I don't know how to introduce this post. The person who wrote it has so much history with me that I could tell stories about...yet the content of this is deep, moving, disturbing, enlightening, and convicting! So how do I begin to prepare you for that?!
This post is from my friend,
Jill, with whom I have a long past and hopefully a longer future! I can't really remember a time in my life when I didn't know of Jill, but I knew we became great friends in 5th grade. For the next few years we were super close until a fight in gym glass on the last day of our 8th grade year (I don't remember what the fight was about, do you Jill?!) Fast forward all through high school when we were sometimes together, but never exclusively and cut to us both at the introduction day at Huntington University. We both stay overnight with a selected roommate who will also be a freshman in the fall of 2003. Jill's roommate never showed up - so she bunked with me, the only other girl there that she knew! We became quickly inseparable again and spent our freshman year of college doing everything together from talking about boys, procrastinating everything, watching Bruce Almighty over and over and over, to sharing our entire lives with each other on our Sunday night walks around campus (where the lights would always flicker out as we walked by, remember that?!). As that school year ended, so it seemed our friendship did as well. Although we were at each other's weddings and kept with each other through mutual friends, it wasn't until the almost birth of their daughter, Ivy, did Jill and I get connected again. Now I am so thrilled to have a friend like her back in my life. She is vulnerable, open, encouraging, determined in her conviction, and an example to me of what living a life for Christ really means.
She has been kind enough to share with us what the Lord is doing in her and her husband, Aaron's life. This post is going to rock your world!
For the past couple of years, the Lord has been teaching my husband and me a lot—a lot about how short this life is (especially compared to eternity!!), about how it is all about His glory, about how privileged we are to know the gospel, and about how many people there are in the world who have NEVER had a chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are so blessed, but we always just accepted those blessings and thanked God for them—we never thought that maybe God blessed us so that we would have adequate means to spread His gospel to the ends of the earth. We now realize that we were wrong earlier in our marriage to think that the Lord blessed us with great Christian upbringings, close friends, financial stability, intelligence, education, and numerous freedoms just to give us a happy, comfortable life. We now know that He has blessed us so that we can bless others.
Because of all of this, we are obeying the Great Commission and will hopefully be going to an unreached tribe/people group to teach them about our Lord Jesus. There are hundreds of tribes and people groups who are totally isolated from the “outside world” because no one else speaks their language and/or no one can access them due to their location deep in the jungle. There are actually many tribes right now who have been contacted and asked if they would want a missionary to come live with them and teach them truth. Many of those tribes have said yes, but they have been waiting decades for a missionary to actually come. There are just not enough missionaries going to fill all of the needs. Here is a staggering statistic: There are currently 1,568 people groups who are not only “unreached” (meaning they have less than 2% Christians), but they are also unengaged. That means there are ZERO Christians and ZERO missionaries in those people groups right now. Some of those 1,568 people groups have only a couple hundred people, while others have millions of people.
This is a video that shows a more world-wide perspective of Christianity rather than our comfortable American perspective that we seem to be so immersed in. I encourage you to watch it!
Tears of the Saints
I don’t think that everyone needs to go to an unreached tribe to fulfill the Great Commision. However, I do think that all Christians need to be sharing their faith in some capacity and be passionate about missions in some way—either going, praying, supporting, or sending. It is not a drudgery or requirement—it is a blessed privilege that Christ gave us to spread His gospel in this short life we have!
Please visit their
blog to learn more about their radical life for Jesus, and their day-to-day life as new parents :)
