be holding several crusades across other countries, whatever God calls your heart to do it is of the utmost importance that you do not run away but heed the call that God shows you.

In no way am I saying that those who give to missions on a regular basis should reduce their giving or to stop their giving for it is true that the mission field workers need our support in order to continue the spread of the gospel.  But God wants us to know that the mission field is right in front of our eyes as well and while we live in the most blessed nation in world history there are millions around us that do not know God.  I do not know if I shall ever be physically able to travel to another country again because of my health, but I do know that I can witness to the fields here in my community and region just as if I had completed a 4,000 mile flown journey to Africa.  If you are not willing to be a missionary to your own community and family, then your heart is writing out-of-state checks in God’s name and that shall not do anything for those who are lost.  Church, let us change our hearts before God has to change it for us for there are countless people all around us that we come into contact at work, in school, on the roads, grocery stores, salons that we can witness to, those are the fields that Jesus wants us to see and to make sure they have heard the gospel.  You will be surprised at how many people in your own community do not know Jesus all you have to do is see the local fields that are ripe and white for harvest.

DLB