Have you ever heard of the tabernacle of David? I promise you, we are going to stare at it for eternity. The Scriptures call King David “a man after God’s own heart.” He established a worship order that was at the center of his kingdom, it is filling the earth now and will fill all the nations before the Son of David returns to Jerusalem and establishes His throne in the midst of that same worship order.

When God looks for people to give assignments to, He doesn’t just look for skills and He’s not impressed by personalities. Heaven isn’t reviewing resumes and measuring salary sizes. There is one thing that catches heaven’s attention, one thing God is looking for. It's not the strength of their might, it’s not the level of their skill and not the scope of their intellect; first, it is worship. Why worship?

The black community is in mourning and the only answer that can be given right now is the comfort that comes from the God who sees and hears, who became the sin of both victims and the victimizers of injustice on the cross so that through Jesus Christ all men can be reconciled to God and to each other.

Are you watering the seeds of offense in your own heart by only watching, listening, and reading people who have the same worldview and experiences as you and do not have a heavenly perspective?

We are hearing words these days like essential travel, essential workers, essential businesses. This is right. Identifying what is essential for society to function is important in a moment when you are working together to stop the spread of a novel virus. In the midst of the search for essentials, I can sense the Holy Spirit searching the church, helping us identify what is essential for our existence and function as the Body of Christ.

This is a season where the Spirit of the Lord is sifting through our ministries, families, and our personal lives separating what is essential and what is additional; what is primary and what is secondary. I believe that God is using this current global pandemic to help us slow down, pause, and identify what is necessary. We have become so addicted to activity here in the West. Bigger, better, faster, and more have become the modern mandates.

But when everything is taken away… what remains?

In Acts 4:36–37, Luke shows us how Barnabas’ trusted ministry began—it began with a demonstrated freedom from the love of things and a heart of love for people. He sold a field that belonged to him and gave all the proceeds to the apostles to use for the movement. In this story, he stands as the example of what the grace of God and the spirit of revival does in the human heart.

Antioch Sending Centers are always deeply marked by the lives of fathers and mothers like Barnabas who long ago “sold their field” to be a part of what God was doing on the earth. They have been radically transformed by grace. They have seen Jesus as supremely worthy, and they have responded with all their hearts. What you do today is setting the stage for what you will walk in, five, ten years from now…

Even though Peter had the correct theological stance of inclusion for the Gentiles through the gospel at the Jerusalem council, we find out soon that having the right theological stance can be much different than acknowledging your own ethnocentricity and allowing God, by the power of the Spirit, to search you and fully deliver you from the culture that nurtured your fallen mindset. When Peter finally makes it down to Antioch to see what is transpiring in this new apostolic center, he comes face to face with his own racism…

Racism is the enemy of missions because true missions is born out of a vision of the worth of Jesus that produces a self-sacrificing love for peoples and nations that we have nothing in common with. The only commonality we have with the unreached of the earth is the compassion of the Lamb.

You are not from here. You were born from beyond the cosmos. The New Jerusalem has birthright citizenship. Therefore, nationalism at its core is anti-gospel because it is a lie that deceives the believer into thinking that where they live is where they are from and the culture they are surrounded by is the culture they belong to.

The New Testament writers confronted this stronghold head-on; this was no side issue to the Apostles.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10