Greetings,

I am not quite sure how this works. I received an email from a friend a few days ago to remind me of the conference coming up, and she urged me to take part in the conference in some way. So here is my two cents…Hopefully it’s worth something in this global discussion.

The Return of Christ in our Generation

I have several different passions and topics I’d love to hit on, but I think for now I’ll share my thoughts about something that I’m going to call “The Doibility of the Mandate.” Not even quite sure if that’s a word. Oh well. Hey! Do you realize that we are almost there? I am 28 years old and ready to go be with God. I don’t know about you, but I want out of here, I want to see God in his glory. I’m sick of Hollwood, popculture, and the American Dream (a wife, 4 bedroom home in the suburbs, with a white picket fence, 2 children, and a dog named spot) telling me what to be and what is success. We are a part of something so much bigger than ourselves and we can see the finish line, “All peoples reached with some form of gospel representation.” According to the president of the organization I’m with, we figure that by the year 2063, every language group could have some form of scripture in their language. By 2025, some form of Bible translation will have been started in every language! Are you kidding me? I get excited about an Iowa Hawkeyes football game, but man alive, this is kingdom stuff going on!

Good News, Bad News, Good News

Last I heard over 150,000 per day are coming into the kingdom. Africa is booming with believers, along with Jesus movements happening in Iran, Indonesia, China, and other places on this globe. You won’t hear that news in the media, but it’s happening. But wait a minute Luke, you are trying to tell me that Christ will return in our lifetime. Well, I think it can happen. It seems to be that Matthew 24:14 and scores of other verses indicate that the end will come when all nations all earth have some form of testimony among them. We should join God in what he is doing. He doesn’t need us but wants us to partner with him. Wow! What a awesome responsibility and job to have. Who would want to settle for anything less? Just recently my wife and I shared a poster with some of our friends. Not kidding, it’s literally 10 feet wide by 4 feet tall. It lists all of the languages in the world with no scripture. Over 2,800 and maybe more! Indonesia has 520 Scripture-less peoples, Papua New Guinea, China, Nigeria, and India all have many groups too with no parts of the Bible!

We Have the People

But hear me out. Through some help of my mathmatician friends (I never did too well in high school), we concluded that if just two people stood up and said, “Send me to one of those 2,800 groups,” then we would need only 5,600 workers to finish the task of Bible translation. We could even double that number for good measure to 11,200. I live across the street from a church in Dallas, TX with 25,000 members in the whole church! (Oh, don’t even get me going about mega churches and how they spend their money). I could give you 25 churches in this city with a membership of over 5,000!

We Have the Money

We spend more money on dog food in America than bringing the gospel to the unreached. I’ll stop there. I think we all get the point.

We Have the God

I love to brag about my God. When I was in middle school, my brother was the captain of the basketball team, the homecoming king, and my hero. He was a high school senior and was good at everything he touched. He led Bible studies in our youth group, got A’s in all of his classes, and had the pretty girlfriend. It was fun to brag about my brother! We’ve got the same situation with God. He is loving, compassionate, caring, redeeming the nations as I write, planning, he takes the initiative, and we get to join him. The only confidence I have is in him. Oh, by the way, we’re on the winning team! I’ve read the playbook. The last page says that he will redeem all nations and that he will bring all of this to a head with his global worship (Rev. 5:9,7:9)! 

So, now what? I’ve probably been preaching to the choir this whole time. Someone smarter and wiser than me once said, “Put your ’yes’ on the table and God will put it on the map.”

That’s what I did a couple years ago and have never regretted it.