The Call of God To The Nations

This August 1st, Pam and I will mark (really celebrate) 7 years of traveling ministry. All my life growing up, and the subsequent years we spent serving in pastoral ministry, I always knew one day God would thrust me out into traveling ministry. But I had no idea at all it would involve the nations of the world!

When I took my first trip to Nigeria back in 1993 with my friend Joey Hipp, as I landed at Atlanta Airport I was convinced I would never leave Alabama again!

But in 1998, Pam and I traveled to Israel where our two friends Dee and Patti Scalf were working in a Christian School that ministered to both Arab as well as Israeli Christian kids as well as children from other countries of the world. During that trip, God seared into my spirit the call to world missions and to the nations of the world!

Almost daily I face criticism from people whose minds will not, for whatever reason, allow them to realize Jesus didn't simply come to save the American people; He really came to seek and to save the lost of every nation! I have attempted over and over again to explain the call on my life, but I simply at times cannot put it into words without breaking down in tears.

I found this story recently about two Moravian young men and the call that God placed on them. This explains why we do what we do!

"Two young Moravians heard of an island in the West Indies where an atheist British owner had 2000 to 3000 slaves. And the owner had said, "No preacher, no clergyman, will ever stay on this island. If he's shipwrecked we'll keep him in a separate house until he has to leave; but he's never going to talk to any of us about God. I'm through with all that nonsense." Three thousand salves from the jungles of Africa brought to an island in the Atlantic and there to live and die without hearing of Christ.
Two young Moravians heard about it. They sold themselves to the British planter and used the money they received from their sale, for he paid no more than he would for any slave, to pay their passage out to his island for he wouldn't even transport them. As the ship left it's pier in the river at Hamburg and was going out into the North Sea, carried with the tide, the Moravians had come from Herrenhut to see these two lads off, in their early twenties. Never to return again, for this wasn't a four year term; they sold themselves into life-time slavery. Simply that as slaves, they could be as Christians where these others were. The families were there weeping, for they knew they would never see them again. And they wondered why they were going and questioned the wisdom of it. As the gap widened and the housings had been cast off and were being curled up there on the pier, and the young boys saw the widening gap, one lad with his arm liked through the arm of his fellow, raised his hand and shouted across the gap the last words that were heard from them, they were these: "MAY THE LAMB THAT WAS SLAIN, RECEIVE THE REWARD OF HIS SUFFERING!" This became the call of Moravian missions. And this is the only reason for being, That the Lamb that was slain, may receive the reward of His suffering."

That's why we do what we do.