I got an email today from someone who works for BonfireFunds, the online t-shirt company I am running my t-shirt fundraiser through. The email was titled “Your Fund is Rocking!” I thought, well I guess it’s doing okay, I have 8 sales so far!
He included an optimized photo for sharing that really caught my attention:
I read that and was like “Man, they put ‘us’ and ‘our goal’ but this is for ‘me’ and ‘my goal’,” and God’s like, “it is? it’s your goal?”
God was right.
So, I got to thinking. Fundraising for the World Race has always been to me as my thing, I have to reach my goals, help support my mission…
But, truth be told, I guess it really isn’t my anything. This is the church’s, this is God’s. The World Race is a mission trip for the lost, this isn’t for me. It’s so that I can be the hands and feet of Jesus, sent out by the church for one purpose: share the love of Jesus to those who have not heard.
That brings me to another picture which I saw on Facebook this past week. This was a realization to me as well, and echoes what I just stated:
“How can they hear unless someone goes? How can someone go unless they are sent? How can someone be sent unless we give?”
This quote was probably a reference to Romans 10:14-15, which says, “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!'”
The church desires to reach people with the gospel, but how can this happen if the missionary does not go to share it? The lost soul needs the missionary, and the missionary needs the church. But, without the churches help the missionary cannot be sent to preach the good news.
This is why the church helps financially and through prayer so that the missionary can be sent. So that the world can hear the good news about the God that loves them. So that Jesus can be made known to towns and villages who have never heard his name.
The Joshua Project, which is a research initiative seeking to highlight the ethnic people groups of the world with the fewest followers of Christ, estimates that there are 3.02 billion people in the world that are unreached. Without the church and the missionary they would remain that way.
However, the good news is there are plenty of missionaries at the ready to go out and preach the gospel to a world that is lost and looking for Jesus without knowing it! We just need the church to be behind us and help us be sent out.
So, I ask that you would please sponsor missions, because the church is not just the building and it’s not the church board, the church is the people. The church is the body, and you are apart of that body. I need you, my fellow racers need you, the world full of unreached needs you.
It doesn’t take hundreds or thousands of dollars to make it worth giving (although that would be nice, especially with the amount us racers have to raise!) Remember the story in Mark 12? “41 Now Jesus sat opposite the treasury and saw how the people put money into the treasury. And many who were rich put in much. 42 Then one poor widow came and threw in two mites, which make a quadrans. 43 So He called His disciples to Himself and said to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you that this poor widow has put in more that all those who have given to the treasure; 44 for they all put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had, her whole livelihood.'”
She didn’t have much, but she gave it anyways. And it doesn’t take much, because even very little can be used for very much.
With love,
Katie Hope
You can read more statistics about the unreached by visiting https://joshuaproject.net/global_statistics
