Blessed Friday. Despite centuries of effort, the call to share the message of hope in Jesus remains incomplete. In this week’s issue, we dive into the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in this vital mission together. 

In today’s edition:

• How the light can reach 94% of hindus 

• Watered-down vs. fired up Christianity

• Running with the Rarámuri

🇸🇩 In the midst of a civil war, Sudan is faced with great physical and spiritual needs.

The Details: Today, Sudanese civilians are caught in the crossfire of the power struggle between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group. Tensions, fear, and violence appear to be overpowering Sudan right now. For years, many civilians, including Christians, have been oppressed in an Islamic country that often denies basic human rights and equality.

The Takeaways: In a country that is filled with violence and division, we know that only God can bring true peace and healing. Sudan is a majority Islamic country with only a 5.4% Christian population. 

Yet, God can use even the darkest times to bring people to himself. We can pray for God to bring the Sudanese to himself. Also, we can pray for God to strengthen believers to be lights in the darkness.

🏃🏽You were born to run.

There’s an indigenous people group in Mexico called the Tarahumara, or Rarámuri. Some have said that the Rarámuri are literally born to run. Rarámuri actually means "runners on foot" or "those who run fast.”

And here’s why: The Rarámuri have a tradition of long-distance running up to 200 miles over a span of two days. And that’s not with the best running sneakers in the world in easy conditions. That’s in sandals through rough canyon country. 

Talk about insane.

Even though I once ran cross country and still like to unwind at the end of the day by running outside, I seriously doubt I could ever run 200 miles at one time. But do you know what I and every other believer can do? We can run the race set before us by God.

When we know and believe the gospel, we are then born again…born to run…to run hard for the Kingdom. All because we are equipped by Christ.

As I’ve talked to countless believers around the world, particularly in hard-to-reach areas, I’ve been reminded of how important it is to run faithfully. There will be days we grow tired, when we have to run in difficult areas, when we are facing opponents who don’t believe in the gospel like we do. We might be called to run around our neighborhoods or, sometimes, in a nation far away. But as we run the race, we become more and more like Jesus, and we have the opportunity to make more runners (disciples) as we go. 

So, “let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:1–2). 

— Selah Lipsey

🛕Hindus need true victory over darkness.

It’s estimated that there are 1.2 billion Hindus in the world, making Hinduism the third largest religion. 94% of the world’s population of Hindus lives in India.

On October 31st and November 1st, many of these Hindus will be celebrating Diwali. This is the Hindu festival of lights, which celebrates the triumph of good over evil.

How You Can Pray: While Diwali says it symbolizes the "victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance,” we know that Jesus is the true light and the one who defeated sin and death for us. During Diwali, pray that Hindus may hear the gospel and know that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

🙅🏼 Urgent Mission ≠ Quick Success Strategy

Imagine you create a delicious drink with powerful positive side effects. A drink that tastes good and is good for you! Then imagine some business consultants telling you, “We can get this drink to lots of people really fast.” You say, “Let’s do it!” and within weeks the drink is in stores with a vast ad campaign encouraging people to buy it. 

Many people respond and buy the drink, but they’re underwhelmed. It tastes “okay” to them. You’re shocked, because you know this drink is better than “okay.” So you run to the store, buy one yourself, and you immediately realize the problem. In order to sell the drink quickly, the consultants produced it cheaply, and it wasn’t the same quality of drink you gave to them in the first place. 

Your efforts to get this drink to as many people as possible are harder now than at the first. People are convinced they have experienced the drink when what they’ve tasted was a fake.

Thankfully, Christianity is not just a good-tasting drink with beneficial side effects. 

But we need to admit that the spread of the gospel in the world has often been made more challenging by ways that, in the name of big and fast, we have substituted a watered-down product for the real one, and people think they’ve seen or even tasted Christianity, but it’s not the real thing.

Of course, we want the gospel to spread fast. In the words of 2 Thessalonians 3:1, “Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored.” At the same time, think about the ministry of Jesus Himself. When He left the earth after 33 years, there were 12 disciples (one of whom fell away) and a little over 100 others. That seems pretty small. But there was something God was doing in the less and slow that in His wisdom would resound to His glory around the world for generations to come.

Think about it in your life and my life today. What if every one of us led just one other person to Jesus over the next 10 years? And what if every one of our churches multiplied just one time over the next 10 years? We might think, “That’s not rapid. Surely we need to move faster than that!”

But just think about that. Do the math, and if you start with even an extremely conservative number of only 500 million Bible-believing, gospel-proclaiming Christians in the world, if every follower of Jesus and church multiplied one time every ten years, you would literally reach the entire world (all the nations!) in the next 40 years. Reaching the entire world with the gospel in the span of a generation sounds amazing to me.

Unfortunately, much work that is done in the world of mission today can be gospel-less or gospel-light, or church-less or church-light. It’s often done with good motives–to reach people rapidly with multiplying movements. And it leads to large numbers that we like to report. But we would do well to heed the words of John Paton, a missionary who years ago went to the New Hebrides, a cannibalistic people group. Paton said:

Plant down your forces in the heart of one tribe or race. Work solidly from the center, building up—with patient teaching and life long care—a church that will endure. Rest not till every people and language and nation has such a Christ center throbbing in its midst with the pulses of the new life at full play. Rush not from land to land, from people to people in a breathless fruitless mission. The concentrated common sense that builds for eternity will receive the fullest approval of God in time.  

Especially in a day where it’s popular to say we’re going to reach this many people with the gospel by this particular time, let’s pause and consider how we might need to exchange our desire for rapid results and success stories for devotion to often slow but generationally sustainable strategies that the church has been built on since the beginning.

As we look at the nations, especially places that are unreached, let’s come alongside and support brothers and sisters who are clearly proclaiming the biblical gospel, carefully planting biblical churches, and wisely training biblical leaders for those churches.

And as we look at our neighborhoods (i.e., right where we live today!), let’s be faithful to do what Jesus calls us to do: to make disciples, leading people to Jesus and teaching them to follow Him, knowing it probably won’t be quick and definitely won’t be easy, but in due time (i.e., in eternity!) will undoubtedly be worth it.

— David Platt

📌 Attention Worthy

• Did you know your short-term missions team can be a burden to your missions partners? A missionary in Zambia offers some frank counsel on the hosting of missions teams.

• Will God judge people for being born Muslim? This question (and answer) from John Piper has massive implications for the church’s mission.

• Is the End of History at Hand? Professor Thomas Schreiner shows that it sure looks that way. But we need to be careful in setting dates.

THIS WEEK’S COLLABORATORS:

Selah Lipsey, Steven Morales, Jairo Namnún, David Platt, Camille Suazo

MAKE YOUR LIFE COUNT!