16. God Has Blessed Us
16
GOD HAS BLESSED US
God wants to speak to you in the everyday events of your life if you will only open yourself up to Him. Let me illustrate with a true story taken from a page of our family album.
Growing up, my son, Daniel, was a gymnast. This meant we as a family often were called upon to support him and his team at their gymnastics meets. As I was in the midst of writing this chapter, I drove the whole family down to San Antonio, Texas, one Saturday for an invitational meet.
There God spoke to me in a special way about His love for the United States of America and the plan He has for this nation—if we will only walk in obedience to Him.
As nearly 100 young athletes gathered to start the competition, we stood solemnly with all the other parents for the national anthem. My wife, Gisela, remains a German citizen, and I am a citizen of the country of India. But our children, born in the United States, are citizens of this great country.
My eyes turned automatically upward to the huge American flag that hung at one end of the brilliantly lit hall. Then God spoke to me as “The Star-Spangled Banner” played. I felt an overwhelming rush in my spirit from God. I realized that I was looking at the flag of a nation unlike any other on earth.
My mind flashed back to the past 14 years since I landed on the soil of this wonderful country. I recalled the day I arrived in the Dallas airport with $8 in my pocket and a few clothes. I didn’t know anyone. The school where I was enrolled made known my situation to other students. Richard Shaffer, a Pennsylvania native, came and picked me up and took me to his house. For the next six months or so, I stayed with him. He loved me and took care of me as if I were his own brother. Everywhere I went, I saw love and acceptance. I was amazed, knowing that I was a stranger, and they didn’t have to go out of their way to show kindness and love to me.
Moreover, what other nation, I asked myself, would have helped us establish a house and a mission organization? Who would have let us send out millions of dollars to share the love of Christ to people whom they have never met? I have traveled to scores of nations but never have been to a country where people are so open and gracious as in the United States of America.
As these thoughts filtered through my mind, my eyes were misty—and a voice from the depths of my heart rose like a voice of an orchestra with a thousand voices, saying, “Lord, thank You so much for America. Thank You for Your kindness to me and to my family in bringing us to this country. I pray that You will continue to show Your kindness to this nation, that once again, O Lord, this nation will be a nation called by Your Name, and a people who truly fear the Living God.” Once again, I pledged to pray for America more than ever.
Of course, there are a lot of problems in America. I don’t deny that. But take any problem you have there and multiply it a thousand times, and you will begin to understand the problems other nations experience around the world.
Peoples of Privilege
Don’t misunderstand me—I am not trying to water down the sin and lukewarm Christianity we find in the United States or in any other country. Those to whom much is given, much shall be required, and I know God is beginning to ask an account for all the blessings He has given us.
I could write volumes about the abundance of education, food, health care and housing we have. There’s little a person needs that isn’t inexpensive and plentiful. We have so much food that we can afford to throw out 14 percent of the food we buy, much of it unopened.[1] While most people living in less developed countries work from dawn to dusk for a few handfuls of rice, we are often more concerned with how to lose weight!
While many people in the world can’t read or write, we worry about choosing the “right” school for our children. While much of the world barely has two changes of clothes, many of us discard clothes every year to make room in the closet for the latest fashions and colors.
I don’t really need to develop this point. Most of us are already vaguely aware of our material privileges, although we rarely pause to thank God for them. But we may be less aware of our spiritual bounty.
First of all, we know about Jesus. Even if His beautiful name is used as a curse word or joke, virtually everyone has at least heard the Christmas story.
In the developed nations, 98 to 99 percent of the population is evangelized.[2] Evangelized means that they have heard the Gospel message and have had the opportunity to respond. I am not saying that nearly everyone is a Christian, but that they have heard the Gospel at least once. Most people, in fact, have heard the Gospel many times. How different this is from millions in Asia.
For nearly seven years, I wandered from village to village and street to street in North India as a missionary evangelist. Everywhere I would ask the same question, “Have you heard of Jesus?”
I cannot tell you how many times I would hear the reply, “Sir, there is no Jesus Christ living here. Maybe he lives in the next village. Why don’t you try there?”
More than a billion people in Asia are unevangelized—they have not heard the Gospel clearly even once.[3] They have never seen a Bible, a tract or a Christian video. Hundreds of millions have never heard a Christian radio broadcast or even met a believer—let alone spoken with a trained missionary evangelist.
Hundreds of thousands of villages are without a Christian witness, and there are 10,000 unreached people groups in the world still without a church! Most of these are in Asia.[4]
Many times, when I quote these gigantic numbers to audiences, I see eyes glaze over. These numbers have been heard so many times they have lost their impact. But remember, we’re talking about real people with lost souls. These are not monkeys jumping up and down or fish in the sea, but people who are born and die, love and hate. They suffer loneliness, guilt and pain just as you and I do.
Now compare this crying need in Asia to the situation in the evangelized nations:
Can you see the gross inequity of this? To give you a visual of what is going on, imagine a soccer stadium with 30,000 seats filled with the populations of Asia and the evangelized countries. There are 24 hotdog vendors serving the crowd; these represent the full-time Christian workers serving in these areas of the world. Of the 24 vendors, 20 are set apart to serve the 6,000 spectators sitting in the front rows, but only 4 vendors are serving the 24,000 spectators in the back.
And it’s worse than that, because only a few of the well-fed spectators in front are even interested in hotdogs, having brought in ice chests loaded with other food. By contrast, thousands of people in the back rows are on the verge of starvation, perishing for lack of food! However, the 20 front vendors do not even venture back to help their 4 exhausted fellow vendors save the lives of the starving people. Instead, they continually walk back and forth in front, asking the privileged spectators over and over again if anyone is hungry. Some well-fed spectators are concerned enough to pass a little food toward the back, but most simply enjoy the game.
That’s what is really happening in Christian missions today. In addition to keeping the lion’s share of the Christian workers for themselves, the evangelized nations also consume the vast majority of Christian literature. Through the Internet, they enjoy a boundless supply of Christian resources for evangelism, discipleship, worship and Bible study. They are also the primary recipients for well over 90 percent of all Christian radio and television. And they have thousands of Christian schools, colleges and seminaries. No wonder they’re stuffed!
Meanwhile, not even a single portion of the Bible is available for more than 4,000 of the world’s 6,837 languages.[9]
Our first reaction, I suppose, should be to fall on our knees and thank God for the privilege of living in nations that are super-saturated with the Gospel. But next, we need to ask ourselves seriously why God has given us such tremendous material and spiritual resources.
Thy Kingdom Come
Jesus said the fields are white unto harvest now. Anyone who has worked on a farm knows what that means. When you’ve got a ripe crop in the field, everything else stops. You harvest it or it rots in the ground.
The potential number of people who could come to Christ in this generation is staggering. As our global population approaches 7 billion people, there are more people living on earth today than have lived in the whole history of humankind. Two billion people are waiting to hear the Gospel now.
At the same time, this generation of believers in the developed, evangelized nations of the world has received the most unearned and undeserved favor of all time. Were we to mobilize these resources for the Lord’s work, we could finish the task of world evangelization. But instead, we carry on as if this wealth were a natural right—as if we have no obligation to a lost world, dying in darkness without Christ.
God has prospered us for the sake of His kingdom, and He has been so patient with us. Why this awesome grace continues must be a question all heaven asks! May God teach us that all these blessings are only temporary and conditional. May He help us see how late the hour is and how urgent it is we respond with obedience to His grace and mercy.
He is the king of Matthew 25:14–30 who entrusts wealth to his servants and goes on a long journey. When he returns, the king demands an accounting and a profit from what he has given to invest. What will we present to our Lord when He returns for an accounting? What kind of stewards are we being with the blessings He has shed on us?