Our Mission, Building Trust Relationships

[HKHaugan]

More and more we have to concentrate on the day to day world in which we live and expand our tents within it (Is.54:2). Especially in this present day environment when what seems overwhelming is really a call to us to put what we can’t control in the hands of the One who knows how to handle it. The real call is to us individually right where we are. The call is to look forward, pray forward, pay forward and stay forward as we come to every next moment.

Every next moment is where faith happens.

When Jesus tells us to take up our cross it means for disciples to put everything in faith-mode just as He did when He went to His Cross. Faith is always looking forward not knowing what lies ahead only that what will happen will be blessed and used by the Spirit to accomplish His will. Jesus gave us faith to look forward when He went to Calvary’s Cross to show its ultimate destiny and fulfillment for us. His focus was always on what faith would accomplish in every next moment. Jesus never sat still. He was always on the move from one place to another.

Humanity, as God intended, only finds its purpose and accomplishment through a ‘looking ahead’ faith which Jesus’ Resurrection demonstrated. Faith is acting in the present based on every next moment seen as a moment that will bring life in the place of death, relationship instead of aloneness and faith instead of fear. When we pray it’s to bring life into a situation. Prayer is looking ahead. When we give, we give not to preserve a past but a future. It’s to bring life into a future moment. When we worship it’s to recognize the presence of God, His reality and the praise and gratitude for His faith in us. He is our source invigorating us to faithful action. When we study Scripture it’s to prepare our minds for spiritually sorting out what lies ahead. When we minister to one another it’s to bring His life into what could end in alienation and death. When we act in the power of the Spirit that is eternal life demonstrated.

But shift to our present culture and its condition surrounding us. The present world is like a car speeding down a mountain highway approaching a curve and the driver applies the brakes only to find they don’t work and more curves are coming up.

As disciples of Jesus we have to, more than ever, see everything in a spiritual perspective, a faith that is always looking forward to joining the Lord where He is waiting for us just around the bend in the face of a waiting heart needing to know Him. We have to face the fact that what we have relied on in the past in terms of institutional structures no longer satisfies the spiritual needs of a people trapped in that speeding car. We used to say ‘build it and they will come’ but that no longer applies. Committee membership, denominational identity and Sunday gatherings were applicable for the age in which they gave us a cover but the age demands more than structure and worship services. It’s where we are as we traverse the globe of our daily encounters with people.

Our age is an age that demands personal involvement, personal ministry and personal mission. It’s all about the trust relationships we are called to build between us and those who don’t have an ultimate trust in which they can place their hearts.

We don’t want people to trust what we belong to. We want them to trust us.

This is the key in our modern setting. I want to say that very carefully so we all understand. The church we happen to belong to may be very solidly faithful and biblical. That is not the issue. The issue is how did the body of Christ grow in its first years, those years directly after the Resurrection and Pentecost?

Check the fifth book in the New Testament, Acts, and you will find congregations starting in homes, by interaction in the market place, people meeting on the road while they were on the way to some other place for some other reason. As you read Acts it was always the unexpected situations where disciples would find themselves in circumstances beyond their ability to respond yet their faith and the power of the Holy Spirit gave them the words, the strength and the insight to act. It was believers seeing life as an opportunity to share their faith in every next moment. It was the trust to share Jesus with the next door neighbor, a friend, a family member, someone they worked with and the trust established in those relationships person to person sharing, it was the trust they offered.

We are closer to the end of time, every day closer, every next moment closer. Jesus will return.

There is no more direct statement than that which Jesus makes when He told the Parable of the 10 Virgins (Mt.25:1-13). It sets the stage for dealing with where we are and looking forward. It has three themes, preparation, oil and Jesus’ return. It’s all about focus. As mentioned previously the Bible is a ‘looking-forward’ book. The Lord Jesus is a forward looking Lord. Being made in the image of God our focus has to be forward looking. It’s an every next moment call to us. The Parable of the 10 Virgins is a ‘looking-forward’ parable.

We will look at it next verse by verse.