Last week during team time with the Mindoro Nanny Team we were reading through the J. Hudson Taylor biography and after I had finished sharing how the story had impacted me and which parts I liked, Meredith asked me about how I came to know that I wanted to be a missionary. I smiled and said, “Well a long, long time ago, back when I was a freshman in college (they act like I'm so old!), I had really started to get my life on track and become more focused on God. I was very involved in our campus ministry; I was on leadership, taught Bible study, attended weekly worship and helped organize all social functions. Therefore, when my campus minister approached me with an application for “Summer Missions” I thought, “Why not! I do everything else involved with our campus ministry.”
However, my idea of summer missions was a little bit skewed. I had done “summer missions” in high school and we would go to a different state and do backyard bible club or visit some nursing homes for a week. But come 2005, I had landed myself on tiny poor fisherman islands off the north shore of Bohol, Philippines going hut-to-hut sharing the gospel for a total of two months! A far cry from Missouri retirement homes…
I further explained to the girls that I thought I knew what it meant to be a Christian before I arrived in PI that summer, but my eyes were slowly opened to the myth of comfortable Christianity being an option. I thought you were to live an upright life for people to see and possibly even desire to emulate, share the gospel with your co-workers (on the rare occasion that they flat out asked you to do so), raise Christian children, tithe, participate in some Church related activity (teach Sunday school or take my monthly rotation in the nursery), pray, read my Bible and call it a day. But after 2005 I can no longer claim ignorance, I now see through different eyes. Read and hear what the Lord is telling you.
“What does the landscape of our Christian scene look like? We have workbooks, podcasts, multiple Bibles and translations. We have the Men’s Bible, Sports Bible, Waterproof Bible, Hunters Bible, the Spirit-filled Bible (I thought they were all Spirit-filled?), John MacArthur’s Bible, Henry Blackaby’s Bible, Joel Osteen’s Bible, the Teen Bible, Children’s Bible, etc, etc, etc, while there are still 2000 languages without the Scriptures in their own language. We have Christian radio, small group Bible studies, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night worship. We have concerts, seminars, and workshops. We know! But we are a people starving in the midst of abundance! A people empty while running from one activity to another. A people ‘honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,’ declared Isaiah.
Knowing about Him doesn’t necessarily mean you know him. Singing a song doesn’t necessarily mean you worshipped him.” – Kuya Jess
“A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the gospel story.” – K. P. Yohannan
“1,700 languages have not a word of the Bible translated. Ninety percent of the people who volunteered for the mission field never get there. It takes more than a ‘Lord I’m willing!’ Sixty-four percent of the world has never heard of Christ. 5,000 people die every hour. The population of India equals that of North America, Africa, and South America combined. There is one Christian worker for every 50,000 people in foreign lands, while there is one Christian worker for every 500 in the United States.” – Jim Elliot’s Journal
“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” – Rom. 10:14
“How can any honest Christian say he must have a special call not to do that sort of thing? How can he say that, unless he gets some specific call of God to preach the Gospel to the unreached, he has a perfect right to spend his life lining his pockets with money? Is it not absurd to suggest that a special call is necessary to become a missionary, but no call is required to gratify his own will or personal ambitions?”
– Robert E. Speer
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” – Gal.2:20
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,…” – Matt 28:19
“It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home.” – J. Hudson Taylor
“However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me – the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.” – Acts 20:24
"Reality is...many of us have subsituted our American value of self-preservation for Christ's demands to take up a cross and follow Him." - Kuya Jess
“Some may wish to live within the sound of a Chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop with in a yard of Hell.” – C. T. Studd
“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb…” – Rev 7:9
Wothy is the Lamb!
I beg you to break free from the cult of American Christianity – complacent and undisturbed by the cry of blood from millions of people heading to eternal Hell without ever hearing the name of Jesus!
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