What are you afraid of?
“I looked and before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” (Rev 7:9)
Cultural-Christian, did you know that you don’t have exclusive rights to God?
American, did you know that God loves and desires good for other countries and cultures just as much as he does for yours?
Redeemed, did you know that Jesus is not only your savior, but also your commander?
The same God who pays out sin-debt and calls us to walk in his freedom is the same God who created the earth and everyone in it. Did you know that at one point, everyone on earth spoke the same language and had the same culture? And did you know that God was the one who decided to make us ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse? (Gen 11)
Had God wanted us to all be white, American, middle-class, English-speaking Christianeez republicans, he would have made it that way.
Do you think he’s not powerful enough to do that if he wanted to? He designed mountains, and protoplasm, and galaxies.
God’s vision and his mission are not that narrow.
His mission is to have the most beautiful, diverse array of worshippers who openly realize that he is the best hope they could never dream of…to have a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-lingual array of people so desperately in love with who he is and what he has done.
Do you and God want the same thing?
Or did you have a different vision?
To aspire to any other vision besides the restored, redeemed, gospel-driven, Jesus-centered universe is to say that God’s vision isn’t good enough and you’ve got a better one. That’s treason of the highest form; you make yourself God and assault his throne with the broken thoughts of your mind.
But if you can see the big, bold, beautiful vision of the Creator and Master of all things, and if you can embrace his mission to redeem and restore and find your place in it, you can live the truly abundant life that the Savior and Commander calls his followers to.
Lift your eyes.