Reflection: To Go Where No One Has Gone Before (May 5, 2013)

The Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:9-14, 21-27; John 16:23-33


When I was growing up I used to dream about going to a place where no other human being had ever been. Fueled by stories I read in books and documentaries from TV, I imagined myself as an adventurer who would discover new lands and untouched civilizations. As time went on, I realized that, because the world was heavily populated and well traveled, it was unlikely that I would ever be the explorer and discoverer that I dreamt of being. I've also come to understand that I have many opportunities to go where no one has gone before. And so do you.

When the Apostle Paul was carrying out the work that God had called him to do in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey), he set his sights on going into the region of Bithynia to proclaim the Gospel. He had already started numerous new churches in the surrounding regions and Bithynia was the next logical place to continue his work. But he was stopped in his tracks by the Holy Spirit who prevented him from going there. Why would the Spirit keep someone from going to a place to share the Gospel? Because He wanted Paul to go somewhere else, to a place where no one had gone before with the Gospel. Paul didn't have to wait long to find out where God wanted him to go. Paul received a vision of a man from Macedonia urging him to come to that region to help the people there. When Paul arrived in Philippi, which was the main city of Macedonia, he found that there wasn't even a synagogue there. He had come to a place where no one had gone before.

There was a time when we would have had to pack up our lives and travel to distant lands to find people who had never heard of the love, joy, and peace of Jesus, to places like those of my childhood daydreams. But now the places where no one has gone before with the Gospel are all around us. Our workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and even our families are filled with people who don't know anything about the love and grace of God in Christ Jesus. Like the Macedonian man in Paul's vision, they are calling us to come to their aid. But unlike that man, they aren't issuing a direct invitation. Instead their cries of spiritual suffering and death through the choices they make, the values they hold, and the sins that they live out in their everyday lives are crying out for us to listen to the Holy Spirit's call to go to where no one has gone before.

Audio file of the sermon "To Go Where No One Has Gone Before."