I just finished reading John Piper’s book Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ: The Cost of Bringing the Gospel to the Nations in the Lives of William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton. Great book. I’ve been thinking deeply about the role of suffering in the propagation of the gospel since I first listened to a Piper sermon in 2007 called Doing Missions When Dying Is Gain. If you haven’t listened to this Piper sermon, get on over to the Desiring God website and listen. It’s free. You can listen online or download to your favorite MP3 device.

Speaking of free, you can download Piper’s book for free too. How sweet is that? So if you’d rather burn 128 pages in your printer, you can print your own copy. Or do what I did. I recently purchased an Amazon Kindle 2 (I’ll write about that sometime). I converted the book into Amazon’s Kindle format and read the PDF on my Kindle. It’s not as clean as a true Kindle book, but it worked fine and God stirred my soul at a deep level.

Some of Piper’s thoughts that I can’t get over:

I am saying that this suffering is part of God’s strategy for making known to the world who Christ is, how he loves, and how much he is worth.

… this voluntary suffering and death to save others is not only the content but it is also the method of our mission.

“… Christ’s suffering is for propitiation; our suffering is for propagation.”

[Colossians 1:24] is one of the most important verses explaining the thesis of this book—that missionary sufferings are a strategic part of God’s plan to reach the nations.

In his sufferings Paul is “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for . . . the church.” What does that mean? It means that Paul’s sufferings fill up Christ’s afflictions not by adding anything to their worth, but by extending them to the people they were meant to save.

So the afflictions of Christ are “lacking” in the sense that they are not seen and known and loved among the nations. They must be carried by missionaries. And those missionaries “complete” what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ by extending them to others.

God intends for the afflictions of Christ to be presented to the world through the afflictions of his people.

Paul’s missionary suffering is God’s design to complete the sufferings of Christ, by making them more visible and personal and precious to those for whom he died.

And these thoughts are just from Piper’s introductory teaching. His exposing the lives of William Tyndale, John Paton, and Adironam Judson and they way they lived out the sufferings of Christ so that “‘the gospel of the glory of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4:4) spread to all the peoples of the world and take root in God-centered, Christ-exalting churches.” Piper calls this “The invincible purpose of God in history.”

So get on over to Amazon and buy the book. Or get it free from DesiringGod.org. If you need to whet your appetite more, listen to Doing Missions When Dying is Gain. And may we not regard God’s call lightly. It’s why Kay and I are doing what we’ve done for 33 years, but now with greater clarity and purpose than ever before.

Kay and I attended c|life church yesterday. We went primarily to contact several friends who attend there. OK, I know I’m not supposed to go to church for social life, but to worship God, for my spiritual life. I get it. But we’re in the Dallas area to visit with several of our ministry partners. So, see!! We’re supposed to go to church to see people! We are all so busy that Kay and I have found it best to meet our partners during their normal activities.

Last Saturday, I helped a ministry partner/friend lay wood flooring for a few hours. I like doing stuff like that. And Kay and I might be doing that in a year or two. And I got to visit with partners and friends. Worked really well!!!

Back to c|life. Yes, we did get to visit with several friends. So that part worked well. But we had the added bonus of a great worship time, and a powerful message by co-pastor David Griffin. His topic was Jonah and his roundabout trip to Nineveh. His title was Overthrown. His premise was that we need to allow God to overthrow our lives. Jonah allowed himself to be overthrown, over the side of the ship, as part of his repentance from running the wrong way. The king of Nineveh allowed himself and his entire kingdom to be overthrown by righteousness as part of his repentence for running the wrong way.

This morning, driving to a 7 am breakfast appointment with a fantastic ministry partner, I listened to Casting Crowns singing Somewhere in the Middle. It echoes the cry of my heart. It’s about my heart’s desire to see my small plans overthrown by God’s amazing plans.

Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender without losing all control

Fearless warriors in a picket fence,
reckless abandon wrapped in common sense
Deep water faith in the shallow end
and we are caught in the middle

With eyes wide open to the differences,
the God we want and the God who is
But will we trade our dreams for His
or are we caught in the middle

Are we caught in the middle

It reminds me of a couple of posts I wrote before here and here.

The focus was a little different, but pretty similar. Life is messy in the middle. And too often, I make choices that leave me floundering in the middle.

In Lord of the Rings 2 The Two Towers, Sam tells Frodo, “It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really matter. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you don’t want to know the end … because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was with so much bad happening? … I think Mr. Frodo that I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back. Only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something.”

Sometimes I’m a fearless warrior behind a picket fence. I wrap reckless abandon with common sense. I want deep water faith, but I want it in the shallow end where I can touch the bottom every now and then just in case things don’t work out like I thought they would trusting God.

Today, I choose to trade my dreams for today for His dreams for today. I commit to holding on to him and his plans. Today, I commit to making choices outside the middle.

Our small group at church is reading John Ortberg’s Everybody’s Normal ‘Til You Get to Know Them. It’s good!

I just started a copy of P. D. James’ The Children of Men from our local library. I’ve never read P. D. James before. But I was intrigued by Chuck Colson’s comments contrasting the movie (which I have not seen) with the book.