Bringing Gospel Hope to Unreached People
This update was written by a Sovereign Grace pastor serving cross-culturally in a strategic city. For security reasons, some details have been omitted or generalized, including the removal of names. In this update we refer to the pastor as “M” and his wife as “B.”…
Every night, I look out my window and see one of our local mosques. Between the mosque’s two minarets, colorful lights display messages to our Muslim neighborhood. One of the messages I see is this question:
What did you do for Allah today?
For the last five years, we have lived in this city surrounded by countless unreached Muslims. That terrifying question is the only way they know how to approach their god.
What did they do for him?
Living in this context has taught me that it is not just the unreached who struggle with that outlook. I sometimes find myself falling into that very same way of thinking, defining my identity by my accomplishments for God.
In his kindness the Lord regularly reminds me that the better and proper question is
What did God do for me today?
Here’s something God did. It happened in language class recently. My tutor is a devout Muslim in her late fifties. She invited a friend to our class for some Q&A language practice. We discussed the Christian faith as well as the demands of parenting. When I mentioned my kids, my tutor looked me in the eye, took both of my hands in hers, and said, “Let’s pray.”
I was shocked and didn’t know how to respond to a Muslim praying over me. Before I could figure it out, she said, “M, would you please pray for my son. He is struggling after breaking up with his girlfriend.”
So, I prayed for her and her son. God set that one up.
Here’s something else God did. Last month, my wife, B, was at a nearby park with our kids. She saw our downstairs neighbor struggling to carry her groceries and toddler son back to the apartment building where we all live. Our neighbor has been cordial with us, but there has been no depth of relationship. Until that moment. B saw our neighbor’s difficulty and felt compelled to help. Using our large jogging stroller, B helped our neighbor get everything back home.
That simple, kind gesture unlocked a growing relationship. Our neighbor recently confided in B that she is struggling with the pressures of parenting. B would be the first to tell you that the last few weeks have felt like nothing short of chaos in our home. Despite that chaos, our neighbor has also observed something different in my wife that she finds attractive. She has come face-to-face with Jesus through B. God did that.
Here’s one last story. Last week, I attended a funeral for the mother of a Christian friend of mine. His mother was a Muslim. Before taking her coffin to the gravesite, a Muslim religious leader conducted a prayer service. Men stood in rows praying close to the coffin. Women stood at a distance. After praying, they brought her coffin to the gravesite. A different religious leader chanted Islamic prayers as they lowered her body into the ground. Then he left. That was the extent of the “pastoral care.”
After the friends and family left, our little group of Christians gathered in a small circle around our grieving brother. Surrounded by countless Muslim tombstones we prayed over our friend. In that moment, the love of God broke into this sad ceremony.
In the Muslim ceremony there had been distance and separation. There was a declaration that “God is great!” But there was no Jesus. There was no hope.
As Christ’s people prayed, however, there was closeness. Men, women, young, and old, standing together in a small circle around one of Christ’s sheep. The love and care of Christ was extended to him. God did that. What a gift.
I don’t know what the Lord has planned for our next five years in this city, but I can share what I’m asking him to do. I am asking him to take the foundation he has given us here and to see a Sovereign Grace church established. A church that will extend the love of God and the hope of the gospel to this unreached people.
There are days when this vision seems impossible. But the Lord reminds me that he is able to do far more than I can ever ask or imagine. We can face the next five years in the confidence that the most important question of our lives is not what we accomplish for God, but what he already accomplished for us through Jesus Christ.
