Mere Missions

50 • M ere M issions : M oving F orward to M ultiply

them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded” (Acts 19.13-16). Being the sons of a high priest, probably meant they were moral, ethical, upright, respected, and adhered to the law. This holds no power though in the spiritual realm. Jesus as Lord is the authority and power. Being endeared to Him, is why and how we can move forward in missions. The evil spirit recognized Paul because Paul’s life was endeared to Christ. “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1.21). Being endeared to Jesus is a simple thing and yet it is probably the most difficult thing. Our spiritual enemy will do all he can to distract you from devoting (to hang out with) time to the Lord Jesus. As Screwtape admonished his nephew Wormwood, in C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters , on how to make the Patient interested in other movements, “. . . the safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,” so the enemy works today. He works gradually using a gentle slope of subtle lies that cause compromises, this day and then the next, and before you know it one has slipped away from a disciplined endearment to Jesus. Paul warned the Corinthians about the enemy’s tactic when he said, “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11.3). Endearment is a fight, a battle. It is discipline that you must work at, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2.12-13). A disciplined devotion to Jesus is not meant to be a restraint but is for our benefit. The Apostle Paul exhorted the Corinthians in this, “I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord” (1 Cor. 7.35). This devotion