"Why Me?"
Sermon Transcript for April 28, 2002
Scripture Reading: II Corinthians 5:11-20
By Rev. Dick McClain, Keynote Speaker for Mission Conference
Good morning! It’s good to be with you today. It’s good to be back home in Indiana. Indiana was my first home in the United States. We came here from Indiana when I was about three and lived in Winona Lake. And spent about five years in Winona Lake and then went to Hong Kong. That was back in eighth grade. And then my senior year in high school graduation from Warsaw High School. Any other marching tigers out there—only me? Ah, there, there we go – All right, we’ve got to talk afterwards. And then during my college years my parents moved down to Greenwood and Dad was one of the directors at what used to be the Oriental Missionary Society, OMS, International. And so they lived in Greenwood while I was down at Asbury College. So this is kind of home. I haven’t lived in Indiana for a long time, but it’s good to be back. I was a pastor in the West Michigan Conference for about eleven years. My wife was from Michigan in college; so I moved there. And from Michigan moved to Georgia. We’ve lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia for 16 years. Has any one been at Stone Mountain? I call it the confederate Mt. Rushmore. But it’s good to be back where people just talk normal, you know, and all of that. So pardon me any Georgia folks who are here today. I’m enjoying being back up here.
Do you read Ann Landers—any one read Ann Landers? Well, this is … I clipped out one of her columns a while back. It’s entitled, "The pole hit my car and other excuses". And these are answers that people gave when their insurance company asked for details of the accident that they filed a claim on. So here are some of the people’s explanations for their car accidents. "The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intentions." What, like it had been planning on that! "The guy was all over the place; I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him." He must have had a bulldog in his back or something. "I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment." Some of them will do that to you—not mine. "As I approached the intersection, a stop sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident." There you’ve got it; it’s the whole Department of Transportation’s fault. Listen to this one, "The telephone pole was approaching fast. I was attempting to swerve out of its path when it struck my front end." And I’ve lived in China, and Hong Kong, and India and Taiwan and Panama and visited a whole lot of other places. I have never seen a pole that can do that. "The pedestrian had no idea which direction to go, so I ran him over." "Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have." And this final one I know has to be from the bypass that runs around Atlanta, which is a crazy place to drive. "The indirect cause of this accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth." I have seen him. I know that man. Oh, my goodness.
You know, it’s amazing the excuses we come up with for doing the things we shouldn’t have done and for failing to do what we ought to have done. You know, when you read them in a column like this it sounds kind of funny doesn’t it? But it strikes me, brothers and sisters in Jesus, that one day you and I are going to stand before the throne of God and God’s going to ask for a report from us of what we have done or not done with the gospel, which he entrusted to us. And if, in that day, we have the sobering realization that we didn’t do with the good news what we ought to have done, I’m afraid our reasons or our excuses won’t cause anybody to laugh. There won’t be any chuckles that day when we try to give some explanation for why we just held the gospel to ourselves. Two thousand years ago Jesus gave what we call the great commission, "Go into all the world and make disciples of every nation!" The word is ethno; not just every country—they didn’t even exist back then--every people group in the world.
How have we done in the two thousand years since then? Well, of six billion people plus on planet earth today, two billion people name the name of Christ. That’s good news! 2.3 billion people are not personally followers of Jesus but they live in some place where they at least have access to the gospel. There’s a possibility that sometime during their lifetime they’ll hear the good news and will have an opportunity to respond. But the sobering reality if you’ve already jumped ahead and done the math is that there is 1.7 billion people on planet earth today who live for all practical purposes beyond the reach of the gospel. They are not followers of Jesus today, not because they decided not to be but because not only has no one ever shared the good news with them, they live someplace where there’s no one to share it with them. There isn’t any Bible in their language; there isn’t any church in their culture, no Christian in their life, no Gideon’s Bible in the drawer of the motel when you pull it out, no Christian radio, no Christian television. Totally cut off from the life that God has revealed in Jesus.
And I say, "That’s awful; it shouldn’t be that way. What are we doing about it? Well, the good news is that the North American church, and we’re certainly not the only player in the world mission scene—in fact the great energy in world mission today is coming from the church in the developing world. We’re kind of lagging behind today. But they’re not our responsibility; we’re our responsibility. So how are we doing? Well, the North American church sends, friends, two billion dollars a year in international missions. Now let me hasten to say, missions doesn’t begin when you get on an airplane to go someplace else. You really could hang a sign over every exit to the church that says, "You are now entering the mission field", because the mission field starts right outside those stained-glass windows. But in terms of the international dimension, where most of the really un-reached people are—I mean there are a lot of lost people in our society, in our culture, but there are a lot of opportunities to find God here, to know about Him. There are people in the world who don’t have that opportunity.
So we spend two billion dollars a year, the North American church, in international missions. So that’s a lot of money. Yes, it is. But, consider what we spend on some other things. Not all Americans, but just roughly one-third of us who are church-going folks in our culture. We spend $180 million dollars a year on wrinkle cream. We spend $270 million dollars a year on sunglasses, $630 million dollars a year on pet food, $270 million dollars a year on Christmas cards, and $610 million dollars a year on Christmas trees. If you’ve done the mental arithmetic, you’re up to $2.1 billion dollars—a hundred million more we American Christians spend on wrinkle cream, sunglasses, pet food, Christmas cards, and Christmas trees than we do on reaching 1.7 billion people who are beyond the reach of the gospel. Now I add a couple of more to that. We spend $22.5 billion dollars a year on fast food and $3.6 billion dollars on weight loss programs I guess to undo the damage of the fast food. Thirteen times—listen! Thirteen times we spend on fast food and weight loss--not all Americans, but just the third of us who are in church—than we spend on international missions.
So I look at that and I say, "Well praise God for what has been done and what is being done." But there is so much more we could do. We’re not even coming close to tapping our potential. Now, I know in many respects I’m preaching to the choir. I get to go to some congregations in my work of helping churches figure out how to mobilize them and how they personalize their mission outreach. I get to some congregations that are still in the dugout. They haven’t even figured out how to get up to the batter’s box yet. You know when I come to a church like this I know we’re somewhere well past second base, maybe we’re rounding the third base corner headed for home. I mean you are a congregation that already is leading the pack in your mission involvement. And I want to say "Thank you". I want to commend you for that. I want to say "Thank you" especially for at least two of the families that you have an interest in, that you support because they are members of our mission. John and Colleen Eisenberg and Brent and Beth Cravens. By the way is Mrs. Cravens here this morning? Ah, I’ve got to meet you afterwards. I love your grandson and granddaughter. They answered a call to missions when I was preaching at Faith Church up in Delta several years ago. I’m just honored to be in their grandma’s church this morning. If they knew I was here today they would want me to say "thank you" to you for your partnership in the work of the gospel. So I know I’m talking to folks who are already doing it. And I thank you for that; I commend you.
But listen, can I be honest enough—can we be honest enough for me just to publicly acknowledge what I’ve found in church after church like yours, even in congregations that have a long reputation of significant involvement in missions? A sizeable portion of the congregation is glad to let the church do it but you personally have never gotten involved or invested. As the Faith-Promise cards are handed out you let other people respond but haven’t made a faith-promise yourself. You’re basically still saying, "Why me? Why me? It’s not my thing! My thing is something else. I’ll leave missions to somebody else." And so while I’m talking to all of you today I really want to direct my thoughts particularly to those of you who may still be saying, "But, this is all well and good but what does this have to do with me? Why should I get involved? Why should I make a faith commitment? Why should I make a serious prayer commitment? Why should I take a card where there are a lot of service opportunities laid out this year and commit myself to a short-term mission experience? Why should I even prayerfully dare to say, "God, do you want something different from my life? Do you want me to do what Brent and Beth have done and commit my life to go to one of those un-reached areas of the world?" So that’s what I want to talk about in the few minutes we have this morning.
In the passage that was read for you earlier this morning, there are four simple reasons why every one of us needs to get involved. When I say every one of us that is every one of us who knows Jesus. And I don’t assume that just because we are in church this morning you really know Christ in a personal way. If not, I hope you’ll meet him today. I mean what…can you think of a better time to say, "Yes" to God and to open your heart to Jesus than today? Why wait till tomorrow? Every one of us here today is either a missionary or a mission field. So if you are here this morning and you are a mission field I hope that before you leave you’ll get a hold of the pastor and say, "Pastor, I just want to receive Jesus in to my life." But for those of you who have already done that, why should you get involved in God’s global cause? Four simple reasons:
First of all, you’ve got a debt to pay. In verse 11 Paul said, "Since then we know what it is to hear the Lord, we try to persuade others." What was he saying? He was saying that in coming to know the fear of God in his own life, he had found great freedom in that. I could preach another sermon on that. I’ll try to avoid chasing that rabbit except to say that there’s wonderful liberty in coming to live in the fear of the Lord. When I live in the fear of the Lord that’s not in terror of God but in reverent awe of the living God. That sets me free from every other fear because I realize there’s only one spectator who counts in my life. There’s wonderful liberty in beginning to live your life in the fear of the Lord! Paul had come to that experience. But he recognized that when he experienced it, it wasn’t just for him. He understood that we are never blessed just for ourselves. Whenever we are blessed, it’s to be a blessing to someone else. Just like when God called Abraham. He said, "I’ m going to bless you. I’m going to make your name great. I’m going to make your family great. I’m going to bring a great nation forth from you. But ultimately it’s not just for you, it’s for all the peoples of the world!" In Romans 1:14 Paul put it this way. He said, "I’m a debtor to Jews and Greeks." John Piper in his book, Let the Nations Be Glad, asks the question, "In what sense was the Apostle Paul indebted to the Jewish and the Gentile community?" He said that he really wasn’t in debt to them at all. That wasn’t the point. The point was that he was indebted to Jesus. He owed Jesus a debt that he never could repay. And the only way he could discharge the debt he could not pay back to Jesus was to share Jesus with the rest of the world. "In that sense," he said, "I’m indebted to the Jews and to Greeks or the Gentiles alike." And I want to just submit to you this morning that we with Paul have a debt to pay.
How many of you were raised in church? Your Mom and your Dad…look around, most of the hands here—not everybody—but the majority of us were raised in church. Did we have any choice about that? No! We just had the good fortune of being born in to a family where we were taken to church as little ones. And the rest of us, even though you may not have been raised in church, you were raised in a culture and a location where you were surrounded by churches. We had tremendous spiritual blessings. That’s not true of everybody in the world. And then think of the material blessings that we have. I mean, it’s just incredible. You don’t have to travel too much outside of the United States in the developing world to discover that what we take for granted is beyond the wildest dreams of most people on planet earth today. We have been an abundantly blessed church. To what end? Is it because God just decided He loved us better, loved us more? Or has He blessed us so that we can be a blessing? I want to submit to you this morning that we need to get involved here and on our knees and in going—first, because we’ve got a debt to pay.
Secondly, every one of us, personally, individually, not enough for the church to do it, we individually need to get involved because we’ve got a love to share. Paul said in verse 13, he says, "If I’m out of my mind it’s for God’s sake; if I’m in my right mind it’s for your sake. For the love of Christ compels me." I like the way the old King James Version puts that, Pastor Mike, "the love of Christ constraineth me." It just has a ring to it, doesn’t it? I’m urged; I’m transformed by the love of Christ to go and to share the good news with others. What about it brothers and sisters? Do you have that kind of love of Christ and for Christ in your heart that just compels you to go and share with others?
I’ve been blessed over the years working with the Missions Society for United Methodists to meet so many people who went in response to the inner compulsion of the love of Christ in their lives. Let me share with you just one or two stories. In 1993, we were recruiting our first team of missionaries to go into Russia, the former Soviet Union, just two years after the Iron Curtain came down and the Soviet Union broke up. Going at the invitation of the National Ministry of Education for the Russian Federation to go in to Russian public schools to teach courses in Christian values and morals based on the New Testament. Are there any public school teachers here today? Do you think you could teach a class like that in Franklin public schools? Probably not. The remarkable thing, doesn’t God just blow us away every now and then? He just turns the world upside down and what we can’t do in a nation that was founded as a Christian nation you can go to the former Soviet Union now and do---teach a course on Christian values and morals based on the life of Jesus, the gospels.
Well, at any rate, we were recruiting our first team to go and my assistant came—I was personnel director at the mission at that time—my assistant came in one day and said, "Dick, we’ve got an application from Dr. Thomas Horne. He wants to go with the mission team to Russia. I said, "That’s great!" She said, "Dick, he’s 80 years old!" Now we’re getting ready to send our team to Kholmsk, Russia. Do you know where Vladivostok is—the eastern port of the Russian navy? Five hundred miles north—I mean you’re northeast of Siberia. It’s not the end of the world but you can see it from there. And I was busy trying to recruit, you know, young students out of Huntington College, and Taylor, and Malone, and Asbury and other schools thinking we’re going to get, you know, we’re going to get some bright-eyed young people right out of college who are willing to give a year of their life to tell people about Jesus northeast of Siberia. And my secretary comes in and says an eighty-year old man wants to go. And I kind of chuckled and I said well I guess we’ll have to find a polite way to let him know it probably isn’t going to happen. Was I wrong! Oh, man, may God multiply Tom Horne’s number.
Fast-forwarding the story, he’s just an incredible person. A Ph.D. out of Virginia Poly Tech. His last job before retirement was with the federal Department of Education and he ran agricultural education for sixteen southeastern states. So he’s accepted on to the team and we are now at a retreat center near the Atlanta airport with the other members of his team getting ready to launch to Russia. And they are just meeting each other. The first night they are telling their stories. Roger and Helen Spaulding from North Hobart, Indiana, a retired couple, who first went to Costa Rica at the age of 66 as missionaries. They had been back from there after three years in Costa Rica, back several years and now in their early 70’s are a part of that team going to Russia. Don and Dotty Dexheimer—Don’s now pastor in the North Indiana Conference. He was a lay pastor at that time--several other folks and Dr. Horne. They go around the table and tell their stories. It gets to Dr. Horne. He shares a remarkable story. At the age of 69 he’s in a hospital room dying of cancer. Down the hall in another room on the same floor is his wife also dying of cancer. God speaks to him in the night in a vision. And it’s like reading something out of the Old Testament—tells him that his wife’s next address will be heaven but that he is going to get well. That’s exactly what happened. It’s eleven years later now. He spent eleven years doing short-term missions with the Shaqtaw in Mississippi and served his church. And now he hears about the chance to go to Russia. And as he’s telling his story at this point tears are just streaming down this stately gentleman’s cheeks. Tall, probably 6’4"-6’5" with a full mane of white hair, distinguished, Christian gentleman, tears streaming down his cheeks. And he said, "When I heard about the chance to go to Russia and tell Russian school children about Jesus, finally I knew why I had been born!" Oh boy, I said, "Tom, you’re out of your mind! You’re 80 years old and you are supposed to be retired. You live in Waynesboro, Georgia. Life is comfortable down there. What are you going off to northeastern Siberia for? You’re crazy!" Tom would say, "Well, if I’m crazy it’s for God’s sake. If I’m in my right mind it’s for those Russian children’s sake. The bottom line is the love of Christ compels me. The love of Christ won’t let me stay. It makes me go."
A few years ago Esther Pereira, of Peter and Esther Pereira, missionaries from the Chicago area who are back in the land of their birth, India as missionaries. Peter’s a member of the Northern Illinois conference. They are serving now in Hyderabad, India and they work with the poorest of the poor. They work with the children of rag pickers. That’s not a figurative term, that’s an adjective. They start schools for rag pickers’ children. They have an orphanage for those children. One day Esther is under a bridge taking food to people who live under the bridge. Their only shelter is the road that passes overhead. She leaves the folks under the bridge, comes back up to the street, hails a taxi, and gets in. The taxi driver takes note of the fact that here’s a nicely dressed, attractive middle-aged Indian woman. And he looks around and thinks, "Where did she come from?" And so he asks her, "Ma’am, where did you come from?" She said, "I came from under the bridge." He said, "What were you doing under the bridge?" She said, "I was taking food to the people who live there." He looked at her in his mirror and said, "Ma’am, you must be a Christian." A Hindu taxi driver knew that only a Christian cared enough to go to the people under the bridge and take food to them. You see, Esther Pereira—your family left India when you were a little girl. You met and married a handsome young engineer. It was enough when he decided to become a preacher. But you left the comfort of Chicago to go back to Hyderabad, India. You don’t work with the Brahman’s; you work with the rag pickers and people under the bridge. Esther, why do you do it? Esther would say, "The love of Christ compels me." Why should you get involved? Because you have a love to share.
There is a third reason and that’s that you have an answer to give. Paul said in verse 17, we read it earlier, "If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. Old things pass away, behold, everything becomes new." Do you realize what good news that is? Do you know that all over the world today are people saying, "How can I roll the clock back on my life? I wish I could get back to day one because I’ve blown my life badly. I’ve just messed it all up. If only I could turn the clock back." The only problem is you’d have to turn it back all the way to Adam because if you turned it back to day one for them, they’d just do it again. It’s the infection of sin that we were born with. And so people were saying, "How do I get free of that? Is there anything or anyone who can change me inside?" And Paul says, "If anyone is in Christ they become a new creation. Old things pass away; everything becomes new." That is good news friends. But you and I have grown up with that. Most of us here probably said "Yes" to Jesus when we were little children in vacation church school. We just figured that’s how life is. But most of the world has never heard that good news and they are asking the question, "How can I get free from sin? How can my life be transformed?" Some of them are even afraid to ask the question because it is too depressing to ask. You don’t ask the question because you are afraid of the answer. You are afraid the answer might be, "There’s no way." And here you and I have the answer and unless we share it people will go into eternity having never found the answer to their question.
Several years ago the Anglican Church in Nigeria sent one of their leading priest to England as a missionary. Think about it. That’s an interesting one. You know, there are more Muslims than there are Methodists in England today. So they sent one of their priests to England as a missionary. He’d had a great ministry in Nigeria but had never had the opportunity to travel internationally prior to that time. And so when he and his wife arrived at London’s Heathrow airport, everything was new. Well, they made it through immigration and now they get to customs. And if you’ve been in those international airports you know it can get kind of confusing in customs. You’ve got green lines and red lines and signs saying, "Nothing Declared" and signs saying, "Something to Declare". None of it made any sense to him so he and his wife just found their way in a line. As it happened it was a red line. They get up to the front of the line finally and now he’s looking at the customs agent. And the agent looks at him waiting for him to say something but he doesn’t know what he’s suppose to say. So he’s just sanding there. Finally frustration the agent says, "Well, what do you have to declare?" Whereupon he reaches into his pocket, takes out his New Testament and says, "I’m here to declare Christ in Him crucified and myself your servant for His sake." Praise God! You see he had an answer to give. Now that wasn’t exactly what that agent was looking for that day, but he knew he had the answer that the whole world needed. And when someone just asked the question, "What do you have to declare?" He said, "I have Jesus to declare."
Friends, it’s not cultural arrogance to go anywhere in the world to people of any spiritual commitment and say, "Let me tell you about Jesus." You say, "But they already have their own religions." Three weeks ago at Gammon Seminary in Atlanta at a noon luncheon I heard a Methodist Bishop from Nigeria, Bishop Ayoladigbolu, raised a Muslim prince; now a Christian, speak with generosity about his former life in the Islamic world. He talked about some of the spiritual disciplines that he learned there that he’s grateful for. But he said to us, "Make no mistake, they don’t worship the same God. In my years in Islam, the God I worshiped in Islam never offered me forgiveness and grace. I only discovered that in Jesus." That’s the Methodist Bishop from Nigeria. It’s not me saying that. It’s a former Muslim priest, now a Methodist Bishop saying, "The Muslim world, for all their zeal for God, they need Jesus too." It’s not arrogance. It’s not cultural imperialism to go anywhere in the world and say, "You need Jesus." It’s simply one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Why should you get involved? Because you have an answer to give.
There’s a final reason and it’s this. You have a command to obey. Did you catch it in verses 18, 19, and 20? Paul says several things. He said that God has committed to us the ministry and the message of reconciliation. Now that’s an awesome thought—that God has taken the ministry and the message of reconciliation and he’s put it in to your hands. He’s committed it to you. He’s committed it to me. And then he says, "We are Christ’s ambassadors." Now our country has a number of ambassadors. They do not have as their address the United States. An ambassador is a sent out one. An ambassador goes somewhere else in the world to another people on behalf of his or her government. Paul says we’re Christ’s ambassadors, we’re sent out to the world. Just another way of repeating what Jesus said to the disciples when he said, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me." In other words, listen up to what I am about to say. This isn’t even just your momma talking. This is the one who will look you in the face and say, "All authority in the universe is mine." It’s either the Son of God or he’s nuts. If he’s nuts I don’t know why we’re here. We’re here because we believe He’s the Son of God and has the right to look us in the eye and say, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go ye therefore into all the world and make disciples of every nation." It wasn’t a suggestion, friends, it was a command.
Two weeks ago right now I was in First United Methodist Church in Carrolton, Georgia, County Seat Church. They were celebrating their first annual global impact celebration. They had a number of missionaries there. They had 14 or 15 missionaries from all kinds of different groups. There were folks from the General Board and from the Mission Society and from other organizations. One of the missionaries there, one of the couples, was Alan and Beth Barrett from the South Georgia Conference. Both of their father’s are in heaven now, but Tom Barrett was a pastor and superintendent in the South Georgia Conference. Beth’s dad, Alton Paris, was a pastor and superintendent in the North Alabama Conference. Alan and Beth had served as missionaries in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. They are back in the states now because they have a son with cystic fibrosis. So they can’t live overseas any more but they are still involved.
Alan was to have been in Pakistan a month ago in the church where the grenade went off that Sunday that you read about in the news as were a lot of other people who never made it to church that day. What a remarkable story just in the weeks that have been the aftermath of that as people began to compare notes of the number of people who were to have been there that morning that didn’t to make it to church that day. Alan was to have been there and a car accident back home made him postpone his trip. Now two weeks ago this morning he was leaving right from the 11:00 a.m. service to go to Atlanta’s airport to fly to Pakistan and was going to be last Sunday n that church spending a couple of weeks there ministering to missionaries and teams who are serving in a really difficult place. You say, "Alan is it safe to go there now?" I asked him that. He said, "No, it’s not." He said, "There’s a $50,000 price tag on the head of any missionary in that place right now." I said, "Alan, you must be really brave to leave Beth and the children and Pine Mountain, Georgia to go back to Pakistan like a time like this." The same question someone asked the Barrett’s ten years ago, when during Desert Shield they finished their furlough and moved back to the refugee camps of Peshawa, Pakistan where people were demonstrating against the United States for our aggression against Iraq. Right at that time the Barrett family moved back to Pakistan to work in a pretty hostile environment. People said then, "You must be really brave to go to a place like this at a time like this." There response then as Alan’s response now was the same, "We’re not any braver than any one else." He would say to you, "For us it has nothing to do with courage. It’s the simple matter of obedience. God has called us to go and we decided to obey." It’s amazing how many issues you can cut through and lay aside when you deal with the obedience question. But God, what about my kids? Settle your obedience question and now that’s God’s concern. But Lord what about my future, what about my finances, what about, what about, what about? Do you realize we spend half of our lives doing nothing because we are all tied up on the what abouts? God says, "Just settle the obedience question."
It’s not just the Alan and Beth Barrett’s of the world who are called to be involved in the church. It’s every one of us here. To whom was the great commission given? I would submit that it was given to each and every one of us who call Jesus, Lord. And so my word to you this morning is very simple. Don’t sit this one out. Don’t just let your church do it. You get involved. You make a commitment to pray. You make a commitment to get involved in some of those service projects that are a part of your church’s mission outreach. And by God’s grace, you make a faith commitment this morning. If you’ve done it before and you have a figure in mind, do something crazy for God’s sake—put another zero on the end. You say, "Well, that would take a miracle." Well, praise God, wouldn’t that be something. If I put down something so much that God would have to work a miracle for me to get that! A guy in my church two years ago did that. He put a $40,000 faith promise in the offering plate. You say, "$40,000, it would take a miracle!" Guess what? God did the miracle—gave him the $40,000. He brought a check in and put it on the pastor’s desk and said, "I would have never seen this money had I not made the faith commitment." He put down what there was no way he could give. He did what Hannah did in I Samuel 1. Do you remember her faith promise? She said, "I want to give you my son. I’m giving you my son to be a priest." Just one problem—she didn’t have one! Why not give God what you don’t have and say, "Okay God, I’m doing my part, now I’m trusting you. If you want the gift, you’ve got to provide it." How’s that for a deal?
Why not do something risky today? For Jesus’ sake, do something bold. Make a serious commitment. 1.7 billion people are not going to be won to Christ on our leftovers. They will only come to know Jesus when we say our priority, the very reason we exist as a church, is to make Jesus known through the ends of the earth. And by God’s grace through our giving and our praying and as God wills, our going, we want to have a part in that. May God help us to respond in faith and obedience. Amen.
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