The Goal

Made For : an audio journey

When you hear the story of the prodigal son, who do you see yourself as? Are you the wayward son who runs away from the father? Are you the father? Or are you the brother who stays behind? Most of us tend to see ourselves as the wayward son, the one who gets welcomed back by the father with open arms. And for those of us who came to faith later in life, after trying out our own path, that may have been true. But what about now? If you're not the wayward son anymore, and you're not the father, maybe you, maybe we are the other son.

Full Transcript below, or at missiongap.org/podcasts

'Made for' CONTRIBUTORS:

• Andrew Scott – From Ireland, living in the USA. Serves as President of OM in the US, and author of “Scatter: Go Therefore and Take Your Job With You”
• Belén Peters – From Chile, living in the USA. Serves as Career Advisor with Elevalto, career advisors for Jesus followers looking to take their life and skills to another part of the world.
• Decio De Carvalho – From Brazil, living in Puerto Rico. Serves as Executive Director of COMIBAM, an alliance of national mission groups across twenty-five Ibero-American countries.
• Ewout van Oosten – From the Netherlands, living in the Netherlands. Serves as Global Director of TeenStreet, a youth discipleship movement in over 50 countries.
• Glenn Packiam – From Malaysia, living in the USA. Serves as Associate Senior Pastor of New Live Church, and author of “Blessed Broken Given: How Your Story Becomes Sacred in the Hands of Jesus”
• Jessica Shumba – From Zimbabwe, living in Zimbabwe. Serves as National Director of OM in Zimbabwe, mobilising Zimbabwean Jesus followers to share Gods love.
• Katherine Lee – From the USA, living in the USA. Serves as Content and Creative Director for the Fuller Leadership Platform at Fuller Theological Seminary.
• Lawrence Tong – From Singapore, living in Singapore. Serves as International Director of OM, a global community of Jesus followers, united to share God’s love with those who don’t know it.
• Vaibhav – From India, living in India. Serves among people unreached with the love of Christ, focusing on the Tribals, the rag pickers, farmers and migrant workers. (Last name omitted for security)

Bible readings: Mason Peters, Mariela Morbelli, Carla Moran, Matt Tooker, Anthea Godsmark, Philip Godsmark

Hosted by: Geoff Peters - Geoff is a huge fan of coffee and market research, but what really gets his heart pounding is inspiring people to share God’s love with the world. He is a deep thinker driven to understand the fears, concerns, beliefs and motivations of Christians better. Through the Mission Gap Project, Geoff hopes to encourage believers to step beyond the safety of their comfort zones and love others for Christ.

Transcript: Series two, episode two. The goal.

Reader 2:

Luke 15:25-32. Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, "Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound."

Reader 2:

But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, "Look, these many years, I have served you and I never disobeyed your command. Yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him."

Reader 2:

And he said to him, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad for this your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found."

Geoff:

When you hear the story of the prodigal son, who do you see yourself as? Are you the wayward son who runs away from the father? Are you the father? Or are you the brother who stays behind? Most of us tend to see ourselves as the wayward son, the one who gets welcomed back by the father with open arms.

Geoff:

And for those of us who came to faith later in life, after trying out our own path, that may have been true. But what about now? If you're not the wayward son anymore, and you're not the father, maybe you, maybe we are the other son. Here's Glenn.

Glenn:

It comes from understanding the heart of the father. It comes from understanding the heart of the father and recognizing our own condition. Where would we be, if not for Jesus? And the well-known story from Luke 15 of the prodigal son, it comes in a series of three stories Luke tells, right?

Glenn:

There's a lost sheep, one out of a hundred, then the woman with the lost coin, that's one out of 10, if you're doing the math, that goes from 1% to 10%. And then there's the story of two sons, and you think, well, 50%, what are the odds that I'm lost, 50% now? You're getting a little sweaty under the collar wondering if it's you.

Glenn:

But by the time you get to the end of the story you recognize, the father leaves the house for both sons. He leaves the house to greet the prodigal on his way home, but he leaves the house to persuade the older brother to come in. And so maybe as Christians, we're the older brother, but we have to understand the heart of the father is for everyone to come in, everyone to come into the house.

Glenn:

And the older brother keeps saying to the father, "This son of yours," and the father's response is, "This brother of yours." And so, maybe what you're saying is there are people in the world that we have not yet learned to think of as brothers and sisters, but the father does, the father dreams of that. The father sees it as, this is your long lost brother and sister, I made them in my image and my dream is to bring them back into the house.

Geoff:

Let's hear from Ewout next. He's describing, coming to know Christ at 21 years old and discovering God's heart for others.

Ewout:

I'm a late follower. So, I didn't start following Jesus until I was 21. I wasn't raised with the mission of God. I wasn't even raised with what it means to be a follower of Christ. So, to suddenly find out God's heart for me, made me very optimistic, enthusiastic about God's heart for others. I came from a place of deep depression, I was suicidal, and God pulled me out of that. He made me very optimistic about other people's opportunities of getting to know Jesus, regardless how anti or how little they would know about God.

Reader 3:

Isaiah, chapter 61, verses one through three. "The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

Reader 3:

To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God. To comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion. To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of the spirit of despair."

Reader 4:

I grew up in a tiny village, in a very small village where medical missionary from USA had started the medical mission.

Geoff:

This is Vaibhav. He lives and serves in India. He grew up there witnessing missionary work all around him. Seeing people acting out their heart for others. Here's the story of his salvation and how the Lord captured his heart for others.

Vaibhav:

In the caste system, as a family, belong to lowest part of the caste system, which is called dalit. And dalit, if you study the caste system, you can find out that dalit doesn't even have a place in the entire system. I belong to that people group.

Vaibhav:

And we did not have any identity. From dalit people considered them as untouchables, as well as they are considered as subhuman in some part of India. So, when I understood about this Jesus, what was really appealing to me was of course, Jesus gives salvation, he liberates us, and he washes my sins.

Vaibhav:

But then in him, I get this whole new identity. I was praying after that, "Lord, what is next? I have accepted you as my personal savior, I've got this whole new identity, brand new life, now what is next? What do you want me to do?" And then since that time in that very year, I still remember, I was praying one night and the Lord captured my heart, and he clearly called me out for his mission.

Vaibhav:

And since then, my focus that night, the Lord burdened me to work among the different people groups in India. India consists of different people groups. And that day, that night Lord burden me for different people groups in India. And I started serving the unreached people groups of India.

Vaibhav:

As we all know that the India's total population is 1.3 billion, out of each roughly five to seven percent people are followers of Christ. But that also draws our attention, to the need of the gospel for 93% people in India. And God's heart breaks for these major chunk of people.

Geoff:

Let's go back to Ewout. He and his wife Ali, started a community in the Netherlands called Taste. This community is the result of a desire to live out the love of Jesus that they had come to know in a very practical and local way. Here's Ewout.

Ewout:

I think my marriage actually played a big role in that, so let me just start there. So, I married Ali 11 years ago. And she moved from the U.S. to the Netherlands and I lived in a small apartment, in a high rise. And I don't know in any other countries, but these high rises, there's this culture of being anonymous.

Ewout:

People in the same hallway, you'd stand in the elevator and there's no real connection. And I just sort of joined that culture as I lived there. But then my wife moved in, she was like, "Hey, I want to get to know the neighbours," and I was like, "Ah, man, we don't do that here." And she was like, "Yeah, let's give it a shot".

Ewout:

Somehow, we started to connect with them through just simple things as share a meal, invite them over. Slightly awkward in the beginning but then you get to know each other's names, things that happen in each other's lives. The other thing is that as we were reading scripture, and me coming from a very individualistic culture, we're like, but the scripture rarely talks to the individual.

Ewout:

It's taught to us like that often in church, hey [inaudible 00:09:53] I,I,I, but just the norm in the Bible is being written to a group, to a collective, to a community. And that community picks up the encouragements, the commandments, et cetera. So you do that as a group, which is a very different way of thinking.

Ewout:

So, yeah, we got all the people enthusiastic for that and bought a building in our neighbourhoods, and started the initial community. It's called Taste, based on a verse in the Psalms, "Taste and see that God is good."

Ewout:

We also realize to not just do it for them but really with them. So, we're involving people in the neighbourhoods in our activities and make them as responsible for it as we are. So, it's really a together thing, and then we reach about 70 to 100 people a week with our community.

Geoff:

You've been listening to the Made For podcast series. Part of the Mission Gap project from operation mobilization, with me, Geoff. To find out more, go to missiongap.org. And if you would, please rate this podcast in your app store and leave a comment so others can more easily find this series. In the next episode.