His Mission, My Life

Jesus was on mission the moment He was born. He said, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:10)

• Not just to SAVE, but the need to SEEK them – to help them understand the need to be SAVED.

• The movement is for us to go to where the NEEDS are. Go to where the people are and bring with us His presence, His love and His grace.

So we see Jesus always on the move, the moment steps into ministry.

• The needs of the people met, not just spiritual but emotional and physical needs.

• He provided them with food, and healed them from their sicknesses. He gave hope to those who are in despair.

When the disciples came to Him once and said, “Everyone is looking for you”, His reply was: “Let us go somewhere else - to the nearby villages - so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” (Mark 1:38)

• He is not willing to stay with those who are already blessed. He is always on the move to where the needs are.

• So Jesus became famous for hanging out with the “sinners” and tax collectors. The sick needs a doctor.

That was Jesus’ mission. And this has become our mission today.

• With the parting commission that He has given us. We are now called to hang out with the “sinners” and tax collectors, with people who need Jesus.

• 2 Cor 5:18-20 “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.”

This is not something that comes naturally to most of us, me included. We are hesitant to share the good news about Jesus.

• I’ve to learn to be an ambassador for Christ. I’ve to learn to share about Jesus.

• It is not that we do not know the message; some of us know it for many years.

• It is not that we cannot speak well, because socially I think most of us can hold a conversation with friends very well, much better than I do. We are trained to make presentation at school and at work

Yet we are hesitant, because we have gotten a wrong view or understanding of what it means to share this good news:

(1) We don’t want to offend people. We live in a society that emphasizes freedom of choice and the right to hold one’s own private opinion.

So in our minds, we see evangelism as an aggressive sale pitch, trying to get our potential target to buy our product. And we don’t like being the salesman.

(2) Fear of failure. We don’t like the responses we get. People are sceptical about it, they resent it, they make fun of it, or they may be angry with us.

This focus on the result discourages us from sharing what is truly the GOOD news.

Both perspectives are unfortunate. The right picture is that God is making His appeal through us.

• We are messengers delivering God’s message to those who are in need of knowing the truth – about God and their lives. We are just the delivery man or woman.

• The way any person comes to faith in God is ultimately a mystery which lies in the sovereign hands of God, and not in our hands.

The truth of the matter is all of us can play this role very well, because God is making His appeal through us!

• I want to encourage you today through a testimony of a woman, a very ordinary woman, mentioned in John 4 – the Samaritan woman.

• She became probably the most unlikely evangelist of the NT.

Jesus was on the way back to Galilee from Judea and He went into the territory of the Samaritans.

• No Jew will take this road. It was off the beaten path. Jesus took on a missionary journey, actually, into a foreign land.

• Why? He wanted to meet a woman in need. In need of love, of forgiveness, of acceptance, and of a new life.

She is a lonely woman with a messed up life. She has had five husbands and now staying with the sixth.

• She comes to the well to draw water, at noon, because that’s when nobody is around.

• And she met Jesus! Jesus spoke, and the rest is history.

Fast forward to the end – John 4:39-42

• 39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.