PLEASE JUST LEAVE ME ALONE

Stafford Greer, Bearspaw Lead Site Pastor

This is the final installment in the devotional series on my tattoo sleeve. You can catch up on previous devotionals by clicking here.

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” Isaiah 6:8 NIV

Growing up in the church, the above verse was something that I heard often enough. It was often used as a verse that was shared by a visiting missionary who was doing the rounds on furlough, or ‘home assignment’ as we now call it in The Alliance. For those unfamiliar, it is often the practice for overseas missionaries to be sent out to ‘the field’ for a period of four years and then be given one-year back home where they would travel to supporting churches, sharing stories from their time overseas, raising awareness for missions, and fundraising support to head back out.

It was during these home assignments that missionaries would bring their stories and accompanying slide projectors (in the days before iPhones, PowerPointe, or projectors) to raise awareness of the urgency of bringing the gospel to areas of the world where few or none had heard of Jesus. They would talk about the call of Isaiah in chapter 6 and his enthusiastic response of “send me!” to God’s question of “who shall we send?” hoping that others might be guilted… or perhaps actually moved by God to also go to the mission field.

Honestly, my internal response to these presentations was more along the lines of, “please God, do not send me! I like it here. I don’t want to go anywhere. Please just leave me alone (but also bless me).”

If we’re honest, that is often what we want from God: we want him to bless our current life, job, bank account, social standing, school, relationships, etc., while also keeping his nose out of our business. At its worst, we can end up treating God like a cosmic vending machine where, if we do just the right amount of good and moral things, God will dispense a blessing for us. This ‘works’ until we don’t get what we think we deserve; “this vending machine God is broken,” we might think, or “they’ve raised the prices on all these blessings, I’m done with this!”

While most of us wouldn’t actually articulate our view of God that crassly or clinically, there are likely elements that would be true: we like where we are, we don’t want to give up our dream, our job, or our comfort, to go somewhere because of God’s leading. We want to serve God, but “going” somewhere across the globe onto the mission field sounds terrifying.

I am a supporter of Global Missions and we are working to find ways to keep Global Missions, our International Workers, and initiatives like the Jaffray Project front-and-centre at RockPointe, but I also know that perhaps our understanding of being sent can be too limited.

Even within our tradition, we have historically fallen into the trap of promoting the highest calling to God as being a missionary, followed by being a pastor; and if you can’t do either of those, then your calling is to make as much money as you can so that you can give as much money as you can to those who are actually going into missions work. Our founder, A.B. Simpson, even said as much: “[if you don’t go to the mission field, your calling is] to stay in this land for the express purpose of getting others to go abroad.”

But what if we were to shift our focus of God’s calling on our life to broaden it beyond just going overseas or giving money to those who do? What if when Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21), he was sending you into the places where you live, work, study, and play to be light to the world? What if the call of “who shall we send?” was the Father asking who could be sent into the marketplace, the construction site, the hospital, the care home, the university? What if the Holy Spirit is leading you to be sent into your neighbourhood to be God’s messenger there? What if we were to change our posture of head low, eyes down, “please leave me alone” into one of “here I am, send me!”

Not everyone is called to be a missionary, or a pastor (although I wholeheartedly believe that some of us are!), but everyone IS called to follow after God’s leading in the power of the Holy Spirit. Where are you being led? What would it look like to respond to God’s leading with a “send me!”?

Let’s be a church that has a posture of listening and obedience to God’s leading, where we can celebrate and commission our people into the areas of their calling!

For those wanting a closer look at my tattoo sleeve. You’ll notice Isaiah on my lower forearm and the seraphim holding the burning coal from the altar in his tongs. On the back of my forearm is also a painting of the burning bush. The background temple is modeled after a cathedral (which one, I forget), and the smoke is filling and surrounding the characters.