Do you have a heart for evangelism? Does the adventure and sacrifice of cross-cultural missions drive your desire to move overseas? In this video, Pastor David Platt explains that Jesus, not missions, should be the all-consuming passion in the life of the believer. People often are drawn to missions because of the adventure and sacrifice that they can experience. While missions are a worthy aim, Pastor Platt explains that it should not be our ultimate goal. Instead, a heart for missions should spring from a heart for Jesus.
- All-Consuming Passions
- Adventure vs. Jesus
- Making Him Known
Watch Full Message of Revelation: The Urgency of Eternity
The Problem with Manufacturing a Heart for Missions
Exhort you, pursue Jesus as the all-consuming passion of your life. And I phrased that very intentionally because I am not, and I don’t believe the Bible is, exhorting you to pursue missions as the all-consuming passion of your life.
This is so important. The most important question I could ask you today is not whether you’re going to be a cinder or a goer. The far more important, the far more fundamental question is, does your heart beat for Jesus? Do you love Jesus? Do you want, more than anyone or anything else, do you want Jesus? A heart for missions, a heart for the nations, springs from a heart for Jesus.
And the last thing I, we want for this conference is to spend three days leading people to manufacture a heart for missions while we miss a heart for Christ. Don’t manufacture a heart for missions and miss a heart for Jesus. Some might say a missions charged sermon like this should be filled with missions stories, not 48 points from the Bible about Jesus. But here’s why I went the 48 points route.
Pursue a Heart for Christ First
Because if I had just told stories of adventure and sacrifice, then you might be tempted to care more about adventure than Jesus. In a weird way, you, I even might, be tempted to care more about the idea of sacrifice than the one who sacrificed for you. So I ask you, right where you’re sitting right now. Does your heart right now beat for Jesus?
I exhort you to pursue him as the all-consuming passion of your life. More than any guy, more than any girl, more than anyone, anything more than money, more than comfort, more than safety, more than success, more than position. We could go on and on more than anything, count all things lost compared to the surpassing grace of knowing Jesus Christ.
And then as you do that, as you pursue him, then exhortation number two, spend your life for the fame of His name, where he is not yet known. Spend your life for the fame of Jesus name, where he is not yet known. We have seen it in scripture. Nobody’s making up anything. It’s in the Bible. The end of all history is the exaltation of Jesus’ name among the nations. That is where all of history is headed. So I ask every person in this room, then, how is your life going to be spent toward that end? How is your life going to be spent for the fame of Jesus name, where he is not yet known?
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
