The Spread of the Gospel and the Glory of God

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The Spread of the Gospel and the Glory of God

Before we dive into the word, I would just say it’s pure joy to get up early in the morning and come to Southeastern Seminary. I am so thankful for this place. I’m so thankful for Dr. Aiken, and for numerous faculty and staff here who are friends of mine and have had a profound influence on my life, including, as you mentioned, my spiritual father in ministry, Jim Chaddick.

So I love the faculty, staff, and students of this school and I’m honored to be back here today if you have a Bible, and I hope you or somebody around you does. I invite you to open with me to Matthew chapter 28, Matthew chapter 28, although I hope you have this passage memorized.

And just as a heads up, I don’t intend to do an exposition of this entire passage. Instead, I intend to focus on three words and their development over the rest of the New Testament. And through these words, I hope to lift your eyes to people in places far from where we are right now in the world, which is admittedly hard for us to do for many reasons.

One, we have a lot going on in our lives and our families, and just this room. How many of us are walking through something in our lives or our families right now that’s really heavy, maybe even to the point that it’s hard to get up on some mornings without going into details, I would just say I’m there and then we have a lot going on in our churches and our communities or in school.

How many of us are walking through challenges and school studies, church community that feel overwhelming? I’m guessing that’s a lot of us too, which means it’s hard in the day-to-day to lift our eyes and people and places far from our lives and our families and our churches and our communities, our world right around us.

The Urgent Need of the Gospel

But I want to encourage you that amidst all of those needs in your life and your family, your church, your community, your world, praise God, you have the gospel and the gospel is good. The grace of God is sufficient for every single need in your life your family your church and your community.

Over the next few minutes, I want to lift your eyes to over 3 billion people in the world who right now don’t have that gospel and are walking through the same hurts and heartaches in many ways deeper hurts and heartaches, but they don’t have the gospel. They’ve never heard the good news of who Jesus is and how much he loves them.

So we’re not talking about people who have heard of Jesus and rejected him. We’re talking about the more than 3 billion people who haven’t even heard of them and who currently don’t have access to the good news about ’em.

They don’t have a Christian or a church near them who can share the gospel with them. We call them unreached. And here’s the other reason I think this is hard and will be hard in the next few minutes because as soon as I mention unreached in the world, what happens is we immediately think about missions and missionaries and we put this conversation, even a sermon like this in a category of a mission sermon, and we do this subtly, almost unknowingly in a way that allows us to excuse ourselves from its implications.

This kind of thinking is not good for us and ultimately this kind of thinking is damning for the nations. I want you to think about this with me. Luanne Conference on world evangelization in 1974, almost 50 years ago, a man named Ralph Winter trumpeted the need for focus on unreached people groups.

In the 50 years since then, we have talked about unreached people, researched unreached people, held innumerable conferences on unreached people, and turned entire mission organizations upside down to focus on unreached people. And 50 years later, there are more unreached people in the world today than when all of that started.

Do you realize this? There are more unreached people in the world today than not just 50 years ago, there are more unreached people in the world today than ever before in history.

This is happening on our watch. The world population is increasing, including the number of unreached people, and the churches are nowhere close to keeping up with what it will take to reach them, which should clue us in that maybe something is seriously wrong with the way we’re thinking and talking about missions and doing it. I’m going to try to show you a map on the screen.

I’m not sure if this is working or not. We’ll see. Is it working back there? Can you guys see it? No. Okay, well imagine it’s really unfortunate. There’s a lot that hinges on showing you a couple of things.

Oh yes, okay, here, boom. Okay, praise is God. Okay, and the sermon would’ve gone on without the technology just to be clear, but it was going to involve some adjustments. Alright? I hope this is a map that you’re familiar with.

So the green areas of this map represent areas in the world that are reached by the gospel. So obviously it doesn’t mean that everybody in those places is a Christian, we know that, but these are places where the gospel has gone, where Christians and churches live, churches have been planted, the gospel’s able to spread, people have access to the gospel and these green areas, the yellow areas represent places in the world that are less reached by the gospel. Usually, it’s going in one of two directions.

There used to be a lot of gospel access in that place, but the church has weakened in its influence. There’s less gospel access, so you see parts of Europe like that or it’s going the other way. Maybe the gospel has more recently come there, but it’s still a weak church with relatively little gospel access around it.

Then you have the red areas in the world, which is where the most unreached people in the world live. No map like this is perfect, but that area represents the approximately. So let’s just put this, make sure we’re on the same page. Approximately 3.2 billion people.

Practically what it means if you live in one of those red areas, the likelihood is you’ll be born, you’ll live and you’ll die and you’ll never even hear the gospel. Remember, this is why we don’t say, I don’t know why we talk about unreached people around the world.

There are unreached people in my office or unreached people in my neighborhood. Those people are not unreached and say, how do you know? Because they’re in your office or your neighborhood, they have access to the gospel. You’re it. People are not unreached here.

People are lost here in North Carolina and metro Washington DC just like there are in Saudi Arabia or Somalia. The difference is there are a few churches in North Carolina, metro Washington, DC there aren’t Christians in churches in most parts of Saudi or Somalia, and as a result, if you live in a place like that in the red, the likelihood is you’ll be born, you’ll live and die without ever even hearing the gospel.

Do we feel the weight of what that means? We’re talking about 3 billion people just like you and me, who are being born, living, and dying, without ever hearing the gospel. And we know from God’s word that they cannot be saved from their sin if they don’t hear the gospel.

This is Romans 10. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ, and they won’t hear the word of Christ if somebody doesn’t go and share it with them. And we as the church of Jesus Christ in our day on our watch, are practically ignoring them.

I believe this is true anecdotally, most Christians have not prayed for unreached people this week in their time alone with the Lord. Most Christians, if they’ve never been to Southeastern Seminary, may not even know about unreached people in the world. And if they do know about them, we don’t really think about them.

We don’t talk about them a lot in most churches. We don’t pray for them in our church gatherings. We don’t give resources to reach them. Only a tiny percentage of Christians consider going to them, and that’s not just anecdotal.

There’s data that makes that clear. Jesus says, where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. Well, where is our treasure? Well, as Christians and our country, we spend most of our treasure on ourselves.

We give a small percentage of our treasure to churches or ministries and most of that we spend on making church comfortable for ourselves. And then a small percentage of what we give to churches and ministries goes to, well, a line item we call missions.

But did you know that this is speaking broadly, the church in our country, out of the amount we give to missions, approximately 98 to 99% of that money actually goes to green areas in the world. Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Europe, and even parts of Asia over here, we give to missions, and in the name of missions, we ignore the people who most need the gospel and we’ve created a whole church culture that’s content to practically ignore 3 billion people who’ve never heard it.

That’s content to focus on our lives and our families and our churches where we have the gospel while we throw relative pennies, send a small number of people to those who’ve never heard the gospel and we celebrate that as missions. I do want to be really careful and clear here. I praise God specifically for the IMB.

All that goes toward the unreached through the IMB and all the missionaries, brothers, and sisters I know and love who are with the IMB. At the same time, I’m convinced that the way we have talked, and I include myself in this, the way I have talked about missions, has contributed to this problem because the reality of unreached people is not ultimately a missions problem.

The reality of unreached people is ultimately a discipleship problem. 3 billion people in the world are unreached by the gospel still not because we don’t have enough missionaries. 3 billion people in the world are unreached by the gospel today because we don’t have enough Christians who are actually following Jesus.

Maybe another way to put that is what unreached people need are not hundreds or thousands more missionaries working to get the gospel to them. Unreached people need hundreds of thousands, millions upon millions of Christians working to get the gospel to them. Do you see the difference?

What Does it Mean to be a Follower of Jesus?

And until the church of Jesus Christ wakes up and realizes this is what it means to be a follower of Jesus, to be a disciple maker for the nations, until the church of Jesus Christ and every Christian in it realizes this is what we’re all here for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth until we wake up and realize that, then more and more people, multitudes more will plunge into everlasting suffering without ever even hearing of the one who gives eternal life. We need a total reorientation in our day around what it means to follow Jesus in the world.

Lemme show you this straight from the mouth of Jesus and in the story of the church in the Bible. So first, straight from the mouth of Jesus, we know these words. Jesus’ last words to his disciples in the book of Matthew, he tells them all authority and heaven on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, the name of the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe all that I’ve commanded you. And behold, I’m with you always to the end of the age of all nations, Ponta, one of all the ethnic groups, so not nations like we think of geopolitical entities, countries today starting about all the ethnic groups of the world, tribes, languages, peoples, the Berber of Morocco, the Ani of Nigeria, the Pashtoon of Afghanistan and on and on and on.

Thousands of them, some say over 11,000 distinct people groups in the world. Others say over 16,000 distinct people groups in the world and Jesus said, make disciples of all of them. That’s not a general command to make disciples among a lot of people.

That’s a specific command to make disciples among all the peoples and places in the world. Then Mark 1615, which I realized it’s a debate about its inclusion in the Book of Mark, but these words certainly echo Matthew 28. Jesus said to them, go in all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.

Then Luke 24, verse 45, he opened their minds to understand the scripture said to them, thus it’s written that Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and the repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. Do you see this?

This is part of the essence of the gospel itself. This is good news for all the nations that must be proclaimed to all of them, which is why Luke picks this up in Acts One with what Jesus says to his disciples. We read it earlier, you’ll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

You’ll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Jesus made it clear my disciples will all have, every one of them have supernatural power to be disciple-makers among the nations, among all the peoples and places to the ends of the earth, which then leads to the whole story of the church.

In the book of Acts, we know the gospel spreads in Jerusalem for the first seven chapters of Acts. Stephen is stoned, which then leads to a scattering of disciples into where Judea and Samaria act.

Chapter eight verse one. There arose on that day, great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. They were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles and those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

You see that the gospel spreads to Judea and Samaria, not through a special group of missionaries, but through everyday Christians proclaiming the word wherever they go in Judea and Samaria, which then leads to Acts chapter 11 verse 19 where we read those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over.

Stephen traveled as far as Fania and Cyprus and Antioch speaking the word there they scattered, spreading the word because this is what Christians do, speaking the word to all these different people, but specifically to no one except Jews, until some of them men of Cyprus and Cyrene who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenism also preaching the Lord Jesus and the hand of Lord is with them in a great number who believed turn to the Lord.

You see it now, the Lord is spreading to the nations beyond the Jewish people as Hellen us Greeks believe and turn to the Lord and it’s happening through Christians preaching Jesus. Then what happens in Antioch, just a couple of chapters later, chapter 13 verse one, they were in the church in Antioch, prophets and teachers, Barnabas Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, my al lifelong friend, Herod the Tetra and Saul, while they were worshiping the Lord in fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart from me, Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off to be sent out by the Holy Spirit. They went down to Cia. From there, they sell to Cyprus. When they arrived at salami, they proclaimed the word of God.

Now, yes, here in Acts 13, God specifically calls Paul and Barnabas to go out from Antioch, but the narrative is clearly written to show us the whole church was involved in this thing and what happens as a result. Well, this is the story of the church.

They leave Antioch, these red arrows are them going out. They go down to Cyprus. Once they get there, they proclaim the word, they make disciples, they gather ’em together in a church and then they move on up to Palestinian Antioch in the north down to Lira Derby and all these places.

Everywhere they’re going, they’re making disciples and gathering together in churches, new places, new people coming to know Christ. Then the blue arrows or them coming back, they’re encouraging the church.

They come back to Antioch at the end of Acts chapter 14 and encourage the church there. Then you have the council of Jerusalem in Acts chapter 15. Then in Acts chapter 16, you have another journey this time a little conflict in the church.

So now we’ve got two missionary teams and Paul takes Silas with him and they pick up Timothy along the way and they go to some of the same places they’ve been before and they’re encouraging the church. What happens?

Acts chapter 16, six through 10, Paul starts to go in one direction. The spirit stops him. He starts to go in another direction. The spirit stops him. He has a vision of a man from Macedonia saying, come over here and help us.

So he concludes God’s calling us to go to more places where the gospel hasn’t gone yet. So they go up into Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, down in Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, all these places we recognize from the New Testament and they’re making disciples and planting churches and all these places, new people, new places.

The church is keeping pressing on where the gospel hasn’t gone and they head down, encourage the church in Jerusalem, and back up to Antioch. That sets the stage for the third journey leaving Antioch again. But you’ll notice on this third journey, Paul doesn’t cover any new territory.

He’s just encouraging the same people until he gets to Corinth and he writes a letter and the letter he writes there is now Corinthians, not Corinthians, because he’s in Corinth. He doesn’t have to write a letter to him. He’s with him.

So he writes Romans here. New Testament professor is really discouraged right now. So no, he writes Romans here, why Romans when he is in Corinth? Well, I’m glad you asked.

He doesn’t write it just to get, I mean this glorious picture of the gospel. Is it just for that? No, it’s more than that. It’s more than just a glorious picture of the gospel. He says I’m on my way. Look at the end of Romans.

He tells us why he wrote the letter. I’m on my way down to Jerusalem, an offering that I’m taking there, and once I go take the offering there for these starving saints in Jerusalem, I’m coming to you. Why write Romans? Why am I coming to you at this point?

Well, look at one more map. Well look at what he says, then I’ll show you the map. Here we go from Jerusalem, this is Romans 15:19, all the way around to a lyric. I fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation.

But as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see those who have never heard will understand. This is the reason why I’ve so often been hindered from coming to you. But now since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, since I’ve longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain and to be helped on my journey, thereby you.

So here’s a bigger map. Here’s Paul at Corinth. He’s headed to Jerusalem. He says, after I go there, I’m coming to you in Rome, but my goal is not to stop in Rome. I’m coming to Rome because I need you to help me get where to Spain.

Why Spain? Because there’s no gospel in Spain. There are no Christians and churches in Spain, and Paul knows the command of Jesus is to keep pressing on where the gospel hasn’t gone. He says a pretty outlandish statement, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, are you serious?

No work to be done there. He’s in Corinth for crying out loud like the place is messed up. There’s so much need for work. But what’s Paul saying? He’s saying the gospel’s there, there’s churches there, there’s Christians there. We as the body of Christ don’t have the option of staying in places where the gospel has gone.

We have to keep pressing on working together to get the gospel where it has not gone. We want to go where Christ has not been named so that those who have never been told of him, will see those who have never heard will understand. That’s what the command is that we’ve been giving.

The Great Commission is a Specific Command

Are you seeing this? The great commission from Jesus was not a general command to just make a lot of disciples in the world. It was a specific command to make disciples among all the nations, all the peoples, all the places.

It’s not a perfect illustration, but I do think it’s helpful. Imagine. So you know the difference between a hurricane and a tornado. A hurricane hits a large swath of land and everything in its path.

Tornado is much more selective, can come through and hit one house and not the house right next to it. Hit one neighborhood, not the neighborhood right next to it. Well imagine a tornado comes through a particular region and ravages this community right here, just totally ravages it, and then keeps going and ravages another community here and then keeps going and does the same thing with the community way over here.

And imagine you’re head of rescue operations on the ground and you and your team get to this first community and you realize there are more needs in that community than you can even begin to address. You’re not going to be able to rescue everybody here and then you start to think, well, if I send some of our team there, it’s going to take them time to travel.

I don’t know how they’re going to get there. It’s going to be challenging, and that’s the time when we could be rescuing people here. And then you think about this community way over here, not only will it take time, imagine that you hear that the people in this community, there are some who will try to keep you from bringing rescue here who will kill you if you try to bring rescue here.

Well, if you’re just using common sense, then what do you do? You stay right here. You work to rescue as many people as possible. The only reason you would split up and send some here and some there is if your commanding officer said, I want people rescued from every single community.

And if he said that, then you don’t have the option of just focusing here. No, you’re focused on all these and you’re saying, okay, who’s going here and who’s going to risk their lives to go here?

This is Paul saying, that we got to keep pressing on where the gospel hasn’t gone. It’s not tolerable to Paul that there are people who’ve not heard the name and the truth about Jesus. It’s not tolerable to Christians for that to be the case in the world.

We work together to change that and this is where the New Testament ends. Paul makes it to Rome not the way he planned. He makes it there in chains and he doesn’t. For all we know, we get to Spain and the story of Acts ends there and we have John at the end of the bible and the island exiled and what does he write as part of his last words to Christians?

See this, I am lucky to behold a great multitude that no one can number from every nation, from all the tribes, all the peoples, all the languages standing before the throne and before the Laham clothed in white robes with palm branches in their heads, crying out with a loud voice. Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb.

In other words, church, don’t take your eyes off this vision. All the nations, all the tribes, all the peoples, all the languages keep working, keep working all of you until the gospel goes to all of them until they’re all singing this song.

Is this not the clear message of the Bible that every follower of Jesus is to live with this vision in mind that every follower of Jesus is to scatter into this world, wherever the Holy Spirit leads, making disciples who make disciples until all the nations, tribes, peoples, and languages are brought into the kingdom. So why are we not doing this today?

Why is this goal not consuming us today? Why are we saying with 3 billion unreached people in the world, we’ll send a few hundred or a few thousand missionaries to them, by the way, in a narrow, predominantly white western wealthy model of sending them?

And again, to be clear, that’s not intended to denigrate what God has done and is doing right now in the world, but surely more is needed than what this kind of model can support for 3 billion people. Surely there’s a better, a fuller answer to this and there is, there’s a biblical answer to this.

Praying for the Nations

We all need to start following Jesus for the sake of his name among all of the nations. We all need to realize this is why we have the breath to pray as Jesus taught us to pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name and all the earth among all the people’s calls your name to be known and enjoyed and exalted as holy among the ber and among the Ani and among the P and thousands of other people groups who don’t know the name of Jesus right now.

This is how not just a few people pray, this is how Christians pray. This is how churches pray. We gather together to plead for more workers to go into the harvest field for salvation to come to the ends of the earth is the spread of the gospel and the glory of God among specific unreached people, groups, and places in the world, a constant part of your prayer life, a constant part of your family’s prayer life.

If not let today be the day that changes for you that your Christianity changes to revolve around praying for what God has called us to pray for and told us is the ultimate goal in all of history. Become an intercessor for the nations because you’re a follower of the intercessor I for the nations.

And then to the extent God gives you influence leadership in his church, lead his people to pray for the nations, and as we pray, let’s put our treasure toward the nations. God help us. We live in one of the wealthiest societies ever to exist on planet Earth.

Let’s not waste it on earthly pleasures that are all going to burn up. Let’s spend our resources on the eternal treasure that will never, ever, ever end personally in our churches alongside brothers and sisters in Christ in the red who are doing this work.

Let’s make this our Christianity where we’re praying like this. We’re giving like this and we’re going like this. We’re making disciples of the nation starting right where we live. We are disciple-makers for the nations in our spheres of influence.

Every disciple is a disciple-maker for Jesus. God delivered us from a spectator mentality in the church, raising up businessmen and women and teachers and engineers and factory workers and entrepreneurs and work-at-home moms and dads who are all disciple-makers for the nations wherever we live, which means by the way that we don’t just make disciples and grow churches with people filled with people who look like us.

Let us not be content with the segregation of churches in our country by the color of our skin when we’ve been given a clear command to cross ethnic and racial boundaries with the blood of Jesus Christ. And God, open our eyes specifically to how you’re sovereignly bringing the nations to us. God is bringing the red to our front doors.

And yet I want to step carefully here too, having pastored for years now in metro DC but why is it statistically evangelical Christians are the most resistant to people coming to our country from red nations in the world? What do we want more?

The preservation of our nation or the proclamation of the gospel and the glory of our God among all the nations? What is driving us? Let’s be disciples. God has brought people who’ve never heard the gospel right outside our front doors.

Let’s step into that fully the opportunities God has given us right where we live and then wherever he leads us. And this is where we realize that yes, yes, there are more unreached people today than ever before in history and there are more opportunities to reach them than ever before in history.

Do you realize the time and place we are living in right now? Paul never could have imagined. I mean it took him how long to travel from one city to the next and buy a boat and didn’t always go very well. He never could have fathomed a machine that could pick you up and take you through the air just about anywhere in the world in a day.

He’d be like, are you serious? And just take you through the sky. Yes, we could do that. How long did it take him to write a letter or dictate it, have it sent to be delivered, have people respond, hear it, respond to it, and send a response back?

He never could have fathomed a world in which we can communicate with people anywhere, just about anywhere on the planet in real time, in multiple languages through a device in our pockets. You could do all that from right there. It’s amazing.

And we haven’t even gotten into goggles yet. Everything else that’s coming, the opportunities we have, travel, technology, urbanization. We realize that just two centuries ago, a tiny percentage of the world lived in cities a century ago, just a little bit.

Now over half the world, God has brought the people’s two cities, two places where they’ve come and are able. The gospel is able to spread from cities to all kinds of different places like never before. Urbanization, the globalization of today’s marketplace, the opportunities there are for work around the world, the opportunities we have from the church in our country, for people in Reddit countries.

Do we realize this? There are people in red areas who will pay Christians to come spread the gospel there. Now they don’t know they’re paying you for that purpose, but that’s the point. You just go get a job and be a Christian, be a disciple maker for the nations, not by leaving your job, but by leveraging your job.

Now you’re starting to realize all the opportunities we have, short term, midterm, long term to go to the red, more opportunities than ever before in history to get the gospel to them. What are we going to do with that?

Let’s steward it to the fullest in our lives. Let’s raise our kids to steward this to the full. Let’s tell our kids about unreached people in the world and tell ’em this is what you’re made for not coast things out on an ice-comfortable Christian family on the American dream.

No, you’re made for so much more than that. You’re made for the glory of God among the nations and you’re going to be able to get degrees that open doors for the spread of the gospel among the nations. Let’s think through what that looks like in your life.

Let’s pray. This is the kind of Christianity we want kids to grow up in where their hearts beat for the spread of Jesus’ fame among all the peoples of the world in such a way. So when I see a 17-year-old, 17 or 18 Mormon high school graduate and she’s on an iPhone video and she’s reading this letter that’s telling her where she’s going to spend the next two years of her life on mission and she reads it, she gets to the point where she says where she’s going.

She’s shaking with nervous excitement. She’s smiling, she reads where she’s going, and the camera pans out. Just that iPhone video pans out and all of her friends and her family are there and they start jumping up and down.

They’re rejoicing with her, celebrating she’s going to spend the next two years spreading a false gospel that condemns. And there’s a whole culture that’s built to celebrate that.

When I spend time on college campuses and I talk with Christian students about the opportunities among the nations, one of the most prevalent things I hear is my Christian parents would not be supportive of that. That’s what I mean by we need a total reorientation of what it means to be followers of Jesus.

We are disciple-makers for the nations. That’s who we are. So let’s be finished and done with a brand of Christianity that turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to 3 billion people who haven’t even heard the gospel.

Brothers and sisters, if they’re going to be reached, it’s not going to be because we changed our approach to missions. It’s going to be because we change our approach to discipleship. It’s going to be because we realize this is actually Christianity.

It’s living to be a disciple maker for the nations. It’s believing that God has not saved any one of his children to sideline them in the accomplishment of his ultimate purpose in the world.

It’s believing that the grace of Jesus Christ isn’t just for people like us with all we have going on in our lives our families and our churches. It’s believing the gospel we hold dear is for all the peoples of the world and we reorient our entire lives, our families, and our churches.

We orient the entire Christian faith around the enjoyment and exaltation of Jesus Christ and all of his glory among all of the nations. And we see this not as missions. We see this as following Jesus.

So that’s where I want to leave us with a question or actually two, one that’s focused on you personally and then one that’s focused on your leadership in the church. And I just want to ask these questions and then lead us into prayer. First, for you personally, what needs to change in your life in order for you to be a disciple-maker for all the nations? 

What needs to change in your prayer life? What needs to change in your use of treasure, in your priorities, your perspective? How is God calling you to be a disciple maker for all the nations right where you live right now and wherever he might lead through opportunities you have to go short-term, midterm, and long-term to the red.

Let’s just put it out there. Our churches won’t go to the nations if their leaders aren’t showing them what it looks like to be disciple-makers for the nations. So what needs to change personally in you?

And then second, as you steward the leadership position and opportunities God has entrusted to you, what needs to change in your leadership in order to mobilize disciple-makers for all the nations and whatever influence God has given you in his church, how can you steward that influence to mobilize and equip and raise up and encourage and activate and unleash disciple-makers for all the nations? Can I give you just a moment to prayerfully reflect on these questions and then I’ll pray for us?

Oh God, we praise you for the privilege of being reached with the gospel. I praise you for your mercy in our lives. We praise you for the hope we have amidst the hurts and heartaches of this world. We praise you, Jesus.

We love you Jesus, and we praise you for the invitation and your command to make disciples of all the nations to join with you and what you are doing for the spread of this hope to people right around us and far from us. God, we pray that you would turn the tide in our day on our watch. God, we pray that you would mobilize us as your church, all your church to do Jesus. What you have commanded us all to do.

We don’t want to miss out on this invitation, this mission. So help us, we pray in each of our lives and in the leadership positions that you put us in, God we pray, spin us however you desire for the spread of your love, Lord Jesus, among all the peoples of the earth and all the places of the earth, we pray, we pray for your blessing as we’ve already prayed today on those who are living and working among the red, some who’ve moved there, some who lived there, God bless them cause the gospel to spread through them today.

Bring Berber and Bosch, tune, and Lan men and women and children to yourself. And God, we pray that you would awaken hundreds of thousands, millions more to join them in that effort. All for the glory of your name we pray. Amen.