BASIC Faith
6 min read
9 “You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. 10 And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.”
—Mark 13:9-10
What a shock it must have been to Peter, Andrew, James, and John to hear this. It hasn’t happened often in my life, but I have felt an extreme sense of dread a couple of times. I imagine that the disciples must have felt something similar, except a thousand times more intense.
Of course, God does not call everyone to suffer persecution as they did. That is good news to most of us. But the reason that they would suffer persecution was because “the gospel must be preached to all nations.” They are the ones who were called to kick start the great commission, and this effort to reach all people groups continues to this day.
The Joshua Project tells us that there are still 7,276 people groups out of 17,311 that have not ever had a chance to hear the gospel. That’s about 3.4 billion people, or about 42% of the world’s population.
The mystery of God’s sovereignty being what it is, who knows how all of those people will be reached, except to say that (1) the entire world will be reached one day, and (2) God wants His people to devote our lives to that effort.
How we devote our lives to that work is a matter of God’s unique calling for each and every one of us. Not all are called to be martyrs (thank God!) or missionaries or evangelists or pastors. etc. What all of God’s people have been saved for is to be “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9).
In other words … . Those of you who have been attending Canvas for any length of time can fill in the … .
For the benefit of those who have not: every believer has been called to bear witness to Jesus Christ (our desperate need for Him), and in so doing, fill the earth with the glory of God in Jesus’s name through God-fearing, God-honoring, God-worshiping, God-loving communities and families, which is the church.
And the strategy that we have been given through the word of God is to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love our neighbors as we even love ourselves.
And even if we cannot execute this strategy perfectly, we have the guaranteed hope of our salvation, so that we can persevere in seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness with the unlimited grace that has been given to us through faith.
This is BASIC faith. And God will most certainly call us and stir our hearts to accomplish His plan of salvation for the world in Christ Jesus when we exercise BASIC faith instead of weighing ourselves down with idol.
And that is the heart of my own ongoing repentance—that I may stop weighing myself down with idols.
Father, as far as the east is from the west, Your ways are not my ways; Your thoughts are not my thoughts. But reveal to me Your thoughts, teach me Your ways, and fill me with Your Spirit, so that I would not weigh myself down with idolatry. And show me Your glory. In Jesus’s name. Amen.