by Emerging Grace

I have a confession. Missional is one of my favorite words. I like it so much because it represents the missio dei, the mission of God, and the mission of God includes all of my other favorite words - redemption, reconciliation, restoration, kingdom, shalom, wholeness, rest, and peace. The story of God and the gospel is interwoven with the beauty of these ideas.

While we often view missional in evangelistic or apostolic terms, there is also a pastoral aspect to missional. This pastoral aspect is the expansion of God's rule and reign in individual lives.

Understanding this aspect of missional affects evangelism because rather than offering salvation as a free pass from hell, we offer to people the freedom and peace that is available through Christ, introducing them to the kingdom now, to the rule and reign of God in their life.

Long-time believers sometimes forget the despair and hopelessness that people live with, and that, unbeknownst to them, they are living under a tyrannical rule - a rule that has produced bondage and broken lives. They need more than the promise of heaven, they need hope for this life, to be healed and set free.

Believers themselves often do not apprehend the wholeness that is available as an ongoing work of salvation and restoration in their lives. We live with crippled areas of our hearts that could be healed and besetting sins that we could be delivered from, either because we do not know that there is greater grace available to us, or we are afraid to trust the broken areas of our lives to the Father.

God has a big-picture plan for the reconciliation of all of creation. However, in the midst of that, there is also a very real plan for our personal healing and deliverance. Healing and deliverance is a part of our ongoing salvation, of being restored to the wholeness that God intended for us.

This understanding of the narrative story of God and his qualitative reign in our individual lives also influences who we are as a community. As we establish our individual stories in the kingdom of God, it shapes our identity as a community, as the people of God living out shalom.

Some time ago, my lens for reading and understanding scripture changed. No longer do I see or hear God's words through a lens of sin, failure, judgment, and punishment.

I began to see the story of His incredible, unfailing love. I also began to truly believe what He said repeatedly about Himself - He is "a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness."

He took care of sin. He had a plan for forgiveness, and it wasn't a plan of shame and punishment. It was a plan of restoration, love, and deliverance.

"God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

"God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them." 2Cor. 5:19

Sin is a symptom of our brokenness. It is an area of our lives that is contaminated by evil. Our view of God affects how we handle sin. If our picture is of a God who is angry and disgusted with us, we react in shame.

When we understand that God is on our side, that He came up with the plan for us to be free, and that, more than anything, He wants us to be free; we come to a place of trusting Him and of accepting His help and power to become free.

In my experience as a charismatic, I have seen some pretty bizarre things in the area of deliverance. However, in the midst of the messiness and hype, I also saw people experience genuine healing and freedom.

I would like to see inner healing and deliverance removed from the realm of the weird and wacky and brought to a place of normal transformational experience in the life of believers.

There is a supernatural experience of healing and deliverance available to all of us. The end result of our healing and deliverance is shalom - the wholeness and completeness that God desires for us, and Sabbath - a place of rest from our striving.

Sabbath is so much more than a time of idleness. Sabbath is a place of rest, where we cease from our striving and remember that our rest is found in the Lord. It is remembering that we were slaves and that the Lord delivered us with His mighty hand.

Hebrews 4 says, "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work...Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest."

This place of wholeness and rest in our lives is something we should pursue.

"For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account."

Our hearts are bare before Him, yet unafraid, because our trust and hope is in Him to do the spiritual surgery necessary to heal our brokenness.

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."

Let us pursue the Lord with trust and confidence to deal with the areas of sin in our lives. We can partner with Him in finding the freedom we desperately desire.

As we pursue a missional life, let us remember that we are ministers of reconciliation, Christ's ambassadors preaching the message of the kingdom - a message of healing, life, cleansing, and freedom.

"As you go, preach this message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give." Matthew 10:7-8