When Apostle Paul wrote his letters of the New Testament, I doubt he could fathom how far reaching they would be. Just within the regions that Paul served the travel time was immense and no easy task. There wasn’t a Greyhound bus from Philippi to Corinth and it wasn’t a Carnival Cruise ship that took him from Caesarea to Miletus. It was perilous times both in the travel as well as the threats against his life just for serving. I’m thankful for mission minded people like Paul who are willing to walk away from everything they know to experience Christ to the fullest (as much as is possible on this side of Heaven.) I’m also thankful for those who serve on the mission fields of their home towns, television, radio and the internet. Paul certainly could never have imagined how far the gospel could travel in milliseconds through technology today. The mission field has changed, but not the mission, and our letters today if they were written in the form of the scriptures we read might read something like this from me…
To FGGAM and those who labor in Christ Jesus:
Fellow laborers in Christ, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you. For five years we have labored for the cause of sharing the gospel with a lost world so that others might come to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ and for no other reason, than God would be glorified through us. Stay in prayer, and continue to give thanks for what you see the Lord doing in our ministries. Pray that God would open doors wide to the gospel in the areas for which we live and travel. These are perilous times. Not as it was in Paul’s day, where there are people physically seeking our lives, but perilous in the fact that the world has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to God, and we are charged with the task of getting the gospel to them. It is not we who are at risk at this time, it’s them. Suicide is on the increase, drug and alcohol addiction at an all-time high because people are seeking to find peace for their troubled souls. The peace we have! It sometimes seems a more daunting task than we can handle. Or at least it does for me. Even those I love and who love me, see no need in Jesus.
None of us should be surprised, for Jesus warned in John 17 as He spoke to God the Father just hours before he would be arrested and crucified:
“Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. 3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. 4 I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. 6 I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. 7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. 8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. 9 I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.”
How awesome to know that the Lord Jesus Himself has lifted our names to the Father for help in this matter that we are now charged with. He has gone on to Glory and left us here to carry out the mission. Daunting… yes. Worthy… OH YES!!!
The Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, Amen.
HAPPY 5th ANNIVERSARY FGGAM!!!
The Jesus Chick
