by Holbert Marie
Think about this, virtually everyday the vast majority of us from the west or westernized modern cites, walk out of our home, get in a vehicle and drive somewhere. Most of us plan our day around the reality that it will take 20 or so minutes to drive — and most the time in climate controlled comfort — the five or so miles to the grocery store, work or school, etc. We rarely, if ever, think about the road we drive on to get where we are going. Think about the impact it would have, or has had, on your time and life if there was no road or you lacked a vehicle in which to drive on them? How much more time and energy consuming and difficult it would be to do simple tasks like grocery shopping and transporting what you have purchased back to your homes with out serviceable roads – if you could even do them at all? Think about the impact it would have on your ability to be efficient and complete a number of tasks in a rather abbreviated and efficient manner. Think about the impact our modern and efficient highway network has on our economy, our civilization, our very standard of living and our ability to meet up with our loved ones and friends! Think about the decisions that we have made logistically in our life, wittingly or unwittingly, due to the availability or unavailability and quality of this particular infrastructure!
Battles and wars have been fought and won or lost over particular strategic points concerning this particular infrastructure of roads or crossroads. If the roads and bridges are broken and damaged, even if only a short stretch between major points on that road, it makes it unusable for the vast majority of vehicles and the damaged road would be rendered useless. Whether you realize it or not, the impact of having a convenient, reliable, easily and consistently transversable road (and access to a reliable vehicle which can maximize the use of them) has had a dramatic impact on your personal life. Even real estate prices are greatly impacted by the availability and convenience of the road that services it.
The point is roads and highways are critically essential to the building and maintaining of any civilized cohesive society. A nations road system is the essential infrastructure necessary to hold a nation or society together! So it is also as equally important in the advancement of the Gospel of the Kingdom and scripture declares it so.
The highways we are building here (and the vehicles we are ‘creating’ to drive on them) have two distinct aspects 1.) The foundations of these highways are made of relationships that we have with one another, through Christ, across the world. These relationships in and of themselves are difficult to build and maintain because of cultural and socioeconomic differences, language and distance. Each one of us is having to put our cultural biases as well as our natural, narcissistic, competitive and rebellious sin nature on the cross daily; this makes bulldozing and cutting a path for the ‘highway or road’, across some pretty difficult terrain, quite a difficult chore. This is actually the most difficult aspect of the two.
2.) After these paths (relationships) are cut and established only then can real tangible and functional roads (rebar and concrete) actually be built. Only when both are done do we have a solid and useful road that can handle a load and not damage the vehicle that is driving on it.
A great plan or vision for a road or highway really means nothing until it leaves the planning stages and it is actually implemented. We can draw it up, be in agreement, rejoice and celebrate about our plan and high five each other over it. (like in Zerubabbel’s day when they had a big praise party for laying a foundation for the temple and proceeded to stop building for some 17 years – read Haggai.) However, until we actually go out and build it, the ‘vision’ or plan is really useless and is nothing more than a dream! This building of highways and roads is intensive, costly and difficult work, both relationally and physically. It requires a strong an enduring commitment, counting the cost of the labor and self sacrifice required over a long period of time. Jesus says that those who ENDURE all the way through will be saved. Ultimately it is IMPOSSIBLE APART FROM THE EVER ABUNDANT GRACE (divine ability) THAT COMES THROUGH OUR HELPER THE HOLY SPIRIT WHO IS GOD!
Jesus commands us to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. It is very difficult to do that with out these ‘highways’ or roads. One can have the heart, the calling and the appropriate skills to serve, yet we need those highways, both relationally and naturally to both get them there and give them a runway to land on. It is going to take an awfully long time to fulfill the commandments of our Lord to go into all nations and make disciples without them! Jesus taught us redundantly to love and serve one another and to preach the gospel to the poor and to the uttermost parts of the earth! There is a practical or service component of this commandment. Jesus and the early fathers, Paul, Peter and especially James and John, redundantly taught about serving and loving one another and preaching the gospel to the poor, which included aiding them physically with things that we CAN do naturally (SALT– Society And Lifestyle Transformation). Jesus also taught us that there was another dimension of things that we should do. These are things that could be done only through the power of the Holy Spirit, (LIGHT). Healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead. and various other supernatural manifestations of God’s love and mercy. In fact he actually commands us, his disciples, in Matt 10:8, Luke 9:2 and Luke 10:9 to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom and heal the sick and other supernatural things that cannot be done outside of the unction and anointing of the Holy Spirit. It is interesting Jesus doesn’t even tell them to try to do it he just tells them to go do it and believe him, simply because the Holy Spirit does it through them, they are but conduits.
There are many references in Scripture concerning us as saints going out and allowing the Holy Spirit to operate through us in various signs and wonders, healings, setting captives free and casting out demons (Is 61!) in HIS NAME! We see no where in Scripture that these commands, either the natural ‘love’ motivated (salt) or supernatural Spirit motivated (light) were rescinded. The truth is they will not be rescinded until the Gospel is preached to all nations and then the Lord himself will return and such things will cease because they will no longer be necessary because we will all be one in his love! (Eph 4:11-16)
The SFI network does not focus so much on the things that the Holy Spirit can do through us, (though we do believe, teach and do it) nearly as much as we do the part of the equation that we are humanly responsible for. That is why we have an ever growing list of practical and specific vocational training opportunities that we offer that gives a laborer a skill to get them through the door. We also establish the ‘roads and pathways’ of trusted relationships through the wilderness to get them there and give them a platform to land on. Ultimately, if we do not do these natural ‘salty’ things that we can do, then our words not only hold little value, but can also be counter productive, as James says so clearly in James 2:14-26. Yet even if one does have the means, the practical skills and a willing heart, to help the poor, faith to heal the sick, raise the dead and preach the Gospel, if there are no ‘roads’, or logistical means to get them there and then transfer and apply them to the areas of need then it really doesn’t matter does it! As Paul says in Rom 10:14-15:
How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? 15 And how shall they preach unless they are sent?
Without a ‘road’ and the resources to build them, laborers will not be trained and sent, needs will not be met and the gospel will not be preached either in word or deed (the Lord himself revealing himself through a vision or dream excluded) and, as mentioned above and is worthy of repeating, the Lord will not return until this is done!
Matt 24:14
“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”
The truth of this last scripture is one of the main reasons the evil one so voraciously attacks our relationships, unity, our businesses and our minds with “the deceitfulness of riches and the cares of the world” (Matt 13:3-9). If ‘the accuser’ can break the relationship between husband and wife, he can destroy or greatly damage a family. If he can divide and create suspicion or jealousy among the brethren then he can cause a vast number of believers to ‘go independent’ and ‘go it alone’, then he has then destroyed or greatly damaged the ‘Kingdom road system’ greatly hindering our ability to “go” and take the gospel to the Nations as he so commanded us to do!
Simply put the objectives, goals and purposes of SFI is a highly important one, one that is redundantly stated from Scripture! Yet it is somewhat a clandestine or underground, difficult and tedious job that is rather lacking in glory. Similar to the cutting of a path and the laying of re-bar and pouring of concrete for a physical road. Think about it, highway construction workers don’t receive much praise or honors for the job they do! In fact I can think of few professions that draws more snarky comments and disrespect from others, at least in the western educated world, then this particular vocation. When the road is there and is in good repair, no one thinks about it, but let it get damaged or blocked for some reason and ….…! Well, you get the point, people just don’t get places and society, as well as tempers, break down quickly. Building ‘highways’ is a somewhat thankless and faceless job, which is what SFI seeks to be, but it is a most important one, critically so!