Our fortieth anniversary coincides with the beginning of a new millennium and the air is full of portents. Opportunity beckons, and expectancy is high. Mediocrity and disaster hover in the wings, and we can sense the prickle of danger. What are we going to do?
Are we willing to commit to the next step that God wants us to take? Will we embrace the danger of obedience as we have in the past, or will we settle for what we’ve already got?
I can clearly remember the sweaty palms and butterflies in my stomach when I sat down to sign a rent contract on a big house in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in February of 1976. Pam and I didn’t need such a big house. The rent was more than our total monthly support. How could I sign that contract?
Then again, how could I not sign it? We had felt from the beginning that God wanted us to mobilize and train Brazilians so they could be a part of reaching the world for Jesus. If we were to have them with us, we needed to have a big enough place, but as I sat there looking at that contract it surely seemed impossible.
Since we had gotten to Brazil, everyone, from expatriate missionaries to Brazilian Christians, had told us that what we wanted to do was unworkable. There wouldn’t be enough finances for it, and the Brazilian young people weren’t suited to this kind of life.
At that moment, all of those voices echoed through my brain. Were Pam and I embarking on a doomed endeavor? It would be so easy to just change course a little and do what was possible. I had started to get invitations to speak in churches. People liked us. Surely we could have a good personal ministry in Brazil. Our support had grown to a level where we could rent a little place for the two of us and work out of there, speaking, teaching and exhorting in a normal way. It seemed so tantalizing.
That wasn’t what God had defined as our inheritance, though. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants leg, gripped the pen, and signed the contract. I’m so glad that I did! Last month we had a national staff conference in Brazil and when we counted our workers there were over fifteen hundred. They are on all of the continents of the world preaching the gospel, planting churches, reaching unreached people groups, caring for the needy, establishing schools, succoring orphans, etc. What an inheritance!
When I risked everything to sign that contract in 1976 it really wasn’t so hard. ‘Everything’ didn’t amount to much. Will we do it now?
In Genesis 11, God calls Abram to leave and go to a land which he didn’t know. With Abram were his father and his nephew, Lot. According to verse 31, "they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan." On this long journey, Abram and Lot prospered, and finally the land couldn’t support them and all of their animals together. Their servants had started to fight over scarce resources, so Abram had a serious discussion with Lot.
Abram let Lot choose, and the Bible says that Lot saw the well-watered plain of the Jordan and chose to go there, while Abram proceeded to Canaan. It doesn’t seem like Lot did much wrong here. He had been traveling since he was a boy. He saw in the well-watered plain the prospect of comfort, security, prosperity and a better life for his family. He wasn’t going to abandon God. He was just going to move to Sodom. In 2 Peter 2:7, he is even described as a righteous man during his time in Sodom.
The trouble is, Sodom wasn’t meant to be Lot’s destination. It was just a stopping place along the way, and not his inheritance in God. It became a comfortable, secure, and prosperous alternative to the real plan of God for him. It looked like a reward for all of the years of wandering with Abraham, a deserved rest from risk and conflict. The result was corruption in his family and the loss of everything.
I think YWAM is at a similar crossroads. God is pointing towards Canaan. He doesn’t seem to really define what is there, so everything seems a little distant and not very clear. It’s risky to go on. Our battles up to this point have carved out a pretty good place to rest. We’re a big mission and can be proud of what the Lord has done through us. We have a lot of properties and ministries to take care of. Our reputation is at least as good as it has ever been. Will we put all of that on the line and commit to the next challenges, difficulties, and risks needed to move on to take our true inheritance?
Do we really need fifty thousand workers? Isn’t that a lot of trouble? Can we really disciple nations? What does that mean anyway? Do I have to multiply my ministry? Can’t I just be satisfied with taking care of what I already have?
In the answer to these questions and others like them we will determine whether or not we will go on to Canaan, or whether we will just settle for having been a pretty good mission.
We’re not there yet. We’re still east of the Jordan. We’ve subdued some kings, but the land is still unconquered. Will we turn aside like Lot, or will we press ahead like Joshua and Caleb finally did so many centuries later?
I believe we will move ahead. I believe the best is yet to come. We just need to believe and obey God and He will give us so much more than we have now.
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