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A few years ago, I was asked how studies like More Things support our Christian mission. I explained that no institution can solve the world's problems—only Christians can. If we understand our role as God's image-bearers and actively participate in advancing the kingdom through sacrificial actions, as the apostles did, real change will happen. This means taking risks, trusting in providence, and truly living as if this world is not our final home.

A workable illustration is the terror group ISIS. Every member of ISIS is single-minded. They are the Borg, for Star Trek fans. Their first thought every day is advancing their agenda. Their last thought every night is what they’ll do tomorrow to advance their agenda. Their vision of what they want the world to be never goes away, never changes, is always the center. Any individual interest is secondary.

How many Christians really think and live like that when it comes to the kingdom of God?  Not enough.

That mindset, motivated by the love of Christ, belief in the reality of our hereafter destiny, and confidence that God will use any service of ours to further his end, is, in my view, how spiritual warfare ought to get done, and how it was done in the first century or so. The vision was CONSUMING. Our vision of the kingdom (at least in the West it seems) is peripheral. We don’t see the vision, and so we can’t believe in it, and so we lack power. Believers in the first century BELIEVED these things, and those things changed the way we live. We don’t believe we have cosmic role to play because we don’t believe in the cosmic arena in which the game is being played. We have lots of sincere Christians who are, basically, believing skeptics. And that affects how they think about their own lives, which in turn affects their vision.

It’s about vision and abandonment to that vision. Doing what you do every day, no matter how small, to move the mission toward its goal, one person at a time, and believing God incorporates such obedience into his end game. 13 men had that in the first century, and they turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6). We have the same truth and the same Spirit, but we lack the person-to-person, day-to-day obsession with being salt and light in the way that ISIS wants what it wants (and I for one believe they aren’t acting alone — they are part of what is ultimately a spiritual war).