Telling the Story
Written on September 22, 2017 by one of our staff at YWAM Harbour City
“Go hard, or go home. Lord, use me up.”
I walk the streets listening to this song on repeat. My eyes wander over countless people and I’m wondering, always wondering: do you know Jesus? Have you heard His Name? Is anyone going to tell you before you die?
The song continues.
“What’s the point of livin’ if I’m livin’ for myself? Lord, empty out my life before I put You on the shelf. So for God I go hard; I don’t wanna die tonight but there’s too many people living who ain’t heard about the Christ!”
My eyes burn with the shock of sudden tears. My feet step one by one over the cobblestoned sidewalks of a nation in which one could be arrested for sharing the Gospel, and a few of its millions upon millions of inhabitants stream by me, lost in their worlds. These two friends chat happily. This young man is buried in his phone. That lady is walking her dog; this guy is just perched on a decrepit office chair enjoying a smoke. Do they know? Have they heard? Will they ever hear?
I am only a visitor, but one day I hope to be more; to be a resident of this great country.
There are innumerable obstacles, and I confess some days they loom large. Where will we go? How will we obtain a visa to stay? What will we do and – a familiar, fearful, hopeless question – what good can we really do, amongst so many?
But that question is not mine to answer. Instead, my answer is one that I’ve already given – “here am I; send me.” And if I am sent, then I am sent for life. “It is no longer I who lives,” Paul wrote, “but Christ lives in me.” It is the Christ who lives in me who burns with a desperate longing for the souls of every stranger I see. It is Christ within me who mourns for the masses who have never heard His Name; who don’t know He saves. It is Christ who left us with all authority in heaven and on earth, and with a final command: be His witnesses to the ends of the earth.
The rap song laments the story of a village in South America, where “forty outta forty never heard of Jesus’ Name.” I can’t help but wonder why this is. Why, after two millennia of going, preaching, discipling and baptizing, are there still entire people groups without a single known believer? Why does Jesus’ last command still seem to be generations way from completion? The questions scroll like a marquee through my head, but the answer seems clear enough.
There are simply too few Christians sharing the Gospel.
Our world boasts a population of 7 billion and climbing. The number of full-time missionaries is only a fraction of that.
A vast majority of those missionaries operate in nations that are already considered reached. But while the amount and distribution of missionaries is definitely a factor, I believe the root of the problem can be traced to something much simpler: Christians aren’t sharing the Gospel.
In some nations, salvation makes instant evangelists out of truth-starved, hope-hungry people. Heedless of the scorn of family or danger from an oppressive government, new believers are eager to share their newfound joy and freedom with anyone who will listen. Yet I, who grew up in the church, had no passion at all to share my faith for the first twenty years of my life. 2.26 billion people on Earth call themselves Christian. What if each one shared with one more? What could happen if we were all – not just pastors and missionaries – obeying Jesus’ command to make disciples?
During my recent visit to a closed nation, I met a 29-year old girl who had just met Jesus a couple years before. She told me that once she read the Bible and realized that the power of the Gospel can change lives, she knew she had found what she’d been searching for all her life.
Immediately, her thoughts went to her ethnic people and unsaved family members. Her uncle and former boyfriend are both Buddhist monks. Her parents don’t know she’s a Christian yet because she’s afraid of how they will react. Ethnically, her people adhere to very dark spiritual traditions. Yet she wants them all to know Jesus. In fact, she asked me to pray about a trip to her home town the following month, during which she was planning to share the Gospel with her parents.
Noticing that she was a bit overwhelmed at the task ahead of her, I tried to encourage her. “You are a missionary!” I told her. “You are carrying the Good News to your family.”
She looked at me rather strangely. “I am?” she asked. “Shouldn’t every Christian be doing that? I can’t keep the Gospel to myself – it is too good not to share!”
This innocent but genuine response truly humbled me, because she’s right. Every Christian ought to be sharing about what Jesus has done for us. Many Christians don’t, but I wonder how many of our excuses are actually legitimate. This girl was a relatively new believer. She lives in a nation where sharing her faith is against the law. Her relatives and people are largely antagonistic towards the Gospel. Yet she told me with shining eyes that her vision was to see her entire nation know Jesus. And I know why.
The Gospel changed her. Transformed her identity; made her into a new person, with new hope, and a dream much larger than herself.
Those of us who grow up in the church can sometimes find ourselves immunized from the changing power of the Gospel. When you hear the same thing so many times, it’s so easy to forget what it means.
How can I tell this story again; make you wonder when you stopped believing?
How can I paint a picture of this kind of love; this kind of healing?— Sara Groves, How Can I Tell
What would happen if we somehow stumbled into the wealth of God’s love? What would happen to the church? to the world?
“I pray I never tire of going hard for Messiah.
I don’t need no motivation, You’re the reason I’m inspired!
Go hard, or go home.
Lord, use me up.”
