Mark: Welcome once again to the GoMission podcast. I’m Mark Gillmore, missions traveler and trainer. And one of the things that stirs my heart most is the opportunity to stand in front of a group of young people or maybe sit behind a mic here and chat with you all and place before you that missions vision. 

The call to surrender your life, to the opportunity to go into the farthest reaches of the world, and to bring the Gospel to people who otherwise could never have heard. To me there’s just a matchless glory in that. To see those who are bound in fear and guilt brought into the liberty, into the joy that Christ brings. 

There’s an incredible sense of personal fulfillment, an eternal reward on the other side where one day you’re going to stand with people for whom God used YOU to bring them the Gospel. They’re there because you obeyed, because you went, because you brought them the Gospel. 

And I’m just overwhelmed with that thought and that reality and want to invite you to experience that with the short life that you have. You only have one life. And the glory of missions just shines so bright in my own understanding. 

And yet, as I have just grown in my understanding of what’s involved in missions, there’s something else that awaits the obedient missionary. And that’s the reality of a pathway of suffering and brokenness. I haven’t always seen that or understood how it works, but I just want to touch on that here today in this podcast. And I want to start by telling you a story. 

I just had a few months ago the opportunity to sit down and be with a missions couple that’s been serving the Lord for several decades, and they’re all about training others in missions. And yet they told their own story of how that, in about the year 1990, God called this couple with their young family of toddlers and infants to an unreached, unengaged area. 

It was actually an island off the coast of China. About seven million souls were there, less than 100 known believers. And as they entered that field, they really wrestled with “God, what’s it going to take to reach this entire region? I don’t want to just reach one village. Our responsibility is this entire region.” And God began to direct them. 

The man was a second-generation missionary. His parents had served in the Chinese mission field. He was a very capable student, athlete, a rather self-confident leader. And yet he began to “experience the reality,” he says, of John 15:5. “Without me, you can do nothing.” 

And they knew that at the bottom at allーhe and his wife had to have a very real, intimate walk with God in their daily life in which they listened a lot more to the Holy Spirit and forged ahead a lot less in their own strength and wisdom. They had to know God’s will, His way, His timing, His enablement. 

After a period of months, as they were there really, um…they weren’t surrounded by a whole lot of other American missionaries. Again, this was back in 1990. There wasn’t technology. There wasn’t telephone lines. They were really pretty isolated. 

And the lady, the man’s wife, she began to have a very serious pain in her back that became totally debilitating. She found herself on her back, unable to care for her family. Her husband was taking care of the children, and now some of their friends among the Chinese there were now actually having to come and serve them. 

They couldn’t go about village to village. They couldn’t do whatever their plans were. They were just existingーbarely surviving, and the nationals were there helping them as if they were completely helpless themselves. After a period of time, they had to leave the field. 

They actually had to go back to California, where the lady found herself in hospital treatment. And for some period of time, there was, I think, a surgery involved, and it was a very incredible trial. And finally, they made it back to their mission field there on that island. And then as they returned, they saw that God was opening hearts to their influence, to their teaching. 

And the native people said this: “When you came, we knew you had abilities and resources far beyond us. But when your wife became so sick and laid up in bed, we realized that you were just as needy as we were. In fact, you couldn’t take care of us; we had to take care of you. We saw you on the same level as we see ourselves. And seeing that you needed God’s help, and even our help, helped us to see that we need God too.”

In fact, that moment of brokenness, that period of suffering, opened the door in an incredible way, and over the next five years there on that island an indigenous church-planting movement broke through that reached to every corner of that island. In fact, they believe that every village had a church, and they saw well over 100,000 people come to Christ. 

That kind of humble response to the trials of life has characterized this dear missionary family, and God has used them in perhaps some of the most amazing, remarkable ways of any missionary couple of our generation. 

He began to teach others the lessons that God had showed him on that island: to teach them how to walk and abide in Christ, how to respond to suffering. And the result of their training of othersーone Chinese missionary who they trained went to an urban area of 20 million. He was actually from Taiwan. God called him to go into China. 

And over 10 years between the year 2000 and 2010, they saw over 150,000 house churches planted. Nearly two million new baptized believers. Out of their training, and in partnership with others, they have seen over 1,000 church-planting movements break out. They’ve planted over 5 million house churches across the world, over 80 million new baptized believers. They have tracked in the last 30 years. 

And yet brokenness and suffering has been part of their ministry. The manーhe writes these wordsーhe says, ”Many people whom I have led to the Lord, whom I have trained, whom I have challenged to go into difficult regions, have suffered. Many people from many countries, and too many countries, have been martyred for their faith. I’ve seen some held captive for years, imprisoned, tortured in horrible, unimaginable ways. They’ve had their children taken from them.  Their homes have been confiscated. They’ve been fined. Some have had to live as fugitives on the run for years.”

He said, “The weight of all that suffering would have been unbearable for me, if not for the Lord’s clear message to me many years ago: He is in control. We win in the end.”

I know this is a sobering challenge, but it came to my mind to give it to you young people at this time because we have a world right now that’s going through a lot of heartbreak. There’s a lot of suffering out there. 

And we can kind of think that somehow Satan’s just gotten control of everythingーit’s his agenda that’s winning the day. And we can feel very overcome, overwhelmed. We feel like we’re just heading into a period of incredible suffering, like all this is going bad, and almost like somehow Satan’s winning the day. 

But instead I want to encourage you with a glimpse into the reality of how God really works. A moment of increased suffering, of increased brokennes, of more difficulty as we might pursue the path that God would be calling us to.

Even a world that’s entering something like that, we have to realize that certainly Satan is in control of some of this stuff. He’s trying hard, but I want you to understand that what he is trying to do can actually backfire on him, if we stay on mission, realizing that this brokenness, this increasing sense of need in our world is an opportunity for God to show upーfor God to meet needs in deep ways. 

And if we’ll yield to that brokenness, we won’t try to hide ourselves, isolate ourselves, just kind of pray for the end, hope we get to Heaven where everything’s gonna be fine. We know we’re gonna be in Heaven. We know the end of the story for ourselves, but I want you to understand that there’s something really good happening right now. 

The world’s in need, and this is an opportunity for Jesus to show up.

Maybe that means you’re gonna be in need. Maybe sickness is going to come and encounter you and your family, and how are you going to respond to that? These moments of suffering are actually moments for God to show up in a way that glorifies Himself and that advances the Gospel. 

Paul said thisーhe said this, that: “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” You see, we have this treasure of the light of the Gospel in an earthly vessel, and when that vessel is broken, then the light can shine out. 

Second Corinthians 4 verse 4 says, “The God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ…should shine unto them.” “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” So the light that the world needs is inside of us, yet they can’t see it until we’re broken. Then the light can shine out. 

Maybe you’re trying to reach out to some peers, some friends, and maybe it seems like they might be working against you. There might be a mocking. There might be despising. They might be casting you out. 

Would you just thank God in that moment? Don’t allow Satan to depress you. Don’t allow him to oppress you. Don’t allow him to silence you. Continue to walk in love, but realize that brokenness is the moment that God is gonna use. Your weak moment is gonna be God’s strong moment to let them see Jesus in you. 

So praise the Lord for the way He works and the way He wants to work. He wants to use us in missions around the world. He wants to see the Gospel advance in remarkable ways, but he does it through brokenness. And He’ll do that through you and I in our world today. 

So remember that the only way to stay at peace in a world of turmoil and uncertainty is to stay on-mission with Jesus in His GoMission.