A MISSIONARY’S Heart

“Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” JOHN 20:21

As Jesus speaks words of peace and commissioning, remember the setting. His disciples were cowering behind locked doors. They had just heard from a resurrection eyewitness, yet doubts still echoed. But suddenly there was Jesus: speaking peace to their doubting hearts and sending them to a world where doubt and fear still ruled many hearts.

As Jesus comforts and commissions his struggling disciples on Easter, there are echoes of a conversation in which the Father spoke comfort and commissioning to Jesus. In one of the servant songs of Isaiah, Jesus tells his Father how his often-rejected ministry vexed his missionary heart. “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all” (Isaiah 49:4).

And the Father’s answer? “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob…. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

In those two statements, you hear the Son’s longing missionary heart answered by the Father’s comforting missionary heart. The Father assures his Son that the salvation won by his ministry would reach the ends of the earth.

So the Father comforted and commissioned his Son. So Jesus comforts and commissions his doubting disciples. So, on this Easter Day, Jesus comforts and commissions us, his often doubting and fearful 21- century disciples. In fact, in a very special way, we are proof of what the Father promised his Son. The truth of Easter morning has made its way across thousands of miles and two thousand years from a locked room in Jerusalem to our hearts.

And God’s missionary heart is so large it still longs for more. That’s why Jesus doesn’t only speak “Peace” to us this Easter. He also speaks words of commissioning.

As you celebrate your Easter peace, look around you. Many are still hiding in fear and doubt. God’s missionary heart longs to give you his same heart. He longs to lead us to say to other troubled hearts what Jesus says each day to us: “Peace be with you!”

Prayer:

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that your Easter message to us is “Peace.” Continue to quiet our doubts so that the certainty of your Easter peace so fills our hearts that we cannot help but speak. May your Easter peace create within us a missionary’s heart just like yours. Amen.