The Heart of MTW

We will never fully grasp the extent of the sacrifice God made in the gospel without understanding the immensity of the love-bond that existed within the Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—from all eternity.

When Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46c), that was the greatest demonstration of love ever to take place. The Triune God willingly endured such cruel and violent separation for our sakes in the central event of all history, the cross. G.K. Chesterton called this the “furious love of God.” I believe that the hardest thing in the world for human beings to believe is that God loves us this much, enough to endure the break-up of the Trinity, in order that we could be reconciled to Him.

“Love is not just an attribute of God,” wrote Jonathan Edwards. “It is the essence of God. God is love.”

The Christian life begins with the love of God. Throughout his writings the Apostle John was moved to refer to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Kittle’s Bible Dictionary comments that when John got to be an old man all he could write about was the “marvelous monotony of the love of God.” He was stuck on one theme, the 200-proof distillate of the love of God.

We all have a love-need that can only be met by the steadfast, unchangeable love of God. Our deepest emotional and spiritual needs are never met by material things, by prestige or power, exhilarating experiences, beauty, or human love. All of our human desires and longings are mere symptoms of our need for Him. Psalm 42:1 expresses this need: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.” He Himself is the Bread of Life and the Water of Life.

When we are gripped by the love of God, He frees us from being emotionally and spiritually crippled. When we realize how we are loved, then we can stop loving ourselves and start loving others. He enables us to become dispensers of love rather than consumers of love. We are able to love others, even our enemies. When old age, life-threatening illness, or danger threatens us, we can look with confidence to God’s loving promise of eternal life with Him.

When we sin, we come to Him for cleansing, comfort, and a new start. When we strike out, we come to Him. God loves us when we strike out. He covers the holes in our lives.

The love of God gives us purpose. The purpose for our lives grows out of His love. He liberates us from self love. Our love relationship with God governs our relationships with others. He enables us to begin to love unlovable sinners as He loves us. When we are angry, depressed, struggling, feeling insecure, we can bring these things to Him. He cares about every aspect of our lives. When our sins and fears are petty and downright embarrassing, we can come clean with Him. He is the Sinner’s Friend.

I believe He wants to see our lives, like John’s, stuck on one theme: the unfailing and limitless love of God.

Originally published in the devotional 31 Days of Grace.

MTW is a worldwide missional community and, through our love for the gospel of grace,
we collaborate in transformative church-planting and renewal movements. 

 

Worldwide: As a family within the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), MTW has the joy and privilege to be involved in over 80 nations, with some 640 long-term missionaries, laboring in partnership with almost twice that number of international colleagues, together with many stateside churches and national staff. Gratefully, the phrase “from everywhere, to everywhere” is taking ever deeper root among us and we’re learning how to more broadly collaborate where God is advancing His kingdom while remaining faithful to our Reformed and covenantal convictions.

 

Missional: Missional is a purposeful word, a word of movement, growth, and expansion locally, nationally, and globally. As a family, MTW has embraced God’s passion for the increase of his kingdom rule and reign. We are committed to actively seeking first God’s kingdom and His righteousness among the nations with the confidence that, “of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.” Since the mission is God’s mission, its promised fulfillment is not founded upon our strength, planning or prowess, but upon our surety, Christ Jesus. God’s mission gathers His people from every tongue, tribe, and nation and, as we pray “thy kingdom come and thy will be done,” Isaiah assures us, “the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this.”

 

Community: Christian community is a gift of God’s grace, rooted in the finished work of Christ, and nourished by the Holy Spirit. We are a missional community, a worldwide family if you will, through Jesus Christ; and in Jesus Christ called to serve at His initiative and command. We strive to do due diligence to serve our colleagues, our church networks, and our denomination faithfully and responsibly with respect to the mobilization of workers, training, administration, and finance; yet we desire to do so not as a mere business but as a family born and sustained by the love of the Father, the saving work of the Lord Jesus, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. Such a community life, while corporately and fiscally responsible, will foster loving, interdependent relationships of mutual respect, solidarity, freedom, and friendship as we serve with our international and local partners. As biblical Christians, we believe that the truth and power of the gospel is best displayed in the love and unity we have for one another as we worship together, learn together, repent together, and serve together.

 

Our love for the gospel of grace: As a community, we seek to live humbly and authentically before God and man, exemplifying integrity and accountability, dependent upon Christ, our only hope and help. The gospel of grace is the wind in our sails, the engine of the organization, and the source and foundation of our ministry that empowers everything we do. All the missional movement and transformation in our lives and labors flow from God’s grace. The MTW family has experienced how the gospel of grace has led us to depend more deeply and intimately on the Holy Spirit, to pray more together, and to work together from a posture that freely recognizes our weakness while embracing God’s strength and provision. Our love for the gospel of grace and a Reformed and covenantal understanding of Scripture is a beautiful and much needed-gift that MTW can bring to the Great Commission. The gospel of grace is a beacon of light that we freely offer to those who share our commitment to the expansion of God’s kingdom.

 

We collaborate: We don’t need to lead, get credit for, or control what God and local Christian communities are doing. In each situation, God directs His people to bring their resources and lay them on the altar of service for the glory of Christ and the good of His body. We will rejoice equally when the Lord places us alongside others or under their direction and supervision. Or, in the absence of local leadership and communities of faith, we will ask the Lord of the Harvest to join us with local believers so that, together, we may serve as a catalyst for beginning new churches in unreached areas. Grace empowers collaboration—locally, nationally, and globally—and forms loving, interdependent relationships that promote a growing wisdom in missional community, foster a posture of humility, encourages innovation, and give us all the freedom to fail.

 

Transformative: Jesus came to save and change the world. Thus, our commitment to these communities of faith and the focus of these movements will be to keep both the proclamation of grace and the doing of justice woven together in our collective hearts and labors. Embracing the proclamation of grace and the doing of justice means that we see the gospel not only bringing personal forgiveness and justification, but also bringing forth a new community, a kingdom community, that seeks to lead all of life—spiritual, material, systemic, private, and public—under the lordship of Jesus Christ. God’s passion for the “increase of His government and of His peace” weaves together His passion for justice and righteousness with a deep work of the gospel that powerfully addresses the areas of poverty, hunger, global sickness, disease, and injustice. Christ-centered churches are transformative in the localities in which they are planted.

 

Church-planting movements: Church-planting movements are God-glorifying, God-centered works of His grace whereby the Holy Spirit empowers local leaders to plant churches, or clusters of churches, with a common vision and a desire to reproduce themselves. These churches would be, first and foremost, about the glory of God and committed to walking with Him in the extension of His kingdom in and through individuals, communities, people groups, and nations. Such movements will embrace orthodoxy, unity, and liberty; and will be built upon local structures and institutions, with local resources and culturally-appropriate worship.

 

Renewal movements: God has graciously promised to build His Church and assured us that the gates of hell will never prevail against it. One remarkable way that He is doing that today is through renewal and reformation of churches and denominations worldwide. It is deeply gratifying to see the gospel of grace infuse new life into old wineskins, many of those beyond the pale of the Reformed tradition. If we believe that God is working in a special way in these churches, movements, or denominations, we will prayerfully seek His direction as to our involvement and look to Him for resources to respond. We are open to partnering with these groups but only through prayerful dependence upon the leading of God’s Spirit and the freedom to bring our love for grace and our Reformed understanding to the context.