Friends, time has flown and already the first of my fundraising deadlines is upon me. Don’t let the numbers at the top of this website fool you. At this point I’ve received over $1,200 in donations. It just takes a bit of time to process contributions. That being said, I have to reach $5,000 by the time Friday ends. That deadline is beginning to rear its ugly head above the horizon, but I’m confident God will provide. He has a thing for seemingly last-minute provision. “Cast your net on the other side,” ring a bell? Abraham and Isaac and the last minute ram, anyone?
Speaking of “last minute,” how and to where has time flown so quickly?
The Holiday season always seems to hurtle past us like a bright, streaking comet festooned in red and green and gold and silver. We find ourselves in a mad dash to make those last Christmas purchases lest a loved one be shorted in the gift-giving come Christmas morning. And by the time we’ve fully awoken from the food coma brought on by Christmas Day festivities, we find New Year’s eve is only a few short hours away. My, how quickly 2015 bid us adieu and how stealthily 2016 swooped in to pick up the track.
As rushed as the season is, if there is any point in time and space during the end of the year at which we slow down it is the cross roads of past, present, and future to which we are brought by Christmas and New Year’s. We reminisce about the past and what choices and events have brought us and our families to the present. Then, on New Year’s Eve, we make resolutions in the present in light of the failures and struggles of the past in the hope of continuing those resolutions to affect our future for the better. But why?
Ultimately, what gives any of these resolutions, or even our past, present, and future, any clarity of vision or purpose? What gives my resolution to go on the World Race any ultimate meaning? Does it matter in the grand story of human existence?
Just after New Year’s, I had the privilege of attending the 2016 Passion Conference which, if you are unfamiliar with it, is a 3 day conference made up of near constant worship led by artists like the David Crowder Band, Rend Collective, Chris Tomlin, Christian Stanfill, and others, organized around 6 sessions of teaching from some of the foremost Christian leaders of our time, like John Piper, Ravi Zacharias, Christine Caine, Louie and Shelley Giglio, and Levi Lusko.
Over the course of the conference as I listened to the teachings of Louie Giglio, John Piper, and Ravi Zacharias, I began to realize that the significance of Christmas and New Year’s are not only heavily linked, but extend beyond the horizons of remembered past and envisioned future and find their focal point in Christ. Past, present, future – truly all of universal history – converges in and is propelled toward an ultimate purpose by Christ, and thus so are our own histories within the larger history of mankind.
Right now you’re probably thinking “That’s all well and good, but what do contemplations of Space-Time convergence in Christ have to do with the World Race?”
I’m tempted to answer my own imagined questioned with sarcasm – “Uh, Christ and the Gospel, duh!” But that would utterly fail to convey the vision Christ joined to my passion during the Passion Conference.
I told you before that I am doing this to step out in obedience to the call of Christ on my life and to join in His work among the nations for the life of the world, and that is true. But what business do I have going to countries reeling from the effects of poverty and sex trafficking, or struggling under the weight and fear of oppressive regimes? What drives my heart toward that specifically when I have struggled with none of those challenges?
I have found the answer in the revelation of the significance that Christ gives all of human history. From the beginning of time, since the first humans committed the first act of rebellion against God and ushered in the condition of slavery to sin and brokenness into which we are all born, the story of man has been the story of God fulfilling His promise to save humanity and to restore it to righteousness and wholeness – to bring us from death to life.
Christ is the fulfillment of that promise. In reality, it’s not our story. It’s His, and we have the honor of playing a part in it.
The victory is set. Christ won it for us in his Crucifixion and resurrection – paying our penalty on the cross, then trampling death in His resurrection. He satisfied the penalty demanded by the Law for all of our sins – past, present, and future – and so satisfied the Law since we never could. To paraphrase Ravi Zacharias, Jesus said the Law was a mirror. You may look into a mirror and see that your face is dirty, but you don’t rub your face on the mirror to make yourself clean – you go to something else to make it clean.
Christ, through his sacrifice and resurrection, offers complete and everlasting cleansing to those who stake their faith in Him. He offers wholeness. And in His victory over death and sin He sealed the fate of this world, and that fate is ultimate renewal by Him and through Him. But, if the victory is set, what remains to be done? What questions remain to be asked?
The world will be renewed, but we who live in it are faced with a choice of either life everlasting and ultimate freedom or death of both the body and the spirit.
The only question is: where and on what will you stand? What part will you play in the great drama of human history that draws inexorably toward the conclusion determined in Christ?
Will you stand in the bondage into which all of us were first born – slavery to fear, slavery to sin and shame and self-destruction, and slavery to unfulfilling masters who offer satisfaction of your desire to love and be loved but ultimately give only death and destruction of the heart? Or will you stand with your chains broken, your spirit free, and your heart made whole and full with Christ’s love, transformed by His Grace?
Many of you reading this have already made the choice for yourselves. I’m sure some of you haven’t and where I am going on this World Race many do not even know that they have the option to personally know God, to be made whole, and to be forgiven and have assurance of that forgiveness just by believing and confessing that Christ is Lord. Many do not know that while they cannot transform themselves and free their hearts from darkness, Christ can and He offers to do so freely.
No matter what form the darkness takes – be it pornography addiction, suicide, an empty heart, fear, hate, shame, feelings of worthlessness, or a country ravaged by murderers and sex traffickers – all of us, every single human throughout the history of the world, have struggled with it. It is not just a struggle against the particular forms the darkness takes, but a struggle between life and death.
A person on one side of the world may struggle with the evils of a murderous, totalitarian government while on the other side of the world another person struggles with an addiction to heroin. Both of them are struggling ultimately with the darkness of the human heart, germinated there by the sinful nature of this world into which we are born.
So, I may never have had to personally face the threats or effects of sex trafficking. I may never have had to live in a country where I had to fear for my life every day, or struggle every day just to provide basic necessities for my family – but I have personally known slavery to the darkness of the human heart, just as every human has in one form or another, but I now know the ultimate freedom that is found in Jesus Christ and I go to see that others know this freedom too.
My past was dominated by sin. But long before that in the further reaches of the past, God’s only Son was born a man on this Earth. He lived a perfect and blameless life and out of love for all of us He died for the sins of all and was resurrected in victory both over that sin and the death it demands so that in the present we may believe in and resolve to follow Him so that in future we may stand with Him, whole, and renewed, and free, and loved.
Will you join with me in sowing into the lives of the people of the nations? Will you take a stand in this mission to bring the freedom of the Gospel – the gift of total salvation and revival and life found only in Christ – to our brothers and sisters across the globe? If your answer is yes I welcome your support gladly, and in addition to the support of prayer and encouragement you can help me reach my fundraising goal by clicking the “Support Me” button at the top of this page and donate to this cause.
There is absolutely no pressure to give, and this is not one of those “if you love Jesus, give money” spiels at all. In fact, if there is an ounce of skepticism in your heart then do not give. There is no shame in that whatsoever.
But you have the opportunity to sow the seeds of salvation into the lives of people around the world – to write your name into the history of the peoples of many nations in a way that brings glory to God and brings life to the masses.
So if you feel the call to join in this ministry and stand with Christ for the life of the world, if you want to partner with me, you can do so through prayer and encouragement and by donating funds through the “support me” button at the top of this page that will help send and sustain me on the journey to bring the gospel to our brothers and sisters all over the world.
Whatever your decision about supporting me in this endeavor, I pray that if you have not already, you will consider the choice we are all offered in Christ and know that you too can know Him. May God bless you and keep you and may He draw you even closer to Him in the days to come.
