Good Morning Friends,
“When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he
gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and
he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He told
them: ‘Take nothing for the journey — no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no
extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. If
people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave their
town, as a testimony against them.’ So they set out and went from village to
village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere. … When the
apostles returned, they reported to Jesus what they had done.” (Luke 9:1-6; 10)
Christianity is rapidly growing in the world. The
church in China is experiencing explosive growth and experts are predicting
that there could eventually be 500 million Christians there. The church in
Africa is also growing very rapidly. Already the center of Christianity has
shifted to Asia and Africa.
Those statistics speak of the power of the
Gospel. The Gospel has the same power that it had in the days of the apostles.
They saw multitudes respond in faith to the simple message of Jesus. That kind
of response can still be seen today.
Jesus predicted that the apostles would also
see places and times where there would be little response to the Gospel. The
apostles found some places where the hearts of men were cluttered or hard and
the response was minimal. Jesus’ instruction to the apostles was to put their
effort into the places where the response was strong and leave those places
where response was minimal alone until they were softer toward the Gospel.
I am deeply concerned about the United States
right now because I see such minimal response to the Gospel here. It’s not that
there is no response; it’s just that the response isn’t very large. I wonder
when God will choose to pull His resources out of the US and put them in places
where the response is more powerful.
His, by Grace, Steve
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