[In Let the Nations Be Glad, John Piper writes that worship is the fuel of missions, because “you cannot commend what you do not cherish.” A new book by Daniel Hames and Michael Reeves – God Shines Forth: How the Nature of God Shapes and Drives the Mission of the Church (Crossway, 2022) – elaborates on that idea. Here are some excerpts, with page references – Coty]

Our aim is to set before your eyes God as he truly is: God who is so full of life and goodness that he loves to be known; not as a campaign to impose himself on us or on the world but to give himself and share his own life with the world. (21)

The glory of God is personal: the Father’s radiance is the Son. It is God the Son who comes to be with his people and, in doing so, shines upon us the truth of the Father. (31)

“The love of God does not find but creates that which is pleasing to it.”[Luther] In his love, God gives to us what we need to know him and have fellowship with him. It is all by his grace and does not rely on us in any way…. God truly loves us sinners and has done everything necessary to redeem us and bring us to himself. He is not interested in our intelligence, morality, or abilities so much as our loving trust and reliance on him in his goodness. (45)

The glorious fullness of the living God revealed in Jesus sets him apart from all other gods. His innermost being is a sun of light, life, and warmth, always shining out: radiant and outgoing. Other gods, however, are always pits of grasping neediness. (66)

The human soul is like an open throat. For you to be a “living being” is to be like a newly hatched chick in the nest. Not yet able to fly or hunt for yourself, you open your beak wide and cry out for the provision of your parents. You are created to desire and crave—and to have poured into you from outside—life and sustenance, whether physical or spiritual. For this reason, the very soul of a person can “thirst for God” like a deer panting for water (Ps. 42:2) or a man in a “dry and weary land where there is no water” (Ps. 63:1). To be human is to be a thirsting and hungry throat: to rely on, receive from, and eat and drink from the living God. The Lord has made us this way to show that he alone is the source of life and that we must go to him for it. (69-70)

When we set our hearts and hopes on anything that is not the living God, we are thrown back on ourselves. Gods that cannot speak will need us to find words. Gods that cannot carry us will need us to pick ourselves up. Gods that cannot freely love will need us to make ourselves loveable. Whether our god is reputation, possessions, or relationships, we will be let down. Exhausting our own supplies, and with no supernatural help from such non-Gods as these, we will become as demanding and oppressive as they appear to us. (71)

Having turned away from the God of glorious fullness [in the Fall], [humanity] condemned themselves to chase the fullness they now lacked in created things that could never meet their needs and desires…. Eve thought that eating the fruit would make her “like God”—something more than she already was. Yet, in the eating, she and her husband became far less than they were. They had, of course, been created to be like God in the first place, but now, heeding the whisper of the serpent, they were quite unlike God…. How the mighty had fallen! This was a fall not only from moral innocence and purity but from fullness and glory (75-76)

Given all we have seen, it is no wonder that our culture is overrun with issues surrounding identity. Since the garden, we do not participate in the fullness of God’s life, his image in us has been vandalized, and we are consumed with self-love. Sinners do not know who, why, or what they are. Many people want to improve themselves but simply do not know what “mended” or whole people would look like. Sensing our brokenness, we make wild stabs at solutions: political activism, radical moral codes, mindfulness, self-improvement, dieting fads, and so on. Increasingly, self-assertion is seen as the key to real happiness, and so, in the brave quest for “authenticity,” almost anything is to be applauded and honored. We recognize that some do not consider themselves beautiful, some are compelled to lie in their job applications, and others feel ill at ease with their biological sex. The answer to all this, we are led to believe, is to look in the mirror and to reach deep within to retrieve our “true self,” increasingly accept it, and let it shine. However quirky, socially unacceptable, or controversial our actions, we are encouraged to be “true to ourselves,” and those who do so most tenaciously are lionized. “You do you,” says the world. This self-assertion is a kind of mission, but one driven by the empty self and not by the glorious God of heaven. It reaches out into the world not to give but to take. Ours is a society utterly persuaded by this lie and largely unable to see the truth: all the talk of looking within and finding “it” within yourself will never solve the problem, because that is the problem. We are simply not designed for incurvature. (85-86)

Evangelism is, by definition, the good news of Christ, not only a warning about the last day. When it comes to motivating Christians to mission, the gospel that moves the missionary must be the same one he or she expects to win the hearts of the lost. If we burden Christians with the guilt of abandoning people to hell, it will be the message of guilt and hell they will pass on, rather than the message of the Savior of sinners and conqueror of hell. Jesus Christ will not be the jewel of the gospel they tell, but only the means to escape a terrible end. Not only this, but the resulting converts will have been motivated by their preexisting instinct for self-preservation. Disciples who are won not by the glory of the Lord to repentance and faith but by an appeal to their own well-being will continue in exactly the same direction. Their newfound faith will be more about themselves than about Christ. (110)

We may find ourselves emphasizing themes of the gospel like “grace” or “heaven” but not explicitly holding out Christ as the gift and as the treasure of heaven. We may offer the world the hope of transformed lives, healed hurts, and renewed communities, but make Jesus the means to these things rather than the center of them all. These things are blessings of the gospel, but if they are elevated to become its center and our focus, they will become nothing more than substitute gods. (113)

[Quoting Luther] “It is right to call the word of the minister and preacher which he preaches God’s word, for the office is not the minister’s and the preacher’s, but God’s; and the word that he preaches is likewise not the minister’s and preacher’s, but God’s.”… This could not be more astounding. In the word of God, even when it is spoken by fallible and sinful humans, God truly gives himself. This means that in our proclamation of Christ in sermons, evangelistic messages, and even conversations about the gospel, Christ the Word is present in power. God is speaking his own Word; God is enlightening with his own light; God is offering himself to those who hear. (116-117)

If God seems to us to be empty and needy, we will serve him with empty hearts, finally taking what we need from the world rather than freely blessing it. What we truly worship and cherish will, for good or ill, be revealed in our mission. It is possible to look completely theologically orthodox while doing this kind of mission. We may doggedly cling to the inerrancy of Scripture, the uniqueness of Christ, the doctrine of hell, and substitutionary atonement while—all the while—exposing the world to an undelightful God. The God we know—or think we know—is the God we will show to the world. If we ourselves do not constantly revel in his free justification of sinners, his self-giving love, and his Son poured out to death for us while we were still his enemies, then we will be ghostly, unhappy Christians holding out a black hole of a god to people already dying. (123)

[For those who go out with the gospel today,] considering the contours of the biblical narrative of God’s mission is of great value. Knowing the history of the church’s missionary efforts is inspiring. Understanding the latest theory and literature in missiology is enriching. But beneath all these is the irreplaceable foundation of knowing and enjoying God. (131)

God’s plan for “the coming ages” is not to surprise us with a glory other than his Son’s but to take us ever deeper into “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7). In other words, in the gospel’s promised future, we will eternally enjoy the very glory that fuels our lives and mission today. (144)

Since we are sure of our future in the eternal embrace of Jesus Christ, we are people of hope. In our mission today, we invite the sinful, broken, and empty not to the hope of “heaven” as an ethereal afterlife but to the beauty, fullness, and glory of the Lamb who was slain for us. His delight is to fill his people with joy in him both now and forever. (145)

The cross is not simply the mechanism by which we receive a selection box of blessings of the new creation: the cross shows us exactly what sort of blessing this is. For the glory of God that will fill the earth at the end is the same glory we see in the death of Jesus. Specifically, the self-giving glory of the cross is the key to understanding the glory that is to come. (148-149)

The future we have to offer to our friends and neighbors is a world of unshakeable, unquenchable love. Can you imagine a life where you know, without any creeping anxiety, that you are perfectly and totally loved by God? Where you love him in return without any whisper of shame or inadequacy? A life where you are entirely secure in the love of those around you and are able to love them all without feeling exposed or vulnerable? Where you love people with such a generous freedom that you yourself only become more open and lovely? This is life in the glory of God and the light of the Lamb who was slain. (157)

The church’s mission is shaped and driven by the very nature of our God. All that we know of him, however limited by our present ignorance and sin, fills us with joy. Yet our hope of knowing him fully in the age to come can only increase our delight and anticipation, propelling us out into the world in overwhelmed gladness. How can we leave our friends, families, and colleagues in ignorance of the Lord whose purpose for all things is so good? Knowing his love that has reached out to us—and will one day reach out and fill all the world—what else can we do but reach out with that same love today? Gazing on the glory of the Lamb who was slain for us, and knowing that this is the glory that will shine in all the world, we may well sing with Wesley, ’Tis all my business here below to cry, “Behold the Lamb!” (160)