How the Offspring of Isaac Blesses the Sons of Ishmael

For many years, we have come to this second and last weekend of our annual Global Missions focus and at the end of the services called for some of you to come to the front of the room, on all campuses, and be prayed for — that God would clarify and confirm your sense of God’s call into long-term, cross-cultural missions, especially among peoples with little or no Christian witness. I will invite you to do that again at the end of this service. I mention it now so that you can be praying about whether you should come. You know what we believe: There are goers, there are senders, and there are the disobedient. Both goers and senders are precious in God’s sight and are essential to the overall mission of the church. And of course, because of the brokenness of our culture, and the lostness of our families and our neighbors, the challenges to the senders are great. But the focus today is on the goers to the peoples of the world whose opportunities to hear the good news of Christ are little or nothing.

 A Call for Long-Term Cross-Cultural Missionaries

      I am praying that today will be one of those decisive moments in many of your lives (people in their sixties or fifties or forties or thirties or twenties or teens or children) — one of those moments when all that God has been doing in your life will distill into a compelling sense that, unless he shows otherwise, you are moving toward the nations. I’m not talking here about short-term missions, though we believe in the value of that with all our heart. The call today is for those who sense that God’s leading toward long-term, cross-cultural missions has become compelling to the degree that you are moving this direction unless he shows you otherwise.
God invites everyone to embrace the good news of Jesus, and he uses his people to proclaim and spread the message.