What Are We Afraid of?

Image: William Holman Hunt, "The Light of the World"

I didn’t know whether to laugh, or cry. I had asked the members of a small group I’m part of, “What are some of the reasons we keep God at arm’s length, that when he says “I stand at the door and knock,” we try to keep him out? What keeps us from really surrendering our lives to God?”

Fear, pride, shame, guilt – such things can maintain such a hold over us. But several specifically stated, “I’m afraid if I really surrendered my life to God he’d ask me to be a missionary.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. As a mission mobilizer I sometimes feel I have the greatest job in the world – inviting people to give up their small ambitions and connect with God’s global plans! But how often is that message simply not connecting with people? Is there a barrier of acceptance based on a (possibly false) sense of what it’s going to cost? How many of my friends hear the word "missions" and translate it "misery"? How many believe, if you say to God, “Here am I, send me” he’s going to send you someplace terrible to do something that doesn't fit who you are, at all?

Some people also hold missionaries, or at least certain kind of missionaries, in such high esteem there is no danger that they would ever consider themselves able to join them. Sometimes our “positive” messages about missionaries paint pictures of missionaries as being happy and effective because they are more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. That may not be helpful either.

So, I guess we in the mobilization biz, mobilizing and equipping Christians for the completion of the Great Commission, have our work cut out for us. I don’t want to be naïve about this. I think we need to recognize the real barriers that keep people from giving themselves to God’s kingdom.

I repeated the story of that conversation with my small group to others a few times to get their reactions and as I did, my perspective changed a bit. You know, nothing worth doing really comes without cost, hard work, and often significant risk. Think of marriage, having children, building friendships – building a career, investing money, or giving yourself to a church or other form of intentional community. It’s a big risk. It’s not going to be easy. It may, at times, make you miserable. Being a missionary (or really giving yourself to one of the other ways one can make a difference for the kingdom) is no different. I wrote about this in my post Counting the Cost.

So perhaps it's only natural that we are afraid. And yet I am saddened by how often we let our fears stop us. My friend C. wrote in a recent Facebook conversation, “Fear has the potential to stop us from doing some of the most amazing things of our life. It's when I am pursuing something BIG, something of God, that I am the most plagued by fear.”

Me too.