New Year's Burden

I'm going to be honest with you. Going into 2020 still 30% short of being fully funded in our recurring monthly support has been increasingly more difficult for me to bear. I've slowly come to a realization that I'm not as okay with where we're at as I first thought I was. You might consider encouraging me with words like, "God is in control, and He knows your needs. You have nothing to worry about; the money will come." However, that would miss the reason WHY I'm not okay.

As we sought to raise all of our support in 2019, the primary motivator for me were those who have been asking for missionaries. We've shared before that there are entire unreached people groups left in Papua New Guinea who have still yet to hear the Good News even once. And of those unreached groups, many have been asking and waiting for decades for a missionary to learn their language and tell them this message from God. Even if we were to land in Papua New Guinea tonight, it would take us at least 5-6 years before we're able to start teaching God's Word in one of these difficult languages. Unfortunately, now, it will take us at least 5-6 years plus an additional 6 months. After all the people from their language group who have already died and are now doomed to eternal suffering, what if even more now die before we can share the gospel? What if that happens in the 6-month span that we could have been there earlier if our support had come in sooner? This thought - along with the troubling reality that lost souls are actually asking for Christians to help them, and Christians are turning a blind eye in pursuit of safety and security - is something I wrestle with on an every-other-day basis.

Now, you might still consider encouraging me with words, like, "God is control. You have nothing to worry about." However, that would miss something terribly obvious from the New Testament. Christ commanded us all to make disciples in the uttermost parts of the earth. Scripture makes it clear that God is also troubled with the reality of lost souls. In fact, He is so troubled by it that He sacrificed His Son! And it's His Son who relayed his Father's heart in telling us to take salvation to the ends of the earth (Isaiah 49:6). God IS in control, and in His sovereignty, He expects us to give up all our possessions (Luke 14:33), to hate our own lives (Luke 14:26) in pursuit of His heart: redeemed people from every tribe, language, people and nation (Revelation 5:9).

Jeremiah was a weeping prophet, and Jesus was called the Man of Sorrows. So, I will take my heavy heart into 2020 believing that this burden is one that God will not lift, because it is one that He laid on the shoulders of the Church.

"We are living in a time where billions of people are dying without Christ. We are living in a time when millions of so-called evangelicals do not even understand the Gospel. We are living in a time when some of the greatest 'evangelical heroes,' if they were simply critiqued in light of historical Christianity, would be proven heretics. Shouldn't somebody be disturbed? Shouldn't someone be broken, and shouldn't someone stand up and say, 'This is wrong'?" - Paul Washer (quoted from the video below)