Give to me a new Heart

Ezekiel 36:25-27 (English Standard Version)
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

I was reading this morning where two communications satellites crashed into each other. The concern now is that the debris field resulting from the collision poses a threat to other satellites and especially the Hubble Space Telescope. Furthermore the greatest navigational concern to ongoing space shuttle missions is the space trash that increasingly circles our planet. As I was reading this I was mindful of the corollary between the relationship of space detritus to future space missions and the wreckage of ill conceived evangelistic efforts to future Christ missions.

I am a missionary. I didn’t ask to be one. I didn’t wake up one morning with a burning call on my life to become a missionary. I didn’t even purpose in the depths of my heart to be one. I am a missionary just the same. I love Jesus, more and more each second, and as a result I am a missionary. This is what it means to be a disciple of Christ. As a disciple I am learning to be like Jesus and to do what He does. Christ is the consummate missionary. In fact in the beginning God had a plan to redeem me, to redeem us, to redeem this fallen world. The plan sent Christ on a mission. Christ is on a mission from God. In the words of Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi I am on a mission from God. If you love Jesus you to are on mission from God. Go ahead and get you some dark glasses a fedora and a black suit and tie. You are sent.

It’s funny really. My mission is to point the world to Christ and His redeeming grace, instead often I point at the world and minister condemnation and rigid law. It’s like I am surprised that people get caught up in the mess. They become so mired in messiness that it becomes hard to tell where the mess stops and people start. Are they the mess or is it the mess making them appear that way? Maybe its both, the worlds a mess, people are a mess and the combination is some kind of mess-a-ganza. When I point at the world I am not only hating but participating. Maybe there is another way?