Pray for More to Go
As you know, it’s missions month here at Riverlawn! I love the month of November because we get to intentionally zero in and focus on missions.
Having grown up on the missions field, I can tell you that sometimes things don’t go as planned. I remember hearing a story of a missionary working in Brazil. As he was visiting a church member, he refused first of all an offer of coffee because caffeine was causing him some health problems and then tea because it could have been made from any type of leaf. Finally, he refused water because he wasn't sure it would be pure. Deciding that he couldn't refuse anything else, he accepted a glass of lukewarm milk with thick cream at the top.
"As I began to drink, I noticed something swimming in the milk and, underneath the cream, discovered a large cockroach doing the backstroke," he remembers. "That was too much. Suddenly, I realized I was standing in front of a large, open window. I quickly threw the milk out the window, relieved to have been able to save face."
But that didn’t solve the problem, "Just then," he said, "in through the open door comes a little boy with milk running down his face and crying, 'Mommy, mommy, that big man threw milk all over me.'"
It’s a funny story, but missions is more than “spilled milk.” Missions is sharing the love of God, with those who have never heard.
In America it’s hard for us to understand, but there are still people in the world that have never heard the name of Jesus and the fact that he died on the cross for their sins.
In Missions, we often talk about the 10/40 window. The 10/40 Window is the rectangular area of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia approximately between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude. The 10/40 Window is often called "The Resistant Belt" and includes the majority of the world's Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists.
More than half of the world's population and people groups live in the 10/40 Window. Approximately 5.37 billion individuals residing in 8,698 distinct people groups are in the revised 10/40 Window. 5,979 (68.7%) of these people groups are considered unreached and have a population of 3.32 billion. This means approximately 62% of the individuals in the 10/40 Window live in an unreached people group.
Another crazy statistic is that three percent of missionaries go to unreached places; 97 percent go to reached or unevangelized places. Having this in mind is one of the reasons we (Riverlawn) have chosen to go to Unreached People Groups. As a matter of fact, it’s one of our 4 core strategies, which are 1. Unreached People Groups, 2. Bible Translations, 3. Church Planting, and 4. Our Timothy’s (people trained coming out of Riverlawn).
My prayer for you this month is that you will continue to pray for more laborers for the harvest. As it says in Matthew,
Having grown up on the missions field, I can tell you that sometimes things don’t go as planned. I remember hearing a story of a missionary working in Brazil. As he was visiting a church member, he refused first of all an offer of coffee because caffeine was causing him some health problems and then tea because it could have been made from any type of leaf. Finally, he refused water because he wasn't sure it would be pure. Deciding that he couldn't refuse anything else, he accepted a glass of lukewarm milk with thick cream at the top.
"As I began to drink, I noticed something swimming in the milk and, underneath the cream, discovered a large cockroach doing the backstroke," he remembers. "That was too much. Suddenly, I realized I was standing in front of a large, open window. I quickly threw the milk out the window, relieved to have been able to save face."
But that didn’t solve the problem, "Just then," he said, "in through the open door comes a little boy with milk running down his face and crying, 'Mommy, mommy, that big man threw milk all over me.'"
It’s a funny story, but missions is more than “spilled milk.” Missions is sharing the love of God, with those who have never heard.
In America it’s hard for us to understand, but there are still people in the world that have never heard the name of Jesus and the fact that he died on the cross for their sins.
In Missions, we often talk about the 10/40 window. The 10/40 Window is the rectangular area of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia approximately between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude. The 10/40 Window is often called "The Resistant Belt" and includes the majority of the world's Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists.
More than half of the world's population and people groups live in the 10/40 Window. Approximately 5.37 billion individuals residing in 8,698 distinct people groups are in the revised 10/40 Window. 5,979 (68.7%) of these people groups are considered unreached and have a population of 3.32 billion. This means approximately 62% of the individuals in the 10/40 Window live in an unreached people group.
Another crazy statistic is that three percent of missionaries go to unreached places; 97 percent go to reached or unevangelized places. Having this in mind is one of the reasons we (Riverlawn) have chosen to go to Unreached People Groups. As a matter of fact, it’s one of our 4 core strategies, which are 1. Unreached People Groups, 2. Bible Translations, 3. Church Planting, and 4. Our Timothy’s (people trained coming out of Riverlawn).
My prayer for you this month is that you will continue to pray for more laborers for the harvest. As it says in Matthew,
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Matthew 9:37-38
Matthew 9:37-38
Will you prayerfully ask the Lord to send more people to share the good news of the Gospel?
Carl F. H. Henry said, “The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time.”
Carl F. H. Henry said, “The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time.”
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