Bible Text: James 2:26 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living |

For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. James 2:26

Ralph Winter was brilliant. He was responsible for many of the ways the church thinks about spreading the Gospel in the modern world. He realized that only 1 in 1,000 people who feel the call to missions ever end up on the mission field because parents, friends, even pastors, rarely encourage them to follow up on that call.

In Luke 9:59-62 we read the words of Jesus who said, “‘Follow me.’ But one who heard Him said, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Yet another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’” Jesus Himself posed that Great Commission challenge to many and received excuses— either not to do the work or to delay until it was convenient.

Somehow, the Great Commission has become the Great Omission. Take the country of Yemen for example. Eight million people, yet, as David Platt explained: “There are likely more believers in your Sunday School class or a couple of small groups in your church than there are in all of northern Yemen. That is a problem.”

What can you do? You can go, you can send and you can mobilize. We were all given the command to go and most of us would say we are willing to go, but are planning to stay. There are about 600 million active Christians in the world today. 150 million of them are between 22 and 50 years of age. The estimate is that we only need about 20,000 cross-cultural missionaries to finish reaching every unreached people group.

Those that go need those who are willing to send them. Many of you Guidelines listeners do just this and we praise God for you who support Guidelines missionaries in the Philippines, Ukraine, Myanmar, Kenya and Russia. These missionaries do so much to impact the Kingdom of God with so little. When you give to missions you are in effect “sending your riches on to heaven ahead of you.” When you pray for a missionary, you are storming the gates of hell itself. Many a prayer warrior has been awakened in the middle of the night with a missionary urgently on their mind, later to find out prayer was critically needed at that very hour. Prayer is the very fuel of all mission!

“Someone must sound the rallying call,” explained missionary and author, Phil Parshall. And this person is called a missions mobilizer today. He or she is the one who stirs other Christians to active concern for reaching the world by praying, encouraging, giving and equipping. They form missions committees, organize short-term missions trips and share mission-vision books and information about yet unreached people groups.

How will you answer the call of Jesus, friend? No matter where you are, you are needed! There is a place in the Harvest for every follower of Jesus Christ.

Resource reading: James 2:14-26