The reason missions has to be so central is because the glory of God is central. And people who don’t believe in Jesus are trampling the glory of God in the dirt because of their unbelief or indifference. But we love the glory of God, and we want them to see and savor the glory of God and magnify it in the world.

Therefore missions, for anybody who loves the glory of God as the central reality in the universe, has to be one of our central tasks.

By John Piper. ©2013 Desiring God Foundation. Used by Permission.

2. Ignorance
There are many Christians who, down deep inside, want to share their faith, but they honestly don’t know what to say.
Sadly, if you were to put a microphone in the face of the average churchgoer leaving a typical Sunday morning service and asked them to define the Gospel message, the answers could range from “um” to dumb. To add insult to injury, far too many preachers have over-complicated the Gospel to the point where even true Christians wonder if they are saved. They’ve added caveats and small print to John 3:16 and, as a result, many believers are confused by the clear and simple Gospel they once embraced with child-like faith.
The Cure: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures …” (1 Cor. 15:3,4)

3. Arrogance
Sadly, there are Christians who think they are above sharing the Gospel. After all, isn’t that what they pay the pastor, youth leader and missionary to do? These Christians want to sing about Jesus in the sanctuary, exegete his book in Sunday school but don’t want to get their lily-white hands defiled with the diseased and dirty “sinners” by having to actually talk to them.
The Cure: “And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, ‘Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance’ ” (Luke 5:30-32).

4. Apathy
Sadly, there are many who call themselves Christians, but they just don’t care about the lost. They believe there is a hell. They know those who don’t know Jesus will go there forever. But they, for whatever reason, just don’t care. They have lost their first love and, therefore, refuse to do what he commands. And, like the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2, if they don’t start letting their little lights shine, they could have their candles snuffed out altogether.
The Cure: “When he saw the crowds he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36).

5. Bad Theology
This brand of bad theology has a range. One extreme defangs hell by making it mythical or instantaneous suffering (as opposed to eternal), therefore removing the urgency to evangelize. The other side of the range uses the doctrine of election as a way to eradicate urgency. After all, if God is sovereign in salvation, why evangelize?
Although I believe in the sovereignty of God in salvation, I’m also fully convinced that if people don’t hear and believe the Gospel, then they’ll be damned forever. I chose not to try to solve the riddle but live in the tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. It is in the midst of this tension that God provides us both urgency and assurance, urgency to reach the lost who are headed to hell and assurance that God is the only one who is sovereign in salvation.
The Cure: “Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).

By Greg Stier

There is a second reason why Paul insists that his incarceration has advanced the gospel: “Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly” (1:14). A whiff of persecution sometimes puts backbone into otherwise timid Christians. Older readers of these pages will remember the five Wheaton College graduates in the 1950s who lost their lives in an attempt to bring the gospel to the Auca Indians. Among the excellent unforeseen results was the very high number of Wheaton graduates who year after year for the next decade or two offered themselves for missionary service. Because of the death of the “Auca five,” many were “encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly.”

Nevertheless, Paul is a realist. He acknowledges that not every consequence of his imprisonment is rosy in every respect. “It is true,” he writes, “that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of good will. The latter do so in love … the former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice” (1:15-18a).

Who are these curious preachers who “preach Christ” but who do so out of the most astonishing motives? It is important to recognize that they are not heretics… If they had been, Paul would have exposed them. The preachers to whom Paul makes reference here… propound the true gospel, but sometimes do so from the strangest mix of motives. In this case, the people Paul has in mind are those that must be understood to lie behind verse 12. They think that Paul has done damage to the Christian cause by getting himself arrested. Probably they magnify their own ministry by putting Paul down. We can imagine their pompous reflections: “It really is sad that so great a man as Paul has frittered away his gospel opportunities simply because he is so inflexible. After all, I and many others manage to remain at large and preach the gospel. One must assume that Paul has a deep character flaw that puts him in the path of trouble. My ministry is being blessed, whilehe languishes in prison.” Thus, the more they speak, the more their own ways are justified and the more Paul is made to look foolish.

How does Paul handle this? Is he wounded? Doubtless he has feelings like everyone else. But… he perceives that whether by preachers like this or by preachers who align themselves with the apostle, the gospel is getting out. And that is more important than whether or not he himself achieves universal respect in the church. Not only can he say “But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached,” but he can add “And because of this I rejoice” (1:18).
Paul’s example is impressive and clear: Put the advance of the gospel at the center of your aspirations. Our own comfort, our bruised feelings, our reputations, our misunderstood motives – all of these are insignificant in comparison with the advance and splendor of the gospel. As Christians, we are called upon to put the advance of the gospel at the very center of our aspirations.
What are your aspirations? To make money? To get married? To travel? To see your grandchildren grow up? To find a new job? To retire early? None of these is inadmissible; none is to be despised. The question is whether these aspirations become so devouring that the Christian’s central aspiration is squeezed to the periphery or choked out of existence entirely …

In a fair bit of Western evangelicalism, there is a worrying tendency to focus on the periphery. [My] colleague … Dr. Paul Hiebert … springs from Mennonite stock and analyzes his heritage in a fashion that he himself would acknowledge is something of a simplistic caricature, but a useful one nonetheless. One generation of Mennonites believed the gospel and held as well that there were certain social, economic, and political entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel, but identified with the entailments. The following generation denied the gospel: the “entailments” became everything. Assuming this sort of scheme for evangelicalism, one suspects that large swaths of the movement are lodged in the second step, with some drifting toward the third.

… What is it in the Christian faith that excites you? … Today there are endless subgroups of confessing Christians who invest enormous quantities of time and energy in one issue or another: abortion, pornography, home schooling, women’s ordination (for or against), economic justice, a certain style of worship, the defense of a particular Bible version, and countries have a full agenda of urgent, peripheral demands. Not for a moment am I suggesting we should not think about such matters or throw our weight behind some of them. But when such matters devour most of our time and passion, each of us must ask: In what fashion am I confessing the centrality of the gospel?

This is not a subtle plea for … a gospel without social ramifications. We wisely reread the accounts of the Evangelical Awakening in England and the Great Awakening in America and the extraordinary ministries of Howell Harris, George Whitefield, the Wesley brothers, and others. We rightly remind ourselves how under God their converts led the fights to abolish slavery, reform the penal code, begin trade unions, transform prisons, and free children from serving in the mines. All of society was transformed because soundly converted men and women saw that life must be lived under God and in a manner pleasing to him. But virtually without exception these men and women put the gospel first. They reveled in it, preached it, cherished Bible reading and exposition that was Christ-centered and gospel centered, and from that base moved out into the broader social agendas. In short, they put the gospel first, not least in their own aspirations. Not to see this priority means we are not more than a generation away from denying the gospel.

It may be that God has called you to be a homemaker or an engineer or a chemist or a ditch digger. It may be that you will take some significant role in, say, the rising field of bioethics. But although the gospel directly affects how you will discharge your duties in each case, none of these should displace the gospel that is central to every thoughtful Christian. You will put the gospel first in your aspirations. Then you will be able to endure affliction and persecution and even misunderstanding and misrepresentation from other Christians. You will say with Paul, “I want you to know … that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel” (1:12).

… Put the advance of the gospel at the center of your aspirations.

By D.A. Carson

Interestingly enough, a radio message had gone out, an SOS that was picked up and broadcast immediately all over the United States in a flash news announcement: “There is a plane falling in the middle of the Atlantic.” My wife heard about this and at once she gathered our three little girls together and they knelt down and began to pray. They were praying in St Louis, Missouri, and I was praying on the plane. And we were going down and down.
Then, while we could see the waves breaking beneath us and everybody was ready for the crash, suddenly the two motors started, and we went on into Gander.
When we got down I found the pilot and asked what happened. “Well,” he said, “it’s a strange thing, something we can’t explain. Only rarely do two motors stop on one wing, but you can make an absolute rule that when they do, they don’t start again. We don’t understand it.”

So I turned to him and I said, “I can explain it.”
He looked at me: “How?”
And I said, “My Father in heaven started it because I was praying.”
That man had the strangest look on his face and he turned away.

Schaeffer draws a big-picture application:

What one must realize is that seeing the world as a Christian does not mean just saying, “I am a Christian. I believe in the supernatural world,” and then stopping. It is possible to be saved through faith in Christ and then spend much of our lives in the materialist’s chair. We can say we believe in a supernatural world, and yet live as though there were no supernatural in the universe at all. It is not enough merely to say, “I believe in a supernatural world.”
Christianity is not just a mental assent that certain doctrines are true. This is only the beginning. This would be rather like a starving man sitting in front of great heaps of food and saying, “I believe the food exists; I believe it is real,” and yet never eating it.
It is not enough merely to say, “I am a Christian,” and then in practice to live as if present contact with the supernatural were something far off and strange.
Many Christians I know seem to act as though they come in contact with the supernatural just twice—once when they are justified and become a Christian and once when they die. The rest of the time they act as though they were sitting in the materialist’s chair.

—Francis Schaeffer, “The Universe and Two Chairs”