The task of getting the gospel to the hidden peoples of this earth is not reserved for a select and adventurous few. It is too big for that. It’s a church-sized task. Under God, the whole church in this world should be involved in the Great Commission. All of us should pray fervently for the work. All of us should leverage our dollars to support the work. And though not all of us will go be missionaries … all of us should at least consider going … for the short term, or for a lifetime commitment. So, ten reasons why we should all consider going with the good news:
1. There is no other name by which men can be saved. So says Peter in Acts 4.12. Unless they hear the name of Jesus, the nations perish.
2. There are so many who have never heard. Consider the Siwa ... 30,000 tribal living completely isolated from the world in a steep ravine in the Egyptian desert. None of them have heard the gospel.
3. There are so few who are getting out the message. No one has ever gotten to the Siwa people with the gospel. Generation after generation has come and gone without a Savior. Should we not have the attitude of Paul who said: “I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ had already been named” (Rom 15.19)?
4. It’s hard to pray for the nations without being willing to go. Paul taught us to “pray…that the word of the Lord would spread rapidly and be glorified” (2 Thess 3.1). But if we pray that way, we must be ready for God to use us as part of His answer!
5. God will be with you if you go. Jesus sends us to strange, confusing, even dangerous places to make disciples … but not alone. “I am with you always,” He says, “even to the end of the age” (Matt 28.20).
6. You cannot fail in the task of missions. There are many pursuits which you can try and fail. But if your pursuit is gospel missions, you cannot fail. “As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth … so will My word be which comes from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty” (Is 55.10-11).
7. Compassion compels us to go. “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand?” declares the Lord in Jonah 4.11. Should our compassion be any less?
8. The command of the Lord constrains us to go. Jesus’ final instructions were: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28.19). It’s awfully hard to “go and make disciples” if we are unwilling to “go!”
9. The example of Jesus urges us to go. Phil 2.5-11 describes Jesus as a great missionary who left His home and came to bring mercy to the nations. Food for thought … The passage begins this way: “Have this (missionary) attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.”
10. God deserves to be made famous among the nations. The main reason we do Missions is because God is worthy of being made known. It is wonderful when sinners avoid hell. But even better that they go instead to heaven to forever declare the worth of God! So the task is to help the nations see how beautiful God is: “I will … send … them to the nations: Tarshish, Put, Lud, Meshech, Rosh, Tubal, and Javan, to the distant coastlands that have neither heard My fame nor seen My glory. And they will declare My glory among the nations” (Is 66.19)!
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