What in the World are you doing for Heaven's sake?

by Roy Ackerle

II Corinthians 12:15
“And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved.”

Jesus warned there would be defeats and victories, losses and crosses,but these setbacks and dangers should not keep His followers from marching forward with the Gospel and invading the hostile territory of the enemy in a pagan world.

It is calculated that the United States has spent a sum equivalent to the trillions of our national debt on nuclear research and weapons, since the beginning of the atomic age. And now we have launched a program of outer space conquest and exploration, whose price tag has been billions, and more billions are yet to be spent in the future.

Not only has the government called for this multibillion-dollar outlay, but it has also called for men and women who would be willing to lay their lives on the line. An expert in the field of astronautics has said that there would be no bargain rates. The fact of the matter is we have lost a reported dozen or so lives in our bid to win the space race; no one knows how many more unreported lives have been lost.

It is fascinating to compare the price tag attached to getting men to heaven. Willingness to pay and to die have always been necessary requisites. Paul did not shrink from this degree of expendability. He wrote, “I will gladly spend (all that I have), and be spent (all that I am) for you,” and he meant it with all his being. Putting men in space is costly, and getting men to heaven is also expensive. Even if the price were higher, we wouldn’t have any reason to complain because, as far as which is more important, there is no contest.

There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of men offering to risk their all that outer space may be inhabited. There shouldn’t be any deficit of dedicated men (or women) willing to hold themselves expendable that heaven may be populated. The term expendability has come to carry a military connotation. It generally means equipment or supplies to be used up or destroyed…most usually men in order to gain an objective.

In the spiritual realm this may seem a high price to pay to get men ready for heaven. But the faultfinders and critics of the cost are not the missionaries who have gone or who are on their way. Neither are the critics the ones who stand behind the missionaries with their support and prayers, and neither are they the nationals to whom the missionary has gone. But these critics are the ones who have never really understood the full meaning of “How shall they preach except they be sent.” (Romans 10:15)

Jesus did not come into this world to Christianize the world. He came to evangelize the world, and that is His command to us. He told us to go into all the world and PREACH the Gospel. It is the Word of God that does the work of God. However, He did tell us that there would be losses and crosses, but He still told us to go. No matter the odds, no matter the opposition, no matter the weather, no matter the living conditions and no matter the stones, the bullets or the spears, His command was still to go, go, go.

The dangers Jesus warned His disciples about were not long in coming: Steven, a layman was stoned to death. James was killed by Herod. Tradition tells us that Peter was crucified upside down. The apostle Paul was decapitated. Thomas, serving as a missionary in India, was thrust through with spears. John was the only apostle who escaped violent death. Tradition tells us that he was cast into a cauldron of boiling oil and escaped by a miracle. After the Roman Emperor’s death, John was released from the prison on the Isle of Patmos and returned to Ephesus where he took care of Mary, Jesus’ mother, until her death.

All of these men held their lives to be expendable when they remembered why and for whom they were dying. Revelation 12:11 says: “They loved not their lives unto the death.”

It was an enigma to the disciples when Jesus began to teach the doctrine of expendability. Privately and patiently He explained that even He must “suffer many things and be killed and raised again the third day.” From their point of view it was unthinkable. The Bible says, “Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke Him (affectionately, no doubt), saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.” (This won’t happen to you.) Jesus saw a Satanic lure in Peter’s words and said, “Get thee behind me Satan: for thou savorest not the things that be of God.” Then He told them they were all expendable to the cause. He said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matt. 16:22-25)

The truth of the matter is, in these days of plush and affluent living, we don’t know too much about this qualification of discipleship.

In the January 1954 issue of the New Tribes Mission magazine “Brown Gold,” there appeared an article with this imaginary scene:

I dreamed that I was in Celestial City - though when and how I got there I could not tell. I was one of a great multitude from all countries and peoples and times and ages. Somehow, I found that the one next to me had been there more than 1800 years.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I was a Roman Christian,” he said, “and I lived in the days of the Apostle Paul. I was one of those who died in Nero’s persecutions. I was covered with pitch and fastened to a stake and set on fire to illuminate the Emperor’s garden.”

“How awful!” I exclaimed.

“No,” he answered, “I was glad to do something for Him who died on the cross for me.”

The man on the other side of me then spoke:

“I have been in heaven only a few hundred years. I came from an island in the South Seas, Eromanga. John Williams, a missionary, came and told me about Jesus and I, too, learned to love Him. My fellow-countrymen killed the missionary, and they caught and bound me. I was beaten until I fainted, and they thought I was dead; but I revived. The next day they cooked and ate me.”

“How terrible,” I said,

“No,” he replied, “I was glad to die as a Christian. You see, the missionary had told me that Jesus was scourged and crowned with thorns for me.”

Then they both turned to me and said,

“What did you suffer for Him? Or did you sell what you had for the money which sent men like John Williams to tell the heathen about the Savior?”

I was speechless. And while they were both looking at me with sorrowful eyes, I awoke. It was a dream!

Losing lives, giving all (for Christ’s sake) - these extremes have always appeared to some as a strange sort of squandermania. Cynics have asked in sarcasm and Christians in sincere bewilderment, “Why this waste?” But letting go of one’s self and being willing to sacrifice both person and possessions counting gain but loss have always been the hallmarks of the true Christian soldier — the man or woman sold out to the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said, I will gladly spend (all that I have) and be spent (all that I am) for the cause of the Gospel. We sing “I Surrender All,” but do we mean it? How much of what we have and what we are, are we willing to put on the line for Christ’s sake?

C. Taylor Smith, missionary to Africa, said, “If I had ten lives, I would gladly lay them down in a white man’s grave, to gain by the grace of God the black man’s resurrection.”

Henry Martyn arrived on the shores of India and kneeling in the sands of the shore cried, “Here let me burn out for God.”

Paul testified to having “suffered the loss of all things,” “having endured all things that others might obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.” (Philippians 3:8; II Timothy 2:10)

If it would have helped, Paul was ready to risk his own soul. “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsman according to the flesh.” (Romans 9:3)

He was willing to endure anything, to go anywhere, to pay any price for the eternal salvation of both Gentile and Jew. The Apostle sank his possessions and his interests in peopling heaven. What in the world are you doing for heaven’s sake? Paul said, “I seek not my own profit, but the profit of many, that they might be saved.” With the next breath he pleaded, “Be ye followers of me.” (I Corinthians 10:33; 11:1)

The record of Paul’s third and final missionary journey is full of touching scenes. At Miletus he called for the elders of the church at Ephesus to come to him. He gave them his emotional farewell address telling them of the hazards that lay ahead, and with tears they could not dissuade him from continuing on.

Paul’s response to the prediction of sudden and violent death has become the watchword of expendability for missionaries of all time.

“None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God.” (Acts 20:24)

This seemed to satisfy his friends. Their good-byes were mingled with tears as they accompanied him to the ship. The resumption of this journey brought him to Tyre. In vain the disciples here tried to warn him. Following him down to the beach, they knelt on the sands and prayed. At Caesarea it was a repetition of the same. Perils were prophesied and the Christians begged him to go no farther. Unyielding, he maintained, “I am ready to die…for the name of the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 21:13)

When Paul wrote that he was “in deaths oft” (II Corinthians 11:23), he was not using poetic license. His “I die daily” (I Corinthians 15:31) was no reference to the constant subjugation of his lower nature as is commonly supposed. Actually he stood in jeopardy every hour, but he testified, “None of these things move me.” (Acts 20:24)

The big issue with him was, “Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.” (Phil. 1:20)

The question is one of commitment. Do we believe that today’s Christians are expendable?

Our generation is being repeatedly stained with martyrs blood. We are prone to soon forget those who have given their lives as martyrs for the cause of Christ – not in the first century only – but also in the last half of this 20th century in widely scattered places like Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Viet Nam, China and Mexico and more recently soldiers of the cross kidnapped in Colombia and Panama. Even today there are those who are hazarding their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only that the world needs more Nate Saints, more Cecil Dyes, more Paul Johnsons, more John and Betty Stams. Nine years before the Stams were martyred by the Chinese communists on December 8, 1934, Betty wrote in the flyleaf of her Bible:

“Lord, I give up my own purposes and plans, and all my desires, hopes and ambitions…and accept Thy will for my life. I give myself, my life, my all, utterly to Thee to be Thine forever…work out Thy will in my life at any cost, now and forever.”

What are you willing to do for Jesus. When He calls you, what will your answer be?