So Send I You

July 30, 2013

A compilation

“As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”—John 20:211

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Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"—Isaiah 6:82

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He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.”—Mark 16:153

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How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”—Romans 10:14–154

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To go on mission to all of creation is to express something indispensable about God’s nature. In the Bible, the word sent occurs more than 650 times, and in a majority of its uses, God is doing the sending. In the Old Testament, He sends angels to minister, manna to feed, and prophets to warn. He sends disasters to stop tyrants or discipline His people. He sends leaders to deliver. God is attentive to needs, and so He sends.

In the New Testament, the story of God reaches a climax as He sends His own Son into the world to suffer and die for our sin and to restore His creation. “I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus says. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus Christ is the ultimate signpost of heaven.

Nearing the end of His ministry on earth, Jesus turned to His followers and said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” Then he sent the Holy Spirit to make our mission possible. In this story of God, we see the sequence of redemption: The Father sends the Son; the Son sends the Spirit; and the Father, Son, and Spirit send us, the church.

The idea of being sent isn’t an agenda cooked up by some religious organization. It is the heartbeat of the living God. He is a God who sends and who goes Himself. In fact, without the word sent, you couldn’t find the gospel in the Bible. That’s why when we go to people and places in need, we are expressing the Creator’s nature. We are representing heaven and our King.

Of course, when God sends us, we don’t have to go. Even the early apostles balked. For quite a while they kept the Good News in Jerusalem. I can understand why they didn’t want to leave. People were responding to the gospel all over the place. A lot of lives were being changed. Why leave when the program was breaking all records? But God wanted them to go into all the world and to all creation with the Good News. Perhaps to help get them going, He allowed persecution. Christians in Jerusalem started getting thrown in jail, beaten, even killed. Within just a few years, followers of Jesus had scattered throughout the Roman Empire, spreading the Good News of the kingdom as they went.—Rick McKinley5

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I am more than ever determined that no limit shall be placed around us other than that of our Lord Himself, who said, “To the uttermost parts” and “to every creature.”

The difficulty is to believe that He can deign to use such scallywags as us, but of course He wants faith and fools rather than talents and culture. All God wants is a heart—any old turnip will do for a head; so long as we are empty, all is well, for then He fills with the Holy Ghost.—C. T. Studd

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It’s through preaching the Gospel that Christianity spreads. It’s through witnessing that the gift of salvation that Jesus died to bring is given to others. If the first disciples hadn’t preached the Gospel and taught others to do the same, then the Gospel could have ceased to be known. God has given us something so great, so eternally life changing, it’s our responsibility, as disciples, to share it with others, to give them the same opportunity.—Peter Amsterdam6

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We need to go back to the original plan that Jesus gave His first followers, which they demonstrated in the book of Acts and which He stated so simply: “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone, everywhere.”7

Jesus alone saves, but He can’t save you alone. He wants to save the whole world, and some day He will, but He needs you to tell others about His love. He wants you to give His love and message of salvation to your part of “all the world.”

If you love Jesus and are serious about pleasing Him, you have a responsibility. He has given you a commission, a job to do for Him, and you need to do it. “Preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season.”8 Love and win souls. Spread the Word. Spread the message. Spread His love.

The fields are already “white for harvest,”9 so “pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest”10—and the first one He will send is you.—David Brandt Berg11

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So send I you to labor unrewarded,
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown,
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing,
So send I you to toil for Me alone.
As the Father hath sent Me, so send I you.

So send I you to bind the bruised and broken,
O’er wand’ring souls to work, to weep, to wake,
To bear the burdens of a world aweary—
So send I you to suffer for My sake.
As the Father hath sent Me, so send I you.

So send I you—to loneliness and longing,
With heart a-hungering for the loved and known;
Forsaking home and kindred, friend and dear one,
So send I you—to know My love alone.
As the Father hath sent Me, so send I you.

So send I you—to leave your life’s ambitions,
To die to dear desire, self-will resign,
To labor long and love where men revile you,
So send I you—to lose your life in Mine.
As the Father hath sent Me, so send I you.

So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred,
To eyes made blind because they will not see,
To spend, tho’ it be blood, to spend and spare not—
So send I you to taste of Calvary.
As the Father hath sent Me, so send I you.
—Margaret Clarkson 

Published on Anchor July 2013. Read by Jerry Paladino.
Music by Michael Dooley.

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