Jesus Christ, Our Great Missionary

Every Easter Heritage receives its annual Lottie Moon offering to support Southern Baptist Missionaries around the world. Today we were privileged to visit in the home of and eat at a Polish restaurant with one of these missionaries.

Foreign missionaries, unlike the everyday missionaries we are, surrender their American lifestyle, proximity to family, and assume the culture of another country, all at great cost and even the risk of life, in order to share the “good news of great joy” (Lk 2:10) with people unlike themselves.

Oh wait. That sounds like someone else, doesn’t it? Someone else who left home, family, and comfort to tell us we are sinners under God’s righteous wrath in need of a salvation mercifully provided by that same God in the sacrifice of

himself.

But you may recognize that story in these inspired words, written by the apostle Paul, who wrote -

“…Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:5-8).

It is with that picture of Jesus’s sacrifice and by the power of Christ’s Spirit that these men and women choose to follow Jesus, away from home and into a foreign place.

In that same spirit, our debt to these extraordinary people is greater than simple financial support. Every once in a while, in some small copy of their choice, we too should leave comfort, home, normalcy and even safety, just to show up at their front door to say. “Thank you. You are not forgotten. We are grateful for you. How may we serve you?”

Heritage has made it possible for Teana and me, on their behalf, to do just that. And so, on behalf of the IMB missionaries we have met and will meet, we bring you their greetings to say. “Thank you, Heritage.” And then, let me add my oft quoted benediction to our congregation, “Happy are you…[O Heritage]. Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD…” (Deut 33:29).

PS. Returning the car to the airport this evening I was randomly stopped at a Polish police sobriety checkpoint. The policeman was very kind and amused that I didn’t know how to blow into the breath analyzer. After several attempts he told me I was just filled with the Holy Spirit and Coca-Cola. Okay, that last part is not true. In the end, he just laughed and told me to go on.

(Here’s a picture of me following our IMB missionary and his daughter to lunch).