Pure Pleasure: The Motivation For Missions

Another of the “P’s” from the ministry of Jesus that the team and I explored on our recent trip to Colombia was Pleasure. If we want to have a ministry like Jesus ministry then we must have His pleasure. Our motivation for ministry must be our joy, delight, and pleasure in God. Duty will never suffice as a suitable motivation for missions…

Enjoyment empowers effort. Doing is the fruit of delighting. Performance is energized by pleasure. – Sam Storms

I want to elaborate on that thought some more. God was motivated by joy, delight, and pleasure, first in Himself, and then in us…

God’s complete joy in Himself as a Trinity led Him to want to double that joy by extending it beyond Himself to the human beings He created. Likewise, we will want to double our joy by seeing how adequate God is to meet our need – love as we use our resources to perform the greatest service to others – helping them to experience the joy in believing in God’s wonderful promises, guaranteed by the finished work of Christ. – Daniel Fuller

The Father’s pleasure is His people…

Psalm 149:4 For the LORD takes PLEASURE in His people;

He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation.

Therefore He found great pleasure in His plan to draw us back to Him by the sacrifice of His beloved Son…

Isaiah 53:10 But the LORD was PLEASED to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good PLEASURE of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

The Bible says in Hebrews 12:2 that we are to look to Jesus as our example and then it goes on to say that Jesus’ motivation for enduring the cross and despising the shame was the JOY that was set before Him.

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the JOY set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

That joy was redeeming us back to Himself! So the Father’s pleasure and the Son’s pleasure is the redeeming of lost sinners. And He wants us to share in His pleasure by first knowing and loving Him,

Psalm 16:11 You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of JOY; In Your right hand there are PLEASURES forever

Psalm 36:8 They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house; And You give them to drink of the river of Your DELIGHTS.

John 15:11 “These things I have spoken to you so that My JOY may be in you, and that your JOY may be made full.

John 16:24 …so that your JOY may be made full.

John 17:13 “these things I speak in the world so that they may have My JOY made full in themselves.

I bear my testimony that there is no joy to be found in all this world like that of sweet communion with Christ. – C.H. Spurgeon

The most precious truth in the Bible is that God’s greatest interest is to glorify the wealth of His grace by making sinners happy in Him. – John Piper

and second by sharing Him with others. When we are full of Him, His love and joy will naturally spill out on others. I think Joni Eareckson Tada says it so well…

“God happily shares His gladness, His joy comes flooding over heaven’s walls filling my heart in a waterfall of delight, which then in turn always streams out to others in a flood of encouragement, and then erupts back to God in an ecstatic fountain of praise. He gets your heart pumping for heaven. He injects His peace, power, and perspective into your spiritual being. He puts a song in your heart. I want to know God like this! Shove me under the waterfall of the Trinity’s joy, which splashes and spills over heaven’s walls. If He’s always in a good mood, I want to catch it”

But how do we stay under this waterfall? John Piper says it like this…

“Grace is power from God to do good things in us and for us. It is an ever cascading, infinitesimal waterfall. How then do you serve God? You posture yourself, and you maneuver your life, and you devote energy and effort and time and creativity to positioning yourself under the waterfall of God’s continual blessing, so that he remains the source and you remain the empty receiver. You remain the beneficiary, he remains the benefactor; you remain hungry, he remains the bread; you remain thirsty, he remains the water. You find out where the waterfall of grace is falling and you get under it. When it moves, you follow it so that you stay wet. And usually it takes you overseas…”

Our joy in God is magnified and doubled when we share it with others in missions and evangelism…

For all of us it should be unthinkable to keep to ourselves the knowledge that God’s ultimate delight is to do the greatest good for others by letting them share in the supreme joy He has in Himself. How could any of us enjoy heaven unless we mobilized our time, talents and treasure to do our utmost to get the good news to the rest of the world? – Daniel Fuller

Missions is the automatic outflow and overflow of love for Christ. We delight to enlarge our joy in Him by extending it to others. As Lottie Moon said, “Surely there can be no greater joy than that of saving souls.” – John Piper

Missions is the overflow of our delight in God because missions is the overflow of God’s delight in being God. – John Piper

Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within His followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world He came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of His eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards. – J. Campbell White, The Laymen’s Missionary Movement, 1909.

I believe that I have experienced in 28 years of ministry a little taste of joy in God both by knowing Him and by sharing Him with others. I have stood in the pulpit and felt His mantle on my shoulders. I have seen Him do incredible things and I have enjoyed seeing His fingerprints all over my ministry. I have walked through the orphanages and felt His presence so thick I thought I could reach out and touch Him. I have seen Him in a thousand faces. But I want more… so much more…