Giving

Giving your life

The last in our short series on ‘giving’, and we have gradually been increasing the value of the things that we are considering giving. Two weeks ago John talked about giving our money – important to us, true, but something that all have to greater or lesser extent. Then last week Ewan led our thinking about giving our time – a much more limited resource, and something which everyone, from the greatest to the least has the same amount to use.

Today I’d like you to think about giving your life. We stand in the shadow of Christmas, when we remember how God gave the very best he could, his only begotten Son. I’d like us to think about us giving the very best we can today.

I’m talking about sacrifice, which may not seem very appealing – but I can assure you it is very biblical! Romans 12:1 says Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-- this is your spiritual act of worship.

The term ‘sacrifice’ is familiar to us. The dictionary tells us that it means “giving up of something highly valued”, possibly “relinquishment of something at less than its presumed value” or even “destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else”.

A friend was telling me last night about a TV awards programme they had been watching, about people who had sacrificed their lives to look after others. Most of the people had spent their lives looking after aged relatives, but there was one person who stood out in her recollection. A lady and her daughter who had fostered dozens of children. Unlike the others where there was some obvious family tie, this lady had chosen to reach out to people that she had no connection with, and spend her life in helping them.

It is the last meaning that Paul is using here. Surrender of our lives, for the sake of Christ; surrender of our lives to do Christ’s will.

And what is Christ’s will? Matt 28:18-20 says Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

The Great Commission. Jesus gave it to his first disciples and it comes down through the ages, unchanged, to us too. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them… and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
I’d like us to spend a few minutes thinking about some remarkable examples of the degree of sacrifice which Christians can reach…

Remarkable people such as Hudson Taylor, C.T. Studd, Dr David Livingston, Mary Slessor, William Booth, Gladys Aylward, Jim Elliot, Jackie Pullinger to name just the first few that come to mind. Have you read biographies of any of these people? I really recommend that you do. Some of the stories swing from heart-warming to horrifying. In each of them we can marvel at the sacrifices which they made when following Jesus.

How they were prepared to leave behind so much in order to take up the communication of the gospel to people outside their own comfort zone… making disciples of all nations… and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus has commanded.

C.T. Studd was an outstanding County and All-England Cricketer. He was a freshman at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1879-1880, and took a degree in law. By that time he had been challenged to a missionary career and, forsaking his cricketing fame and the family fortune, he followed Hudson Taylor to China.

He returned 21 years later, broken in health, after serving in China and India. Unexpectedly he received a new and very distinct call to the heart of Africa. At 53, leaving his invalid wife in England, he set out in utter reliance on God's promises. His answer to all who questioned the wisdom of his action was found on a postcard on his desk: If Jesus Christ be God, and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.

William Booth was a poor apprentice pawn broker, invited to ‘front’ a tent–mission in Whitechapel. The date of this mission, 2nd July 1865, is taken by the Salvation Army as the date of its foundation. Booth was then just 36, had no steady income, and had a wife and six children to support with a seventh on the way. After one year Booth’s Christian Mission had over sixty converts but the work was hard and dangerous. Catherine Booth said of her husband that he would ; "stumble home night after night, haggard with fatigue. Often his clothes were torn and bloody, bandages swathed his head where a stone had struck."

Jim Elliot was a gifted writer, speaker, and teacher. He had a commanding presence while a student, even starring on the wrestling mat where he became a champion. Many of his friends were convinced Elliot's spiritual giftedness should be concentrated on building up the church in America. 

Elliot, however, wanted God's will. After many protracted and solitary prayer sessions, Elliot sensed God's call to a foreign field, specifically South America. "Why should some hear twice," he said, "when others have not heard [the gospel] once?". Correspondence with a former missionary to Ecuador and hearing of a tribe—the Aucas—that was never reached with the news of Christ's redemption set his course.

In the winter of 1952, Elliot and a friend who shared his vision set sail on a freighter for the jungles of South America. In the Autumn of 1955, missionary pilot Nate Saint spotted an Auca village. During the ensuing months, Elliot and several fellow missionaries dropped gifts from a plane, attempting to befriend the hostile tribe. In January of 1956, Elliot and four companions landed on a beach of the Curaray River in eastern Ecuador. They had several friendly contacts with the fierce tribe that had previously killed several Shell Oil company employees.  Two days later, on January 8, 1956, all five men were speared and hacked to death by warriors from the Auca tribe. Many Aucas eventually came to accept Christ as Saviour when Elisabeth Elliot bravely returned to share Christ with those who killed her husband.

What could motivate these people, and thousands like them who have lived and died unheralded, to give their lives in such a dramatic way to further  the spread of the gospel?

I am convinced that the reason that they were prepared to sacrifice so much, so willingly, was that they had a clear and overwhelming appreciation of the Lord Jesus Christ. More specifically they understood deep in their hearts something of the depth of love which Jesus has for us, the depth of sacrifice that Jesus accomplished when he went to the cross.

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus, in the most humble of circumstances. The greatest of all gifts, given in the most ignominious of packaging – wrapped in cloths and laid in a food trough. Yet this was the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, the Lord of all – humbly laying aside all his glory in order to live like us, be one of us.

And Jesus was born to die. The plan of salvation always led to the cross. We could not live unless he died there on the cross, in our place. In my place and in your place.

Christmas is really just the promise of the greatest gift of all. The delivery of the greatest gift we will ever receive came on that terrible day of the cross, when Jesus, our Jesus, my Jesus was whipped, mocked, scourged and humiliated. When Jesus, our Jesus, my Jesus had the crown of thorns rammed on his head, his hands and feet nailed to that cross. When Jesus, our Jesus, my Jesus carried our sins, bore the wrath of God against those sins in his own body.

Shortly after I became a Christian someone made the point to me that even if I had been the only person on the planet, Jesus would still have died for me – even though I’d have been the one banging the nails in.

And if we were to look up at that cross, and see him hanging there, see him dying there, if we were to look into his face, his eyes would be saying “I’m doing this for you. I love you. I’m doing this for you”.

You are remarkable people too. We may forget, but the same Holy Spirit dwells in you as dwelt in those heroes of faith we’ve spoken of earlier. You follow the same remarkable Lord, and if there is one thing that I’ve learnt it is this – Jesus’ love transforms us. He changes us. He is at work in us and he is at work in you right now.

Jesus is calling you to be living sacrifices today. Dietrich bonhoeffer said “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”. In our comfortable country we can so easily forget that. A quick read of Fox’s book of martyrs, or the Open Doors reports from around the world today would quickly disabuse us of the notion that being a Christian is supposed to be an easy option.

Jesus’ last words to the disciples are give in Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”

The Great Commission is to be fulfilled in ever increasing circles, and that reflects the circles around us too. You will be his witnesses in your home, in your neighbourhood, in your town and to the ends of the earth.

Now you don’t have to go to the ends of the earth to step outside your comfort zone. For most of us I imagine that stepping up to our neighbour, friend or colleague and speaking about Jesus is a wide step outside our comfort zone!

But I want to ask you a question that I’ve not heard from this or any other church platform in a decade.

Is God calling you to the mission field?

It is easy to come up with all sorts of rational reasons why we might answer ‘no’. We might need to consider our health, our career, our pension, our children’s education; we might say that we don’t have the freedom to choose that we might have done when we were the age of Ben, or Mary-Anne, or Julian, who don’t have to worry about family, children and mortgages when they make sacrifices to serve Jesus today.

God knows, I’m wrestling with these very issues myself, even now. Many of you know that I’ve already been down this route once before… in 1994 I felt called to Mission work and started looking for opportunities, by 1995 I was sure of it and wanted to get started; things moved slowly and it was 1998 by the time that I’d been accepted for Bible training and by Operation Mobilisation. I left my very well paid job that summer, not knowing how things would work out financially or in any other way, but trusting to God. To my incredible surprise he gave me a lovely wife, and then closed all avenues for full time Christian service in front of me. At that point God very clearly directed me back into ordinary work for a period.

The sense of calling to service hasn’t gone though, only been postponed. And I know how much more difficult it is to make decisions that don’t just affect you, but also affect your family, your children.

How can you find out whether this is, in fact, something that God is calling you to do? Pray, and ‘test the waters’ as it were. Start to investigate the possibilities.

For instance: Visit our missionaries – and bring a report back to the church! Consider short term missions opportunities. Oak Hall run a number of “taste of mission” trips each year – in 2006 there are aid trips to Serbia & Bosnia, helping mission projects in South Africa, Karen refugees and bible school students in Thailand or an SU team working with street children in Peru. Six month or longer short term opportunities are available through Operation Mobilisation and other organisations.

So I’m not asking this lightly. Is God calling you to the mission field?

He is certainly calling you to be his witnesses; the only question that remains is where.

We are called to be sacrifices, and that may mean sacrificing much in this life. But what does that compare to the sacrifice Jesus made for me, for you? The eternal destiny of non-Christians, heaven or hell, is determined by what we do. As King David says in 2 Sam 24v24 “I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing”. As Jim Elliot said “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose”. As CT Studd said “If Jesus Christ be God, and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”.

What do you say?

 

Alex White