To the Nations

This year's Global Mpact Celebration is now history. Each year our church hosts an Mpact celebration like this one. To focus our attention on missions. To celebrate those who have committed their lives to taking the Gospel to the nations. To challenge us to do more and be more and give more for the cause of Christ around the world.

What a joy and a privilege to be part of such a celebration. My role in this celebration was being part of the food team. It was a serving role, involving things like putting out breakfast, or setting out food for another meal, or pouring tea, or being sure everybody had what they needed. Was it a hard thing to do? Not particularly.  Even so, I confess to you that this morning I am tired. Yet while there is physical weariness now that the celebration is concluded, there is also great joy in serving those who have committed their lives to serve.

I was blessed and challenged as I met and chatted with so many of these men and women. They have different talents and abilities. They live and serve in different parts of the world. They have different backgrounds. But they all have this one thing in common - their willingness to follow wherever the Lord leads. Willingness to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. They are men and women whose lives have been touched by the grace of God, and who are now ready to go and share that grace with a world that so desperately needs it.

These men and women have heard the voice of the Lord calling them, and they have said 'yes'. They have left their homes and families and all that is familiar to them, and they have set out to unfamiliar places with the good news of Jesus. They have been sent to the nations.

We have not all been called to go to the nations, but we have all been called. 

Each of us has the same mandate from the Savior that these missionaries have: "as you are going, make disciples". (Matthew 28:19)

"You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." (Acts 1:8 ESV)

May we be faithful to that mandate. In our cities. In our counties and our states. In our nation. And to the ends of the earth, wherever God leads us.

We may not have been called to go, but we can share Jesus wherever we are. We can pray. We can give. We can serve.

May we be faithful to God's calling on our lives.

May we be faithful to pray for those who are taking the Gospel to the nations!

May we be faithful to give so that more can go!

If we are called to go to the nations, may we be willing to say 'yes'!

And may we do all that with great joy!

"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."  (Matthew 9:37-38)