Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Nov/77

Contributor - Chris Platteel

Title - How to get to Heaven, or how to lose yourself in God's Mission

Topic - Advent

Advent is upon us. No, not just in the next month or so, (though we need to remind ourselves once in a while) - we live in the Advent of Christ, in the expectation and anticipation of the coming of our Lord and Savior, every day of the year!

How should we live in this interim time? Jesus tells us,

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. Mark 8 : 34, 35.

As a fledgling on the foreign mission field, I'm just beginning to see what this life principle may mean for me.

How I would like to follow my own interests and hobbies and seek to fulfill the needs that I have and feel! I would explore and travel the Canadian wilderness. I'd go back to the scientific challenge of the job I had; to a comfortable home; to a healthy climate. I'd be part of a congregation and would have fellowship with people I'd understand and love and who would understand and love me in return. I would live my life until my coupon to heaven matured. I would . . .

"You must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me!" What it really all boils down to, is OBEDIENCE.

Jesus has called me to a certain task. Therefore, as long as I honestly and openly believe that He wants me to prepare for and to meet the needs of a developing church in Chiapas, all my own needs and desires have to be surrendered. This means that all the knowledge gained through years of hard work at university is discarded and lost. Fellowship with friends and loved ones, a sense of belonging to a congregation or to the Church, and a claim to constant health and comfort; all these are (willingly or unwillingly) counted as things to be discarded for the sake of obedience to the gospel of Christ.

Now God also promises to meet the basic needs that we surrender. I hear from missionaries and others involved in Christ's Mission, that sooner or later, they have received satisfaction from their work and have found many friends and a sense of belonging to the people, they work with. Yet, the fact that one surrenders his self, means that he no longer demands these things to be first in our lives and that he may have to suffer, along with Christ, the lack of what he surrendered.

Can we possibly live such a self-denying life and survive? The frustrations and discouragements of starting alone in a new mission field really make me wonder. Nevertheless, Christ has done this before us, and wants to empower and enable us to do it too!

In this time of Advent, Christ wants us to direct our way of living not so much towards the ilpie in the sky in the sweet bye and bye", nor to satisfying our own personal needs here and now, but primarily, to obeying the call to live for others.

The focus of Christianity is not on the question: . . . do you know for certain that if you were to die today you would go to heaven?", but rather, "Do you know what God has done for you in Christ, and what Christ wants you to do for others?"

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