The Last Frontier

This week I had an inspirational experience spending time with young adults at a global retreat for missionaries who are sold out on Jesus and passionately maxed out on His mission to reach every unreached people group on this planet.

The organization I visited is a cutting-edge mission and missionary enterprise that has targeted unentered or unreached swathes of the human race heretofore seemingly untouched by the everlasting gospel of Jesus Christ. This elite organization (OK, I admit, that's my word, not theirs—but "elite" in my humble opinion is any strategic effort to go where no man or woman has gone before in the spread of the religion of Jesus) with global offices now in the U.S., Canada, Brazil and South Africa, has mobilized these 200+ individuals to many nations (some that must remain nameless), urban centers and rural mountainous zones, and secular towns and cities in East and West Europe—all because of our Lord's command, "'Go into all the world an make disciples of all nations'" (Matthew 28:19).

While I've been preaching morning and evening to these missionaries, the inspiring testimonies from these families as I sit with them in the sprawling dining hall each day stir up my own soul. Not only are they mastering a foreign tongue whose alphabet is unlike anything you and I have witnessed, their stories of friendship building and gospel-living and Jesus-telling are often times nothing short of miraculous. Miraculous not only because of the very evident "fingerprints" of the Holy Spirit on the supernatural fruit of their efforts, but miraculous because when strangers speaking another language and hailing from a distant shore and culture set up house in hostile territories and then through incarnational loving on behalf of Christ begin to win friends for Him—the only word that makes sense to me is "miraculous.""And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). And He still is through these intrepid missionaries.

Timothy and Abigail (not their names) have taken up residence and mission in a country and culture so foreign and so hostile you and I would laugh off the suggestion God was calling us there. And yet with no friends or prior acquaintances in that nation (nobody—meaning zero, nada, no one), this courageous couple has set up house and "gospel shop" in a beneath-the-radar sort of existence, quietly loving and cautiously awaiting the divine moment for simple witness. "You will hear a voice behind you saying . . ." is how the modus operandi works (see Isaiah 30:21). And work the Spirit of God does. With fruitage measured in the optics and coinage of the Kingdom.

If life for you has become terribly predictable and/or numinously unsatisfying, God's solution for you may be to simply double down where He has you now and with a prayer for added grace carry on in your faithful surrender to His daily providences and guidance. But if the Spirit of God is stirring up your soul with the compelling commission—"'As the Father has sent Me, so send I you'" (John 20:21)—then it may be it's time to look for an open door and obey Jesus' command, "'Go preach [and use words if necessary] the gospel to all creation'" (Mark 16:15). God may already be planning to send you to the last frontier left—where your only hope will be His promise, "'Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen" (Matthew 18:20).