“My ambition has always been to preach the Good News where the name of Christ has never been heard, rather than where a church has already been started by someone else. I have been following the plan spoken of in the Scriptures, where it says, ‘Those who have never been told about him will see, and those who have never heard of him will understand.’” (Romans 15:20-21)
Food For Thought: Are you a missions-minded Christian?
I thought I was. I grew up in the church where the occasional missionary would come, and if we were lucky, show slides of his work in Africa, or some other far off place that I’d only heard about in settings like that or in geography lessons at school. Then I grew up and went into ministry as a pastor, and again, the occasional missionary would come and tell the church of what God was doing somewhere far away, and I would feel good that we were a missions church. I would even give occasionally to support the church’s missions efforts around the world. I thought I was a missions-minded Christian.
But that begin to change. I was periodically sent oversees for short-term missions projects by the various churches I served, and my heart begin to get reshaped by what I saw God doing among people who had never heard the name of Jesus before. My mind was blown away by the signs, wonders and miracles (Paul talks about that in this missions context in Romans 15:19) that I would witness as we proclaim the good News of Jesus Christ. I’d never seen such things back in the U.S. I chalked those miracles up to the extreme openness to the supernatural that I saw among these folks living in spiritual darkness, but whatever the reason for them, I longed to see them back home in my church, too. God was shaking and reshaping my heart for missions.
Then about four years ago, God completely dislocated my heart, and gave me a passion for missions, for reaching people who’d never heard the Gospel of Christ, and now I can truly say that I am becoming a missions-minded Christian (I use the word “becoming” because I’m not sure you ever completely arrive).
It happened when I reluctantly got involved in a church-planting project in a remote, unreached region in Africa. I was reluctant because I knew that my involvement would require a lot of my own personal resources, and to be successful, would require significant resources from my church. And I was afraid that if we got involved to the extent I thought we needed to be involved, that the resources would flow away from other worthy projects to this one…we’d simply be “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” so to speak. I figured our resource pie was stretched, and limited.
But as I was stressing over this likely scenario, something wonderful happened. God spoke to me. Now though I believe God speaks to me through his Word and leads me through prayer all the time, I don’t often claim to have heard the voice of God—in fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever claimed that. But God spoke to me. Not in an audible voice or through writing on the wall or some other sensational sort of way, he simply and clearly spoke to me through a strong inner impression in my spirit. And he addressed my stressing over how our involvement in this Africa project might affect our other efforts. And the message was this: “Ray, if you will take care of the things I care about, then I will take care of the things you care about. And I care about a lost world. I care about people who have never heard my name.”
Well, that was good enough for me. And the long and short of it is, we jumped into this project up to our eye-balls, and we began to see a miraculous flow of resources both for this project, and for those other projects that I was so concerned about. But more than that, I was able to witness a revival, a book-of-Acts-type revival in this region in Africa that was beyond my wildest expectations. In a region where only a few believers attended a few churches, we’ve seen over a thousand churches planted and 50,000 believers added to those churches in just four short years. And it’s still growing, and showing no signs of slowing.
And what God has done there through the faithfulness of our church has changed my heart forever, and given me a true passion for missions. I still have a passion for my local church (that’s missions, too), but I have an added ambition, and that is to keep our congregation focused on reaching people who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ.
That was Paul’s ambition, according to verse 20. That is God’s ambition, according to verse 21. I hope that you will open your heart and let God make it your ambition as well. I hope that you will travel with me down the path of becoming a missions-minded Christian. And I will make you the same promise God made me:
If you will take care of the things God cares about—a lost world, God will take care of the things you care about—your world.
What a deal! That’s an offer you can’t refuse.
Prayer: God, you so love the world that you came to it, giving your very best by giving your Son to die for it. And I am the beneficiary of such extravagant love. Now Lord, you have called me to go to the world and give myself to reach it with the same Good News that reached me. I am committed to that down to the very core of my being. Help me today to bring that Good News of your love to someone, and may it change their live like it changed mine.
One more thing… “If you will take care of the things God cares about, God will take care of the things you care about.”
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