Mission – it is more than you bargained for.
Every now and then I am gripped by something someone writes or says. Here is one such time in an opening from a book:
Before departing for Burma at twenty-four, Adoniram Judson’s
“deep conviction . . . to engage in this [missionary] service” was to be
“devoted to this work for life, whenever God in His providence shall
open the way.” His convictions were tested for thirty-eight years in
Burma, through the loss of two wives, seven of thirteen children, and
terrible sickness at sea that led to his death. In the face of constant
persecution and imprisonment, he not only finished a Burmese-
English dictionary and grammar but also translated the entire New
Testament into Burmese. After ten years, he had one church of
eighteen believers. Nevertheless, this crucible of suffering tempered
and strengthened Judson’s convictions:
The path of self-denial is, to carnal eyes, a veiled path, a mystery
of the divine kingdom . . . but if thou wilt do what thy hands
find to do this hour . . . thou shalt find the path of self-denial
open most wonderfully and delightfully before thee; thou shalt
find it sweet to follow thy dear Lord and Saviour, bearing the
cross, and shalt soon be enabled to say,—“Sweet is the cross,
above all sweets, To souls enamored with thy smiles.”
Even on his deathbed, he said, “No one has ever left the world with
more inviting prospects, with brighter hopes, or warmer feelings—
warmer feelings.” Deep conviction formed the bedrock of his sacrificial
yet joy-filled labor. Today, Burma (known today as Myanmar)
has over four million Christians because of that sacrifice.
Is such costly sacrifice an antiquated throwback to a distant past?
Today, short-term missions teams can hop on an airplane, care for
impoverished orphans in rural China for a week and stop by Starbucks
in Beijing before returning to give a missions report in their
comfortable church. Even as globalization has eased some of the demands
of short-term missions, the challenges for missions today continue
to be daunting. More than three thousand unreached and unengaged
people groups remain today; they are in some of the hardest
to reach places of the world, and they total almost 250 million people.4
We must go. We must persevere even when we see little fruit.
G. K. Beale & Mitchell Kim, God Dwells Among Us: Expanding Eden to the Ends of the Earth (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014), 13.
What a challenge this is. I could not help thinking that I just celebrated – if celebrated is the right word – my tenth year with Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. To show for it I have a congregation of about 18.
What a humbling reality. What an enormous challenge. Difficulties abound, but I have not been as severely tested as was Judson. I must continue to do the work that God has set before me. I am a coward by nature. I shrink from the challenge. I would rather have my safe place to study and churn out materials for the church to dissect 500 years into the future. But week in and week out I must stand before those that God brings within the sound of my speaking voice and speak God’s Words. What a challenge. What a Responsibility. What a Privilege. Both Judson, and St. Paul, who inspired him, continue to speak into my life. I will not be silent. Even when I desired to shirk my responsibility, like Jeremiah, His word was a fire in my bones. Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.
God be merciful to me a sinner!
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