[You may listen to an old recording of this song here.]
When You ask who’ll go,
Will we turn away?
Or will we exclaim,
“Here we are; send us!”?
Send us out, O Lord,
Into all the earth;
Let us tell the news
Of your saving power.
When You ask who’ll go,
Will we turn away?
Or will we exclaim,
“Here we are; send us!”?
Let us share Your Plan
With each tribe & tongue.
Send us out, O Lord,
All around the world.
When You ask who’ll go,
Will we turn away?
Or will we exclaim,
“Here we are; send us!”?
About This Song:
This song comes in part from Isaiah 6:8…
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
(NIV)
The rest comes from Psalm 67:2…
Send us around the world with the news of your saving power and your eternal plan for all mankind.
(Living Bible)
Growing up the only child of a dedicated Christian minister, I saw firsthand many of the problems preachers have to deal with day in and day out: prejudice, insufficient finances, substandard housing, contentious church members, broken promises, resistance to change. Plus every flavor of sin. Compiling an adequate list would take a lifetime, and even then it would be incomplete.
Is it any wonder, then, that I prayed for God NOT to call me into a full-time Christian vocation? Picking up roadside litter would have seemed preferable to serving as a preacher or a missionary.
I’ve been familiar with Isaiah 6:8 most of my life, I imagine. But I didn’t have Isaiah’s spirit of servanthood and obedience. Not in my early years as a Christian. Developing even a little bit of that attitude has taken years. Many of them. I can’t say they were “wasted,” though. I believe God used that time to grow me in certain areas that would better qualify me to “go.”
At the same time, though, I’ve always had a heart for missions. Just not missions done by me. Working in Information Technology at the International Mission Board gave me a special thrill because of the way it allowed me to participate actively in missions behind the scenes. Without having to go.
And then I heard about an available, two-week mission trip to Australia. Who wouldn’t want to go to Australia? But on a mission trip? Hmm. Was that my call to go? The one I’d never wanted to hear before?
The answer was yes, and that trip changed my life. I fell in love with short-term mission trips. They’ve been mostly hard work–definitely not vacations.
I was dying to go back to Australia, and I had another opportunity. But it didn’t feel right that time. Did God have something else in mind? I learned of a mission trip to England. England? Hmm. Not exciting. But was I willing to give up Australia if that’s what God had in mind?
Apparently so.
I’ve always felt that forgetting about where I wanted to go and going where I felt I should go constituted my ultimate “Here am I. Send me.”
Are you ready to go where God directs you? Or will you hesitate? Will you hem and haw and make excuses? Or will you take one step forward and say, “Send me”?
I write Christian novels as well as songs. The two most recent ones are shown below and their pictures are links to the Amazon pages. The eighteen-book picture is a link to my Amazon Author Page.
I’ll be back again next Wednesday. Please join me then. Better still, sign up to receive these weekly posts by email.
Best regards,
Roger
Links you might be interested in:
As I Come Singing. . . 