John Piper’s book on missions is very good, in my opinion.  In “Let the Nations Be Glad,” Piper wrote something like this, “Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”  In other words, because God is the Creator, the Source of life, the Sustainer of life and the Savior of mankind, we ALL should love, adore and worship Him.  We were created to worship.  We all worship something or someone, maybe even ourselves!  Mankind’s greatest failure and most obvious evidence of sinfulness is our failure to worship God for who He really is.  The first four (of the Ten) commandments are about this.  He loves us and wants us to live in relationship with Him but we have ditched Him for lesser loves.  He gives us all things richly to enjoy, but then we end up enjoying the gifts rather than the Giver.  We often leave God out of our lives until things go poorly, then we want Him to “snap to it,” and fix the problems.  We treat Him like a genie from the lamp and hope He goes back inside once we have our wish.  John Lennon wrote a song about imagining a world without religion.  I would rather imagine a world engaged in “white hot worship of God.”  I believe that what Lennon wanted was right.  I also believe that his longing could never be fulfilled apart from the One who gave us life and sustains it.  The world will never be a better place trying to “get God out of here.”  It will only get better as we worship God for who He truly is and live in light of His purpose.  That’s why we “do missions.”  Missions exists because worship doesn’t.  Remember the words of Jesus to the woman at the well, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."   Let’s be those people…and encourage others to join us.