October 14

God’s Heartbeat for Missions

October 14, 2007 Todd Rasmuson, Daystar US

Introduction: Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

Well we have another treat. Our speaker today is Todd Rasmuson. Todd has been a missionary to Tanzania for about seven years and he also was helping direct the Mission Moving Mountains Ministry we have supported over the last several years. God worked it out that Mission Moving Mountains joined with the Navigators and many of those folks have gone to live in Colorado Springs, and that’s where the ministry is located now. Todd decided what he wanted to do and he is working with Daystar now, another group we support and work with; and they are the university we support in Kenya. If you came to the picnic a few weeks ago, their choir sang for us and you remember how wonderful that was. So Todd is going to bring the word to us today. He has given me the privilege of reading the scripture which, on first sight, it may surprise you that it is a missionary text; but indeed it is. Early on God demonstrates that He is a missionary God. God began sending people into the world, into strange lands, a long time ago. Another thing is you shouldn’t worry about how old you are if you think about missionary work. Abraham was seventy-five as you will hear. Now he may have been a very vigorous seventy-five, but as we have someone in our midst who is ninety-seven and quite vigorous, we can be missionaries where we are and in whatever we do. Don’t think that it’s over for you. There is no such thing as retirement. Well I’m not here to preach today. I’m tempted, but I’m not going to. But just listen. Sometimes we don’t listen to the word, but listen to the little details in this story. A man called from where he’s comfortable, to a place where he is very uncomfortable. A man called, probably living in a pretty good-sized house, everything is pretty well settled, at least a settled place. He goes and he’s a wanderer at a very old age, and yet He becomes a blessing which is still being shown into our land. We are children of Abraham. We’ll leave that to Todd. Hear the word of God as it comes to us from Genesis, Chapter 12.

Genesis 12:1-5

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go, go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families in the earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram went, as the Lord told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai, and his brother’s son, Lot, and all the possessions they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan.

When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place of Sheckem to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, you are not one to stay in one place. You have sent your servants throughout the ages; and you have demonstrated to us that you are a God of missions, a missionary God, by yourself becoming a human being, and becoming one of us. We thank you for Jesus, our Savior. Now Lord, I ask that you would bless the words that Todd brings, bless him as the bringer; bless us as the hearers. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I remember when I was five years old and I first learned the song, “This Little Light of Mine,” and held my little finger and watched it and wondered if it was going to light up. But you know, for eight years I had the joy of taking that light, the light of Jesus, to Tanzania, East Africa, and I never thought I’d be a missionary. So you kids who just learned that song, you never know where God is going to lead you to sing that. For me, I remember biking out to a village in Tanzania and talking about Jesus and it was the first time they had ever heard that name. I opened up the bible; they never had seen a bible. I said, “I’d like to share something with you from the word of God.” One man said to me, “Wait just a moment.” I thought, “Oh, no. Here I have offended him. My early days as a missionary, I’ve just offended him.” And he said, “Please wait. There are many of my neighbors who have never heard the word of God. I want to invite them to listen as well.” He gathered up his neighbors as I shared with them the first time they had ever heard anything from the bible.

But you know, twenty years ago was the turning point in my life. The word of God spoke to me in a powerful way. I was in Eugene, Oregon and I was sipping a cup of good coffee and eating a day old muffin and I opened up the bible and I was reading this text from Genesis 12. I was learning about the heart of God. As I read, and as I read people who wrote about missions, I realized that God’s heart is for the families of the earth, for the peoples of the earth. You know, in Genesis it starts out and in Revelation, chapter 7 verse 9 it says, “Then there were people from every tribe and tongue and nation standing at the throne and praising God, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God.” And this will be done in one loud voice. Can you imagine what that will be like? There will not be a need for any microphones, the acoustics will be perfect; and there will be people of every language speaking in one voice. It will be the perfect choir and they will be singing praises to our God. But there is a lot between Genesis and Revelation, and the God who wrote the entire word sent Jesus to be the Good News. When I was reading about this and learning about missions, I had much to pray about because I had taken a short term mission to Thailand and I was teaching English and sharing some about the gospel with some Thai men and women. It was a great experience. I came home back to Minneapolis and I was praying for missionaries in Thailand. You know what? Praying for missionaries is dangerous, because God may actually say, “You know what? It’s time for you to go.” Or, “I want you to be a sender like you have never been before.” And as I was praying for these missionaries, I realized that on this team of short-term mission’ friends that went with me, one of them was looking at full-time missions and had a brochure on Mission Moving Mountains. He said, “Look, they put together teams of missionaries based on their professional backgrounds. They’re looking for an engineer, a doctor, someone in public health, someone who has studied theology, adult education.” I was sitting around a table with five of my friends; and around the table was an engineer, a public health person, a doctor, someone in adult education and theology. We just looked at each other and said, “Could God be sending us together?” So as I was sitting with my cup of coffee and my day old muffin, I was praying, “Lord, are you sending me, a little boy who grew up in Iowa, who learned ‘This Little Light of Mine?’ Do you want me to go to East Africa and be a missionary?” As I read, and as I prayed, I ended up saying, “God you love me. God you love me.” You see, I was hearing the heartbeat of God, and an embrace from God. You know, that’s when you hear the heartbeat the best of another person. It’s when you hold on to them, you feel their heart, you hear their heartbeat; and in that moment I said, “Lord, you love me. I hear your heartbeat and it is for the families of the earth.”

So I want you to listen to God’s heart with me. I want you to listen to three heartbeats. The first one is Go/Send, Go/Send, Go/Send. The second is Bless/Curse, Bless/Curse. And the third is Joy/Pain, Joy/Pain. These three heartbeats are the heartbeat of our God.

You know, Abram was told to “Go.” If you look at the text with me, Genesis, chapter 12, verses 1-5, “The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.’ ” What’s important there is, who is saying this? “And the Lord said,” it is God that said “Go.” It is not parents, it is not your church, it is not your pastor, it is not the other children with you, when God says “Go” that is most important. Secondly, God is saying to Abram, “I want you to go, but I want you to leave.” This is the hard part. You know to “go” in missions is one thing; but to say “I want you to leave your family and your church and your parents and your friends and your Sunday afternoon football and your Christmas music and your shopping and your warm car and all of these things, God is saying, “Leave them.” That’s when missionary life gets hard, when you realize the romance of “Go,” the adventure of “Go,” has this other part of “Leave.” That’s where sender’s come in, is that the beauty of going is that there are senders. Number one, God is the sender; but secondly it is other people around that play a critical role. If you look at this story with Abram, who are the senders? I love this because Abram left with the people who were around him; with his family, with his friends, with Sarai, his wife, all his possessions. He took a lot with him, and he left. These people were sending with him, they were encouraging him. But leaving can be very difficult because in this day and age we don’t take everything with us; but to take the Lord God who is the caller, that is a critical part. You know, going and sending require faith; and God will accomplish His promises. If you look at this text, look at the number of times the word will is said. It says, “I will take you to the land I will show you.” Verse 2, “I will make you into a great nation.” “I will bless you.” “I will make your name great.” Verse 3, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.” All of these statements of “I will.” God is at the heart of this and He is making a lot of promises. So the question is, did Abram trust God, that He would keep His promises? If you look at verse 4, you get the answer to that and it says, “So Abram left.” You know, you can say you believe in God; but if you can show by your actions, that you really believe in the promises of God – Abram left, he showed this in his life.

So that’s a question for us, do we believe God? Are we showing that with our life? Are we showing that with the way we live? So leaving and trusting God in the promises, but you know what? There are still out there six thousand peoples who have never heard the words of the gospel – and that’s about 2.5 billion people, most of those are living in poverty – still who have not heard, who have never seen the bible opened, who have never heard the gospel explained to them. There are six thousand people groups waiting, even in this age of technology. There are so many people groups who have never heard the good news of Jesus. So what are our choices? We see in this text, to go. We know that God brings up others around us to be senders; so going and sending, and the third choice is to miss the opportunity of joy and blessing. But you know what, this going and sending is a great combination together. One of the things I like about this text is that there is going and sending and for many of us, we have seen in the United States, there is a growing trend of short-term missions. How many have been on a short-term mission outside the United States, in this church? O.K. Quite a few. That number is increasing every year and as people go and come back to their church, the question is, how has this impacted our lives in being senders? Things like to listen, to write to missionaries, to read about what is happening in the world, to encourage, we can really make a difference when we come back. This a joy of when I was a missionary overseas, I remember reading letters from my aunt Marilyn. She would write to me every week and inside her cards were two sticks of gum from the United States, wrapped in Saran Wrap. I would chew that gum and read a letter from my aunt Marilyn. That was such a blessing to me. The way that we send can really encourage and bless the nations. One of these things in this text was very difficult for me to study and to think about; and, that is, if you look at verse 3, God says, “I will bless those that bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse.” You know as Americans we love that part that says, “Alright, our God loves to give blessings, “I will bless those who you bless,” so if you are involved in missions, and you really encourage the nations and bless people, then God will bless you. But what is this cursing thing? What’s God up to with that? The reality is that there are many parts of the world where sharing the gospel puts our life at risk. I remember going into an area where cursing was real. People wore charms. They would visit a witch doctor and bury certain things around their homes to protect them from being cursed, and there were people that did not like that we were there. I remember sitting one day with a man underneath a mango tree and it was time for their home to be turned into a bar. They were making some homemade beer and around a corner walked a woman with all kinds of jangling charms; and when she saw me, she just stopped and stared at me. I realized that I was a threat to her business, to her livelihood and to the spirits that she served. The reality is that there is a spiritual warfare in missions and there is blessing and there is cursing. But you know what? Who does the cursing here? If you look at that text it says, “I will curse.” God doesn’t leave the cursing to us. God is the one who judges and He can handle those issues without us feeling like we have to curse others. We can be involved in the blessing and let God curse those who want to curse us. God will handle that perfectly but it is part of the promise.

As we look at the blessing of going and sending, I have an opportunity to thank you as a church for supporting Mission Moving Mountains over the years and Daystar University; and when our singing group, Afrizo, was here, I know they stayed with people here at this church in their homes. And to be a sending church who welcomes people from around the world into your homes, that is a beautiful sign of a church that has a sending heart. So thank you for your support. But as we look at blessing the families of the world, we realize that there are many parts of the world where there are struggles. When I was at Daystar University this past year, I realized that when you look at the heartbeat of God, and the bless and the curse, there are many parts of the world that have many struggles. Yes, we have problems in our country as well, but we also have great resources. God has blessed this country. When we look around the nations, we realize that there are many people who have not yet heard the gospel; or there are many people who struggle with civil war and issues where people are losing their lives when they are trying to be faithful. One day I was at Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya, and I was walking up the stairs. The university has 2700 students and there are majors of all kinds, similar to Bethel or Wheaton College, which were two of the instrumental colleges that helped form Daystar. Of the 2700 students, I was following a man walking up the steps who was limping. So I asked him, “How’s it going?” We were talking a while and I was able to ask him about his limp. He said, “Well, I’m from the country of Rwanda and, as you know, several years ago there was an awful genocide between the Hutus and the Tutsis. These two tribes went at warfare for a long time killing thousands and thousands, even millions.” He said, “The opposing tribe killed my aunt and my uncle and two of my brothers and burned my house down and beat me so much that my leg will never be the same.” I listened to his story and I said, “What are your plans?” He said, “I’m studying peace and reconciliation at Daystar University, and I am going to go back and rebuild my country and reach out in the love of Jesus to the opposing tribe that killed my aunt and my uncle and my two brothers and burned down my house and even gave me this injury.” The power of the gospel is real; and even those places that struggle with the blessing and the cursing, there is a realness there that God is at work.

When I was in Nairobi this past summer, I had a chance to teach in the Christian ministries training program at Daystar. I was teaching this group of students and one of them said, “Come to the slum of Kibera with me.” How many people have had a chance to be in Nairobi? Well, there’s a few in here. O.K. Kibera slum is the second largest slum in the world, 1.4 million people, second only to the slum in South Africa. 1.4 million people live in little cardboard and metal shacks in very close quarters. When it rains it is just awful to walk through the mudded patches of this area. The rate of AIDS is about 25%. One out of four young people that I would pass have AIDS. So in this awful environment, here comes a woman who is a graduate of Daystar University who said, “I want to make a difference.” She had worked with twenty women who had lost spouses due to AIDS and many of them had AIDS themselves because they were infected by their husbands. They had come together to learn how to make soap. They were going to sell this soap in the slums. So I visited them and I came to speak with them and I thought this was going to be a hard day, and when I arrived, you know the first thing they did? They stood up and sang. They sang praises to God and danced for me and my wife, Tamara. They performed with joy on their faces, because to them, Jesus is real. Even in the face of tragedy, even in this mixture of blessing and the curse of sin and disease that is still part of their life, there was joy. This woman was making a difference by teaching them practical skills but watching them grow in their faith.

What a joy it is to know that God is at work in the nations, but you know, missionary life is one where there is a roller coaster of ups and downs. This is the last heartbeat. It is Joy/Pain, Joy/Pain. That heartbeat of God knows that the world of missions is filled with joy and pain. Our example is Jesus, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross; and there is a combination there that is real for anyone who will say, “I’ll go” or “I’ll be a sender.” When I was in Tanzania, I saw that. There were times of laughter and tears. I remember being a language learner and struggling with the Swahili language and then I learned a tribal language, the Sukuma language. It was a special day, because it was my wife’s birthday; so I went to the local carpentry shop to buy her a special platter, a nice wooden platter. They had a man there who could design and carve out little flowers. So I asked him, “Would you please put flowers all over the handles?” The word for flowers in Swahili is maua. “Would you please put maua all over the handles?” You know, I said mafua instead of maua. You know, that’s very close, for those of us studying. “Would you please put mafua all over the handles?” He gave me this funny look and he was holding back laughter. As I walked around and looked at things there was laughter following me around; and what I said to him, instead of saying, “I would like ‘flowers’ all over the handles,” I told him, “Please, I would like ‘snot’ all over the handles.”

Some of the funny humor comes from being in a place where Lord I am willing to serve, even if it means I’m going to be humbled. Another day I was saying goodbye to some friends. I was going to take a trip to Nairobi from Tanzania, so it is appropriate to say goodbye before you leave on a trip. So I stopped by and said “Tomorrow I’m going on a trip and I’ll come by and say goodbye to you.” I got that look again. What I wanted to say was “Tomorrow I’m going to cu aga to say aga” and aga is goodbye; but I said ‘oga,’ one vowel difference. I said it at three homes. “That I am going to come by tomorrow and oga with you.” I came home and I said, “Tamara, did I say something, what did I say there?” She said, “Well basically you told them that tomorrow you are going to stop by and not say ‘goodbye’ to them; tomorrow you are going to stop by and ‘bathe’ with them.” So the next day and I had to go to all these homes and one man had a bar of soap waiting for me.

You know there are many good reasons for laughter in the missionary life, but there are also many hard times, many times of tears. One that is just so much in my mind still is that about half the children in developing countries like Tanzania die before the age of five because of preventable diseases. I attended lots of funerals for children. I’d had never known a child who died in my family back here in the U.S. I went to a funeral of a little one year old boy and I asked if I could take a picture. They said “Oh would you please, because if we could have a copy that would be wonderful. That would be the only picture we have of our child.” A year old, died of a preventable disease, and the only picture this family will have is on the day of his funeral. It’s hard. It’s so hard. I would have never have pictured these kind of stories and yet God is calling us. Will we go to people who need Jesus? And will we send, will we send people who need to go?

You know for the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross. I did have the joy of being this little light to children like Salu. Salu was a ten year old boy who sat outside my door in Tanzania many, many mornings. He wouldn’t knock at my door or announce his presence, he would just sit. I would come out and “Oh, Salu.” But he would sit on the cement and I would invite him to one of my little porch chairs and say “Sit down here. How are you doing? How’s it going?” And Salu was very thin. Salu was dying of AIDS. He was infected from his mother at birth. His mother had died, his father had died, his two older brothers had died. He was the last one, living with his grandmother. Salu would come by and I would pray with him; I’d share the scriptures with him. He knew how to read, so I gave him a Swahili bible to read. We’d talk and I’d give him some food and my wife visited his grandmother’s home to see how he’s doing. Salu came to faith in Jesus. That’s the beauty of that story. He died at age 12 before he could be a light to others.

The reality of life in the world is that there are so many needs and we in America have been so blessed. How do we go and send in a way that honors God? Well the heartbeat of God is for missions. So the question is first of all, not is God still calling people, and still using imperfect people like us to be senders? Well the answer to both of those is yes. The question is, are we listening? Are we listening to the heart of God? To listen to God’s heart you need to draw near to him. If you draw near to God, He will draw near to you. You will hear his heartbeat when you embrace; and God loves it when you come to him as His child and say “God, I want to hear your heartbeat. I want to know you more.” If you draw near to God like that, He will draw near to you. You know, the question of, is there still a need? Is there still a need? Is there a way for people? When I was in Tanzania I would share different stories about Minnesota. I grew up in Iowa and lived in Minnesota for ten years before I went into the mission field. I would tell some stories about Minnesota. One of the favorites that the Tanzanians loved to hear was about ice fishing, because for them many of them had never touched ice, let alone seen a lake that was frozen over. I’d say “Oh yeah, let me show you a picture.” I’d show a picture of me going out walking on the lake when it’s frozen. They’d say “You didn’t walk on that.” I said “Sure I did, yeah, it gets three feet think and you walk out there; in fact, people drive out there.” “No!” “Yes, they do. They drive their vehicles out there. In fact when it is really cold you can fish from a pick up truck and it’s a lot warmer.” Then I said, “There was a man I know who just bought a brand new red Ford 150 pickup and drove out on a new lake he hadn’t been on very often. He drove out there; and, as he was fishing, he heard a crack, and then a big crack; then he shut his door just in time as his truck fell into the water. It was 25 feet deep there and his truck went down, down, down, all the way to the bottom where it was dark. He sat there. You know, there are different times when prayer becomes important and this man was praying. As he was praying, he heard the water gurgling, filling up the engine, starting to come around his feet. He started to panic a little bit. Inside his pickup truck was a bag of garbage that he was going to put out but he forgot. He dumped out the garbage and filled the black trash bag full of air, kicked out the window, put the trash bag into the rushing water; and that bag helped him float directly straight up so he got out the hole where his truck fell in and he lived. As he tells that story you never hear him complain that it was a bag of garbage that saved him. What he says is that there was a way; there was a way and I thank God for that way.” Some people stumble when they hear the gospel because Jesus died on a cross; it was painful, it was bloody and it was…. Is that the only way? But you know, it’s not a question of was it the only way, although it was; but there is a way. There is a way that our sins can be forgiven, that we can receive Jesus as our Savior, and there is a way to be saved. There are many peoples in the world who still need to hear the news that Jesus died on the cross and provided them with a way. So the question is for us, are we ready? Are we ready to listen to God and to be goers and senders in a way that honors God?

Let’s pray.

Lord God, you have made a way by sending your son Jesus and you use imperfect people like Abram, like us, to go and to send. I pray Lord that you would bless this church with great joy as they go and send in faithfulness to you. Thank you Lord for your presence here, and if there is someone Lord you are speaking to in a powerful way, that perhaps Lord you are calling a person to go for the first time to be a missionary, make it happen today Lord that they would talk to me or another pastor in this church. Lord that you would bless them, that they would go and be one of those taking the light where the light is needed; and Lord, if you are calling one to be a sender like they’ve never sent before, encourage them with the way they could do that. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.