THE SEPARATION FOR INCLUSION

"...I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh."— Romans 9:2-3

For years, I have contended that mission and missionary work is not defined by the number of journeys undertaken. It is not about how many cities we traverse or how many unreached people groups we visit. Mission, at its core, is a heavy, inescapable burden for the salvation of others. It begins, first and foremost, with the spiritual impact we make within our immediate neighborhoods. 

A ministry that has lost its burden for people may continue to operate, but it has lost the very pulse that connects it to the heart of God. A missionary may travel from nation to nation and return with celebrated, glowing reports, but that does not mean their ministry remains alive in the eyes of Heaven. Once the burden and the love for souls are lost, the mission ceases to exist as far as God is concerned. As the Lord warned the church in Ephesus, we can possess tireless labor and patient endurance, yet still hear the sobering verdict: "You have abandoned the love you had at first" (Revelation 2:4).

Therefore, the defining challenge for Christians today is not simply to ask, “Who needs my preaching?” but rather, “Whose spiritual condition has become a burden upon my heart?”

The Apostle Paul reached a critical juncture in his missionary race where his utmost desire was no longer just the act of preaching, but the actual deliverance of souls into the Kingdom. Romans 9:2–3 is not an isolated emotional outburst; it reflects a profound, biblical pattern of carrying the weight of lost humanity before the throne of grace. 

Paul reached a point in his spiritual journey where he could find no joy in professing Christ and enjoying the personal security of eternal life while his kinsmen remained accursed, blind, and strangers to the Gospel of salvation. He went so far as to wish that, if an exchange were possible, he himself might be cast out if it meant their deliverance. This echoes the selfless cry of Moses on Mount Sinai: "But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written" (Exodus 32:32).

What a heart. What a love. What a life. It is almost unimaginable to conceive of a man willing to trade his own salvation—wishing to be cursed so that those who rejected his message might be eternally blessed.

Personally, I am still trying to recover from the penetrating question the Lord is posing to my own soul: Am I living for the redemption of others, or am I merely preserving my own comfort, safety, and personal salvation?

I fear that many of us in the modern Church have lost this deep, Christ-like sympathy. We live primarily for personal preservation and self-interest. Our ethnocentric biases, denominational rivalries, and underlying racial prejudices are diagnostic indicators of the true condition of our hearts. 

We can spend endless hours in warfare prayer, binding witches, wizards, and those we perceive as enemies of the Gospel. Yet, we spend almost no time weeping on our knees, pleading with God for their salvation. We treat our opponents as targets to be destroyed rather than souls to be won. When we look at those who oppose us and see only enemies to be defeated rather than sheep without a shepherd, we reveal a devastating truth: we have lost the burden.

Our hearts have been battered and hardened by betrayals, deep wounds, and the suffering inflicted upon us by others. Consequently, we secretly recoil at the thought of our offenders finding mercy at the feet of the Savior. Our quiet, unexpressed wish is often that they experience some swift calamity—a divine judgment that will validate us as God’s favored children and expose them as sons of perdition. We forget the warning of Scripture: "Do not gloat when your enemy falls... or the Lord will see and disapprove" (Proverbs 24:17-18).

As we look at the cloud of biblical witnesses, we see men and women who overcame these natural human sentiments. They were healed of their deep offenses by offering their lives for the very people who spitefully used them. It is here we realize a sobering spiritual law: God limits our spiritual influence and the caliber of people He trusts to our care according to the narrowness or largeness of our hearts.

Until we, like the martyred Stephen, can fall to our knees amidst a shower of crushing stones and cry out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (Acts 7:60), we will not see the genuine, sweeping revival we claim to long for. We will continue to labor exhaustively in our own strength, seeing little to no lasting fruit. When we choose to withhold our love from a world that God so desperately loved (John 3:16), our earthly efforts become a hollow, self-serving enterprise. We end up sowing only to our own flesh, and from that flesh, we will reap only a harvest of temporary, corruptible things (Galatians 6:8).

I hear the Spirit of the Lord speaking to us today, just as He spoke to Ananias when He commanded him to go to Saul—the violent persecutor of the early Church: "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel" (Acts 9:15). 

Go to that person you have labeled an enemy. Reach out to the one who deeply wounded you. Stop looking at them through the lens of your pain, and start looking at them through the lens of God's redemptive purpose. For even they may be a chosen instrument in the hands of the Almighty.

Do not stand in the way of what the Lord desires to do.

A Sobering Call to Repentance

Let us examine ourselves under the searching light of the Holy Spirit. Have we built monuments to our own safety while the world around us slides silently into a dark eternity? Have our altars of prayer become places of self-preservation rather than battlegrounds for the souls of men? 

If our hearts are cold, if we find ourselves empty of tears for the lost, and if we are quick to judge but slow to intercede, let us fall on our faces in deep repentance. May the Lord break the hard ground of our hearts. May He deliver us from the quiet, comfortable idolatry of personal security. Let us cry out for a baptism of holy sorrow, that we might once again carry a genuine burden for the lost—willing to be poured out, spent, and broken, so that others might live.

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Peter Abdul-Razaq, OLAYINKA 

A Serving Missionary — Living Grace Christian Missions, Ilara

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