Living Sent Part VI

by Landon Reesor

So how do we change that?  What would it look like if we began to live “sent”?

What would our prayer experience be like if began to pray “sent”?  How would our giving be different is we allowed a “sent” mentality to infuse itself into our generosity?  How would our interactions with our family, our neighbors, our co-workers and unreached people groups around the world be changed and altered if we lived everyday “sent”?

I’m convinced that we would pray with the bigger world and more global, others-centered needs at the core of our conversations with God.  I’m confident that we would readjust the way we spend our money and be far more strategic and sacrificial in the way we release our resources.  And I know that we would become much more intentional with the relationships that God has sovereignly placed in our lives and we would begin to look for ways to increase our circle of influence to expose more people, both locally and globally, to the life-changing, hope-creating, freedom-offering Jesus story.

That’s the life I want to live.  That’s the life I want my family to experience.  That’s the kind of missional journey I want our church to take.  That’s what it means to live “sent”.

The intent of the team blog website and format is to aid collegiate/young adult leaders in their ministry to college age students in Texas.  The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention does not necessarily agree with or condone all of the thoughts in every blog written by ministers, they simply are providing a platform for resources and thoughts to be shared through this blogging opportunity.  If you have any questions contact our offices.

Living Sent PART V

by Landon Reesor

He loved, served, sacrificed and injected Himself into the lives of the people around Him.  He was known as a drunkard and a glutton, not because He was one, but because that was who He would strategically and intentionally reach out to, hang out with, and connect with.  Without question, Jesus spent a ton of time in private prayer and fellowship with His Father.  He also invested a lot of energy in His relationship with the 3 (Peter, James, and John) and the 12.  But those moments were, in large part, to prepare Him (and them) for their greater mission in the world around them.  The time with His followers was part of a larger strategy to intentionally go to and engage the world.

Unfortunately, I think if many of us were to do an audit of our lives, we would find we spend a massive amount of time with other Jesus followers and far too little time out with the lost and spiritually disconnected, far too little time entering into their world and their lives.  If that is true, we’ve lost the essence and understanding of what it means to live “sent”.  We’ve lost that missional passion and focus.  We’ve allowed our fear of contamination to limit our communication and connection with the lost world both Christ and we were sent into...

The intent of the team blog website and format is to aid collegiate/young adult leaders in their ministry to college age students in Texas.  The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention does not necessarily agree with or condone all of the thoughts in every blog written by minsters, they simply are providing a platform for resources and thoughts to be shared through this blogging opportunity.  If you have any questions contact our offices

Living Sent PART IV

by Landon Reesor

I’ll be honest with you, this John 17 passage is a pretty familiar one to a lot of people.  I’ve read it and heard it hundreds, if not thousands of times, in my life.  And almost every time, it’s been summarized with the phrase, “in but not of”.  In other words, as Christians, we’re in the world but we’re not to be of it.  And that’s correct … kind of.  We are in this world.  We do live and breathe and exist in this physical life and on this globe.  And while we are here, we are to always remember that our nature has been changed and we are not the same as the people around us.  Oh yeah, and we’re not supposed to go back to how we were and allow our new selves to be corrupted by the old vaules, beliefs, and behaviors that still characterize the fallen world around us.

But when we say that we are “in but not of”, I think it’s a misguided and misleading summary of this passage.  It’s not about being “in but not of”.  It’s about being “not of but sent into”!  Being “sent” is the major theme and purpose of the passage.

If you think about it, the “in but not of” mentality is an incredibly defensive approach that puts us in a  passive posture towards the world around us.  It almost paints a picture of us as believers sitting in the corner, twiddling our thumbs, biding our time and trying not to get soiled or influenced by the world until our time on earth is done and we get to go to Heaven.  That mindset can easily translate into a process where we as believers focus our attention on putting up walls and barriers to protect us from the outside culture while we construct Christian communes and isolated communities that insulate us from the negative influence of the world around us.  That mentality leads to disconnected lives that have little or no impact...

That isn’t the way Jesus lived!

The intent of the team blog website and format is to aid collegiate/young adult leaders in their ministry to college age students in Texas.  The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention does not necessarily agree with or condone all of the thoughts in every blog written by ministers, they simply are providing a platform for resources and thoughts to be shared through this blogging opportunity.  If you have any questions contact our offices.

Living Sent PART III

by Landon Reesor

Now, against the backdrop of the hatred the world has for the Church, pause for a second and remember that God is our Father.  And I can tell you as a father that if one of my children was in an environment where I knew that they were hated and being persecuted, I would do one of two things.  I would either try to resolve the conflict quickly or I would just remove my child from that environment immediately.  And part of me assumes that God, as a gracious Father, would do the same thing for us as His spiritual children.  But in His greater wisdom and because of His mission, He doesn’t.  In fact, Jesus doesn’t pray that God would take us out of the world that hates us.  He prays the exact opposite!  He prays that God would NOT remove us.

Instead, He asks the Father to do two things …

1 – He asks the Father to protect us while we’re in the world

2 – He asks the Father to continue to change us and prepare us to be used specifically for Him

And then He says, “Just as You sent me into the world, so I have sent them”.  Wow.  Think about that for  a minute.  Let that sink in.  In the same way that Christ was given a mission that God had established for Him long before the creation of the world, we have a mission.  Just as He was sent into the world to show a radical love and share a life-changing story, so we have been sent into that same world with the opportunity to display that same love and communicate that same story.  We are extensions of Christ.  We are His Body.  We are the physical expression of Jesus on this planet and we have inherited the same cause He lived, died, and was resurrected for … the redemption of the nations.

And yet the only way for us to accomplish that is to live “sent”, to recognize this commission we’ve been given, and to live everyday with this missional mentality...

The intent of the team blog website and format is to aid collegiate/young adult leaders in their ministry to college age students in Texas.  The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention does not necessarily agree with or condone all of the thoughts in every blog written by ministers, they simply are providing a platform for resources and thoughts to be shared through this blogging opportunity.  If you have any questions contact our offices.

Living Sent   PART II

by Landon Reesor

In John 17.14-17, Jesus is praying His “high priestly prayer” for His disciples and all of the believers that would come after them (that includes us!).  In that prayer, He says …

I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. – John 14.14-19 (ESV)

As I read through that passage, the first thing that strikes me is that we, as Christ followers, are different from the world around us.  Jesus says that He has given us the Father’s Word and that His Word has changed us.  The result is that we are no longer “of the world” any more that He was of the world.  That phrase “not of” comes from the negative form of a Greek word that means “I exist”.  It speaks of our identity, essence, and origins.  The bottom line is that after we embrace Christ our very nature is radically altered.  We aren’t the same people we were before.  Our beliefs, values, attitudes, and actions are different.  A change has taken place and now continues in us.  Scripture says that the old things of our lives go away and that all things become new.  We are different.

And that difference, that change, creates conflict and tension with the world around us that hasn’t embraced that Word yet.  Jesus says that the world literally hates us because of the change in us.  Hate is a strong word and yet it is exactly what the text communicates.  There is an anger and animosity between the world and the Church.  Even when we live lives of compassion and kindness, even when we predicate the sharing of the Gospel with an act of generosity and sacrifice, there is still a friction between who we are and what we believe and who the people of the world are and what they embrace.  That difference between light and dark, life and death, hope and despair, truth and lies is inescapable no matter how much love we share.  I’m convinced that compassion needs to precede our communication of the truth and that sometimes the world won’t listen to our message because our behavior towards them hasn’t given them any good reason to.  But the bottom line is that the tension between the Church and the world inescapable.  Jesus was the most compassionate person to ever walk on this planet.  He embodied the Great Commandments of loving God and loving your neighbor.  Yet the world hated Him and rejected Him because of His Word and claims to truth and that same experience is waiting for us.

Come back tomorrow for Part III...

The intent of the team blog website and format is to aid collegiate/young adult leaders in their ministry to college age students in Texas.  The southern Baptists of Texas Convention does not necessarily agree with or condone all of the thoughts in every blog written by ministers, they simply are providing a platform for resources and thoughts to be shared through this blogging opportunity.  If you have any questions contact our offices.