Seek Ye FIRST...

Sheesh, I've been going about it all wrong this time. Ever since October...no, before that. Last summer, I think. Ever since then we've been working towards going back "out there".

Only now I keep coming across passages and columns saying, "Seek ME". I've found I've been pursuing missions more than Jesus Himself. I see it in an Oswald Chambers daily reading, in a magazine article, and especially in the "Perspectives" book/course. (If people want some meat to sink their teeth into, that's a good one to go to.) Yes, "The true greatness of any church in not how many it seats but how many it sends," (unknown), but anything can become an idol, even very good things. Pro-life crusades, songwriting....missions. Anything that gets our main focus. As P.T. Forsyth said, "the weakness of much current mission work is that [we] betray the sense that what is yet to be done is greater than what [Christ] has already done. The world's gravest need is less than Christ's great victory." (emphasis mine)

"And step by step you'll lead me....and I will follow You all of my days." (Rich Mullins)

Asleep in the Light

is the name of a Keith Green song. It also seems to be the national theme. K.P Yohannan says that whenever he comes to America (which he doesn't much like to do), he is amazed by how saturated the country is by the gospel. We have so many books on so many subjects, so many Bible translations, and so many people analyzing minute points on Scripture that maybe it takes a visitor to see its overkill.

Why?

The image that comes to mind is that of a clogged drain. The Gospel isn't getting out, so it's building up here with nowhere to go. If the analogy runs true, it's also stagnating with its lack of flow.

I don't know if that's really the case, but I do know that the Gospel which is so freely, freely available here to virtually everyone is completely inaccessible to large parts of the world. America has approximately one Christian worker for every 230 people, but those who have never heard the Gospel even once have one worker for every 450,000 souls. 9% of the world's population speaks English, and yet 94% of all ordained preachers in the whole world minister to the 9% who speak English. I have to look up these statistics when I want to refer to them (I got them from "Why You Should Go to the Mission Field" by Keith Green, so they're probably somewhat outdated), but there's one illustration which stays with me much more easily:




the rice grain in the middle representing the number of Christian worker(s) among the unreached (only the sea of rice I saw was much bigger).

It was that same Keith Green tract which first convicted us and eventually led us overseas, and we've been longing to and working toward going back ever since we came back here. It saddens and frustrates me to hear people say (as we did before the first time we went out) things like, "I want to stay here and shake up the Americas". If all that engorgement hasn't done the job by this time, then his staying here is going to change all that single-handedly?

Of course huge things can happen from one person. Look at Open Doors, started by one man. Operation Mobilization, started by one. Jim Elliot and his four partners. (And look what else they have in common...they went.) But you know what's gonna "shake up the Amercias" the best?

Obedience. As Keith (yet again) said, "They have a rule in the Armed Forces that says, 'Always obey the last order received, until a new order is given". The last order we received was "Go into ALL nations...'" It may seem strange to say leaving the country is the best thing for it, but so often it's something like that. The best thing to do for your kids is to love their father/mother; the best thing you can do for your spouse is to love God more than them; the way to write a better song is not to go to songwriting classes, but to serve others.

But instead, while "we talk of the Second Coming; half the world has never heard of the first." -- Oswald J. Smith