The greatest motivation in missions: the sovereignty of God!

Kevin DeYoung:

I think one of the main reasons we struggle to tell people about Jesus is that deep down we just don’t think it will ever work. We think we’ve already tried to share with people before and nobody was interested. We imagine sharing our faith to be nothing but muscling up our strength to go do our duty and embrace failure. We soldier on, expecting fruitlessness, so we can say, “I did it, pastor.”

Most of us lack faith that God actually has people prepared for us who will listen. This is where the doctrine of predestination is the best news in the world. We have not yet exhausted the number of God’s elect. God has more people to be saved, so keep on sharing.

When Spurgeon was asked why he kept preaching the gospel when he believed in election, he replied, “Because the elect don’t have yellow stripes down their back.” In other words, he could not see who was elect and who was not, so he had to keep sharing, believing that God had more people who would listen.

The sovereignty of God is the greatest motivation for mission. God still has people, preordained from the beginning of time to be responsive to the gospel message. You may think that you have already shared with everyone who would possibly be interested in the gospel, but it is not so. Remember: that the Spirit of God goes before you. As the it says in Zachariah 4:6, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.”

God is more interested in saving people than we are in telling people how to be saved. So as we keep sharing, he will keep providing some to be saved.

Read the rest.

HT: Z

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Three simple prayer requests for missionaries

Pray on their behalf for

1. Gospel Opportunities and advancement
2. Protection and deliverance
3. Personal holiness and refreshment

More here by Dave Prickett at Cripplegate

 

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Praying for China

The world’s largest country has a new leader.  These pictures tell the story. Pray for the spread of the gospel and the work of Christ’s church in this land as you browse.

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An amazing mission story: 50 years of grace!

“In 1962 Don and Carol Richardson came into contact with a remote tribe in West New Guinea known as the Sawi people. They were cannabilistic headhunters without a written language, nor any clue about Jesus.

The Richardsons, along with their three children, preached the gospel to the Sawi people and witnessed a remarkable movement of God. The story is told in the best-selling book Peace Child and has inspired many to take the gospel to the furthest ends of the earth.

Just recently — fifty years after they first met the Sawi — the Richardsons returned to the village they once called home. This short 15-minute film from Pioneers documents that experience. It is one of the most amazing things you will ever see.”–DG Blog

View it here. . .

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Learning from Brainerd’s death

Jesse Johnson mentions three lessons he has learned from the death of David Brainerd, a man of God whom we know much about because Jonathan Edwards published this man’s journal after he died.  Brainerd died young and suffered much.  Johnson writes of some takeaways from this life/death:

1) In the earthly sense, we simply don’t suffer like Brainerd/Edwards, et. al. The sacrifices pastors made then were simply different than now. My greatest trial yesterday was that my car’s battery died. I could have walked to church and instead a neighbor gave me a ride. That is not quite suffering for Jesus.

2) We are not sinning by not suffering. It’s not my fault that I live in 2012 and not 1747. It’s not my fault that my congregation loves me, while Brainerd was expelled. It is not a sin to not suffer. I feel willing to suffer, but I know it is easy to feel that way when the sky is clear. God’s providence has placed me in a country with blessings like Starbucks, police, and a plurality of pastors. My ministry mirrors Brainerd’s gospel, but not his afflictions.

3) Even the slightest complaining from me is totally and wholly out of bounds. Brainerd left Yale for Indians and death. Edwards left a thriving ministry for suffering on the frontier. The Apostle Peter left everything in this world to follow the Lord. As John Piper writes, “Jesus was not impressed with Peter’s sacrifice.” Our Lord left heaven to come to earth—and he did so without complaining. We can bite our tongues when we make 21st century kinds of sacrifices, and we can be thankful for the era of human history in which we live.

Read more about Brainerd in this post by Jesse

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Meet a missionary: Adoniram Judson

Our church will be enjoying our Missions Conference in just over a week.  Missions is a significant part of our church life and it is always a joy to meet new missionaries for the first time or ones we have established a relationship with over years.

It’s also good this time of the year in our church life to re-aquaint ourselves with those who have been pioneers or well-known examples in missions.  That’s what Nathan does in this post called “A Life Not Wasted” on the life of Adoniram Judson.  Nathan points out Adoniram’s early struggle with faith–in fact renouncing it all until God used a great providence in his life to bring Adoniram to Christ. It goes on to give a brief overview of his ministry in India and Burma especially.

Even if you know a lot about Judson, take five minutes to refresh your memory of His life and impact!  Be reminded to not waste your life.

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Start today praying for the nations!

“Frontline Missions has produced a simple way to pray for the spread of Christ’s fame among thirty-one of the gospel-hungriest nations. The free pdf includes a map of the 10/40 window identifying thirty-one countries with some key data about which to pray. All we need to do is pray for the one corresponding to today’s date. You can certainly find other tools that give much more information (most notably Operation World), but this single-page map gives a quick, easy, and focused way to pray.

Download it today. And let us pray.”

–Matthew Hoskinson

 

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Can nothing more be done?

The Lord Jesus says to us all, “Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you. While you have light believe in the light.” . . . The lesson of the words is generally applicable to the whole professing Church of Christ. Its time for doing good in the world is short and limited. The throne of grace will not always be standing–it will be removed one day, and the throne of judgment will be set up in its place. The door of salvation by faith in Christ will not always be open–it will be shut one day forever, and the number of God’s elect will be completed. The fountain for all sin and uncleanness will not always be accessible; the way to it will one day be barred, and there will remain nothing but the lake that burns with fire and brimstone.

These are solemn thoughts; but they are true. They cry aloud to sleeping Churchmen and drowsy congregations, and ought to arouse great searchings of heart. “Can nothing more be done to spread the Gospel at home and abroad? Has every means been tried for extending the knowledge of Christ crucified? Can we lay our hands on our hearts, and say that the Churches have left nothing undone in the matter of missions? Can we look forward to the Second Advent with no feelings of humiliation, and say that the talents of wealth, and influence, and opportunities have not been buried in the ground?” Such questions may well humble us, when we look, on one side, at the state of professing Christendom, and, on the other, at the state of the heathen world. We must confess with shame that the Church is not walking worthy of its light.

J.C. Ryle, The Gospel of John

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I can relate to this

J.D. Greear:

“As I re-entered the United States I was struck by how much weight we give to things that really don’t matter that much. I had been unplugged from the internet for about a week, and upon re-engaging it I was inundated with the usual controversies in the Christian world of who said and who thinks what and whose out of balance and etc. I think that secondary and tertiary stuff matters (ultimately everything in the Bible does), but all of it all to be held in the context of “the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” There are still more than 6000 Unreached People Groups in the world with no access to the gospel and many of my own neighbors do not even understand it.

If you’re rushing down a sidewalk to help rescue people from a burning building and someone is trying to stop you to engage in an argument you say, “I don’t have time for that foolishness right now.” . . . .Given time and distance, my own heart will forget the urgency of first things and fixate and secondary and tertiary ones.

A lot of our intra-Christian problems would probably be fixed by a good mission trip. We’d still write about the stuff, but we’d probably do it differently. When we separate our theology from mission it’s bound to go bad.”

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A free missionary biography on Adoniram Judson

Get it here in ebook format

About this book:

Earnestly consider your role in completing the Great Commission.

That was John Piper’s overarching plea when he delivered a biographical message on Adoniram Judson in 2003.

Judson was America’s first foreign missionary and an example of one who considered, and executed on, his own uniquely strategic role in the completing of the Commission.

Though warned not to go to Burma, he entered the country almost 200 years ago — in July of 1813 — and there invested the next 38 years of his life preaching Christ where he had not been named.

And the cost was very high. But in God’s perfect economy, his suffering had a plain purpose. As Piper explains, “I am persuaded from Scripture and from the history of missions that God’s design for the evangelization of the world and the consummation of his purposes includes the suffering of his ministers and missionaries.”

Originally an address to pastors, Piper’s biography of Judson is now available in a short e-book that leads us to ask the same challenging question, “Might God be calling you to fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, to fall like a grain of wheat into some distant ground and die, to hate your life in this world and so to keep it forever and bear much fruit?”

An EPUB file is formatted for readers like the Nook, Sony Reader, and Apple iBooks (iPad, iPhone, iPod). A MOBI file is formatted for Kindle applications (this option works well on some mobile devices, and not so well on others).

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