Missions Blog

One Thing
by Charlie Hall

Single minded, whole hearted, one thing I ask
That I may gaze upon Your beauty, oh Lord
That I may seek Your Holy Face
That I may know You in an intimate way
And follow after You all of my days

All of life comes down to just one thing
And that’s to know You, oh Jesus,
And make You known

Last spring I was asked to speak at a christian organization on the campus of Texas A&M on the topic of missions. The worship leader told me that he was planning on singing songs that go along with the theme of missions. While I was praying and thinking in the back he began to play this song. As it was playing this idea flooded my head that there was a key part missing. We were saying that all of life came down to just one thing, to know Jesus and make Him known, but we were only singing about knowing Him ourselves. We never took the time to pray that THEY might gaze upon the beauty of Jesus and seek after Him all their days. So here is how I think that the song should go.

Single minded, whole hearted, one thing I ask
That I may gaze upon Your beauty, oh Lord
That I may seek Your Holy Face
That I may know You in an intimate way
And follow after You all of my days

All of life comes down to just one thing
And that’s to know You, oh Jesus,
And make You known

Single minded, whole hearted, one thing I ask
That they may gaze upon Your beauty, oh Lord
That they may seek Your Holy Face
That they may know You in an intimate way
And follow after You all of their days

All of life comes down to just one thing
And that’s to know You, oh Jesus,
And make You known

I began to sing the song that way and started crying. OH JESUS, PLEASE LET THEM KNOW YOU IN AN INTIMATE WAY! PLEASE LET THEM FOLLOW AFTER YOU ALL OF THEIR DAYS!!! I WANT THEM TO SEE YOUR BEAUTY.

To often we sing and think about only ourselves and our relationships with the Lord, and totally forget the masses that are dying around that Jesus wants to know just as much as He wants to know us.

“Preach the gospel at all times, if necessary use words”

what most people mean when they say that…

“Never preach the gospel, and whatever you do DON’T USE WORDS!!!!”

Michael’s totally random rant.

One hot August day I got a phone call from one of my Corps buddies asking me if I could run over to the emergency room because one of our freshmen had collasped from heat exhaustion. I quickly headed over and when I arrived he was getting an IV to rehydrate him and was doing just fine. The doctor stopped by to check on him and was calmly talking to him when the intercom came on and he heard “Code Blue! Code Blue!.” A man was dying of a heart attack. I don’t think that I even saw the doctor take off, I only saw the curtain flap after he had gone running through it. The dying man took precident over my recovering cadet.

Triage is a concept where in a medical situation you give the person with the greatest need attention first. If you work in an emergency room and different people come in with a stub toe, a small cut, a broken arm, and a gun shoot wound to their artery the last person would obviously get treatment first. If you treated anyone else first the gunshot victim would bleed to death as he waited.

Its an obvious concept in the world, but unfortunately not one that is adopted by followers of Christ when it comes to the souls of men. Currently 2 billion people are gunshot victims quickly bleeding to death with no one tending to their needs. While we minister to the genuine problems of the body of Christ and the the lost who have access to the gospel, we almost completely ignore the unreached.

They are dying at a rate of 45,000 people a day never ever having had access to the good news of the salvation found in our Lord Jesus! The Lord loves His church, as do I, but we are overly concerned with ourselves as billions perish world wide. On average we give 95% of money to ourselves, 4.5% to ministering to the reached, and .5% ministering to the unreached. Need should tell us that we need to prayerfully reconsider our priorities and do much more to rescue those held captive by the god of this world, who have no way of hearing of the freedom Jesus offers. We need to take stock of the world and rethink who’s needs are the greatest and require immediate attention.

How will you reorient your life to see the gospel get to those who do not have it? You can pray for the Lord to raise up laborers, give to those trying to reach them, or even consider going yourself. May the Lord draw us near to Him and give us His heart and priority for the world. He is so worthy!

Mobilization can be a really hard thing some times. The spiritual attack released upon people who are willing to take the good news to those who have never heard is incredible. If they didn’t believe that the enemy hated them, they are learning. He trys to destroy their families and place pressure on them that way. It makes me take the truth of Matthew 24:14 more seriously, that when every tribe and tongue and nation has heard the gospel, the end will come. The enemy knows his time is limited and that if he keeps these people in darkness his judement will not come.

Are you praying for those ministering to the unreached or praying for those that are wanting to? Stats kept tell us that the majority of people that have interest in being ministers to unreached peoples won’t make it to the field, and that the majority that do probably won’t be there long enough to see the job get done. Prayer warriors for these people are massively needed. Please be one. Ask me if you want some people to pray for.

So I have been reading a book about being on fire for God. It has been really encouraging to my soul. The last chapter was talking about a topic I often think about. The chapter is about how important the power of God being present in your life is. I hear a great deal about truth and that is the thing that is most important about presenting. I agree, but I think that sometimes in a Baptist culture the concept of power is barely discussed. The New Testament talks about it all over the place. Just listen to Paul in 1 Cor. 2:1-5

And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. 2For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 3I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. 4And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Wow! He came to them in a demostration of the Spirit and of power so that their faith would be in the power of God. I wonder how many false converts we have because we only presented the gospel in superiority of speach or of wisdom. How many people have rested their faith on the wisdom of men? (See also Rom 1:16, 1 Cor 1:18, 1 Cor 1:24)

Jesus touched and healed people. He cast out demons. He demonstrated a powerful kingdom, not just a more correct one. I love that passage in Luke when His disciples did not realize it was Him they were talking to after the resurrection and on remembering the experience they said their hearts were burning inside of them. I can tell you that the power to inspire others or helping people over come strongholds is not possible without the power of God.

1 Cor 4:19-20 says that Christ is the power AND the wisdom of God. Both are important. Do a search for power in the New Testament.

I have often seen the fruit of lack of power in witnessing as people feel no conviction of sin. I have also seen, after a time of breakthrough with God in prayer, people get massively convicted over sin and once even cry out “what do I have to do to be saved” in frustration. He wasn’t exactly super broken, but the conviction and understanding that he couldn’t just be good and religious to get to heaven was getting to him.

Now I love truth and often defend with passion, but truth alone is not enough. When crowds of people have been brought into the kingdom of God the power of God was present in an incredible way. Maybe we don’t talk about because we know nothing of it. Or atleast we don’t know that much about it. We need to ask Jesus again to “teach us how to pray.” We need to ask Him to empower our pastors and ourselves to take the gospel to a hardened people.

I think we have neglected it because so many have faked it on TV, but we need to get over all of that. We need Jesus and His power to break through to people hardened by sin. Our families are suffering, our churches are hurting, and our communities are getting worse.

I just finished reading through a biography on the life of William Carey. Although short, it really adds to my appreciation of what I already know about him. The father of the modern missions movement did so much for that vast land of India it is almost incomprehensible. He considered himself to be a plodder, someone who faithfully worked at his tasks a little each day, eventually becoming one great work.

I wonder if he would think it was crazy 200 years after his death that many in India still are unreached. How crazy is it that where the modern era of missions began still has the most neglected bloc of people in the world. North India Muslims numbering 146,000,000 have ridiculously few workers among them. In averages out to about 1 missionary for every 5 million of them! Hopefully a new group of Christians with a pioneering spirit will launch out to tell these people of Jesus sacrifice.

I was just noticing how much the Apostle Paul talks about praying. He mentions that people are always in his prayers and that he wants them to pray for him. From the books I have read and the testimonies I have heard I believe that our current culture makes it hard for people to be patient. I mean, that is if we fully embrace it and take part in everything. I also believe that the Lord has not changed and we have not because we ask not. Much of the new generation’s lack of patient, I do not believe, concerns our Father and the cost to see Him move is still the same as it always has been.