I May Be Called to Missions — Where Do I Start?

00:00:00.000 | A listener named Pfeiffer writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, you mentioned in your

00:00:09.000 | recent podcast, podcast episode 233, about your trip to the Middle East and the need

00:00:14.380 | for young people to devote and give their lives to an unreached people group.

00:00:18.200 | I'm a young man in college and I'm just wondering what it would look like for a young person

00:00:22.080 | like me to move forward on a call like this.

00:00:25.080 | Where do I start?"

00:00:26.080 | That is an absolutely crucial question because my guess is there are a lot of people in churches

00:00:33.600 | where not a lot of missions focus exists and therefore there's not a lot of practical help.

00:00:42.360 | So let me try to give some.

00:00:44.800 | Where to start if God gives the slightest tug toward the unreached peoples of the world?

00:00:53.600 | Start with your Bible and prayer.

00:00:57.520 | Read your Bible with the question, "What does this have to do with world missions?"

00:01:02.080 | And you will be amazed.

00:01:03.080 | If you just put it all through the grid of missions, then pray earnestly every day, "God,

00:01:10.240 | please cause your name to be hallowed in my life."

00:01:14.560 | That's the Lord's Prayer.

00:01:15.560 | "Make your name great and treasured and praised and valuable in my life.

00:01:21.680 | Bring your kingdom through my life.

00:01:24.280 | Show me the most fruitful path of your will for my life.

00:01:29.500 | Give me a sense of yieldedness to your leading.

00:01:33.200 | Prepare me in every way for your service.

00:01:35.940 | Show me yourself and how I can serve you."

00:01:38.680 | So that a young person who's, say, 13 or 15 or 16, if a young person prays that prayer

00:01:46.520 | every day, God's going to do amazing things.

00:01:49.120 | He is.

00:01:50.120 | He won't neglect a prayer like that coming out of the heart of a young person.

00:01:54.840 | And then thirdly, be a part of a good gospel preaching, missions-minded church.

00:02:00.400 | Now that may not be easy for a kid because he's going to go where his parents are going

00:02:03.760 | and the church may or may not be a missions-powerful church.

00:02:09.120 | If you're not at one, pray that God will reform your church.

00:02:12.420 | Be an instrument of reformation among the young people.

00:02:15.580 | In the history of missions, young people have gotten together to talk and pray about missions

00:02:19.680 | and have read things about missions and have become the explosive agents of reform in the

00:02:24.520 | church instead of waiting around for the church to get reformed so that they could be inspired

00:02:28.140 | about missions.

00:02:30.280 | Seek to have an older and a younger friend or friends who share your interests and talk

00:02:36.320 | to them about missions.

00:02:39.880 | If you can get to know some missionaries, talk to them, write to them, ask them all

00:02:44.560 | your questions.

00:02:45.560 | Find out who the missionaries are at your church or if you don't have any, find some

00:02:51.040 | through friends and write to them and ask them what it's like and give them your very

00:02:56.120 | particular questions.

00:02:58.720 | Go to visit them on the mission field.

00:03:01.040 | Do a short-term missionary project.

00:03:03.160 | Lots of people wind up in long-term missions because they did a short-term project that

00:03:08.240 | missionaries find helpful, not just that you find interesting.

00:03:12.180 | You want to serve when you go.

00:03:13.240 | You want to serve.

00:03:14.240 | You're not there for entertainment and you're not there for a cross-cultural experience.

00:03:18.320 | You're there to serve and you get all that other stuff thrown in.

00:03:23.920 | Read missionary biography.

00:03:26.120 | Read William Carey, A Faithful Witness is the name of the book by Timothy George and

00:03:31.040 | there are others.

00:03:32.280 | Read To the Golden Shore by Courtney Anderson, the biography of Adoniram Judson.

00:03:37.760 | Read John Patton's autobiography.

00:03:41.440 | Read Peace Child and Lords of the Earth and Eternity in Their Hearts by Dawn Richardson.

00:03:46.960 | These are books that will just fire your imagination and stir up your faith and your hope and your

00:03:52.800 | joy.

00:03:54.160 | Read Hudson Taylor and his story written by his grandchildren or his own book, Hudson

00:04:00.280 | Taylor's Spiritual Secret.

00:04:03.260 | Read history of missions like Stephen Neal's history of missions or Dana Robert, Christian

00:04:07.740 | missions.

00:04:09.240 | Look at websites like joshuaproject.net and try to understand the scope of the need and

00:04:14.400 | the nature of unreached peoples.

00:04:17.480 | Check out online mission agencies.

00:04:21.480 | Get to know a few mission agencies.

00:04:24.080 | First start with your own denomination.

00:04:25.080 | If you're in a church and it has a denomination and they have a world missions board, ask

00:04:29.840 | your pastor what it is, how to get in touch with it, if it has a website and just get

00:04:33.920 | to know your own denominational mission focus.

00:04:38.060 | And then outside that, there are lots of interdenominational mission boards and I think it would be great

00:04:44.880 | just to scan their websites and read about what God's doing.

00:04:48.440 | And here's a few of them.

00:04:50.440 | Pioneers, Frontiers, Wycliffe, TEAM, to every tribe, Action International Ministries, AIM,

00:04:58.480 | SIM, IMB, WEC, SEND, SEND.

00:05:03.680 | These are all, you can rewind this podcast and just go online, say type in mission agency

00:05:10.200 | in one of those and you can find out all kinds of things that God is doing and maybe be stirred

00:05:15.340 | up for a particular place or people.

00:05:19.160 | And maybe the last thing I'd say is come to the Cross Conference in Louisville.

00:05:24.320 | This is a conference that I was part of founding and the first one, we got about 3,500 folks

00:05:31.380 | signed up.

00:05:32.380 | So I guess I'm hoping for 4,000 or 5,000 young people, these are students and seniors

00:05:36.840 | in high school I think could be included.

00:05:38.940 | So Louisville, December 27 to 28, you can go online and find thecrosscon.com and be

00:05:44.940 | a part of that.

00:05:45.940 | That is a tremendous encouragement when you're with a whole lot of other students who have

00:05:49.980 | the same kind of questions and the same kind of prayers you do.

00:05:55.520 | So my prayer is that God will make this question that's been asked here, the question of thousands,

00:06:02.340 | thousands of young people and that they'll raise them and seek to find all the practical

00:06:08.120 | ways that God has of showing them a pathway into missions.

00:06:13.060 | I pray that God will raise up an army of goers in our day among young people with the gospel

00:06:17.980 | of peace.

00:06:18.980 | Yes.

00:06:19.980 | Amen.

00:06:20.980 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:06:21.980 | And just to reiterate the importance of the Cross Conference, which begins on December

00:06:25.340 | 27th in Louisville, Kentucky, it's a large conference with several excellent speakers.

00:06:29.740 | And for more information about everything offered at the conference, check out the website

00:06:33.060 | at crosscon.com.

00:06:34.060 | Crosscon.com.

00:06:35.060 | It's spelled C-R-O-S-S-C-O-N.com.

00:06:39.980 | And we'll be back on Monday asking the question, where did all these Calvinists come from?

00:06:44.420 | Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:06:45.580 | Thanks for listening.

00:06:46.340 | [END]

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I May Be Called to Missions — Where Do I Start?

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