Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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This morning, I made leeway on boxing up my childhood bedroom. It brought back a host of emotions. I’ve found many things: birthday cards, motivational letters from teammates. I sifted through old schoolwork, mixtapes with carefully selected songs, art projects, awards from sports, running shoes and bathing suits that hold a multitude of memories. I was surprised by how nostalgia washed over me as I rediscovered these memories—as my finger traced old photos, the spines of my favorite childhood books. I was especially moved as I read through old journals that were tucked away. I started my first journal in 2004. I’ve been delving through the entries that became over the last fourteen years. I read them with laughter, tears in my eyes, again feeling pangs of pain and celebrating the swells of victory. I read them, overwhelmingly, with gratitude for God’s fingerprints and faithfulness that can be seen all throughout the years. I read them, and again recognized how deeply we can live with an unknowing spirit. I see more deeply how we come before Christ unknowing; oh, how a veil can cover the eyes of our heart.  

In the last months, I’ve been pondering and trying to more fully understand what the word [unreached] means. In August, when our team launches, we will be serving in the 10/40 region, which is named the “most unreached” area of the world in terms of evangelism. Below, I’ve included some statistics from the Window International Network, a nonprofit organization founded in 1999 to continue international outreach.

 

What is the 10/40 Window?

The 10/40 Window is located from 10 degrees south to 40 degrees north of the equator, which includes Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

  • Nearly 4 billion people live here, including 90 percent of the world’s poorest of the poor. It is estimated that 1.6 billion of these people have never had the chance to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ – not even once!

  • The seat of every major non-Christian religion – Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Animism, Atheism, and Sikhism – is headquartered in the 10/40 Window.

  • In many of the 69 countries represented in the 10/40 Window, witnessing the Christian Gospel means death. Truly, the 10/40 Window remains the darkest and most inhospitable territory to the cause of Christ and represents the greatest remaining stronghold of Satan.

  • Two-thirds of the world’s population (4 billion) live in the 69 nations of the 10/40 Window.

  • 95% of the people are unevangelized.

  • 90% of the people are the poorest of the poor, averaging $250 per family annually.

  • 43 of the 50 worst countries in the world for persecution of Christians are here.

  • Only five pennies out of every $100 spent on missions goes to this desperately needy area of the world.

  • Illiteracy is widespread.

  • Terrorist organizations and child prostitution run rampant in many of these nations.

  • Horrific abuse of women and children remains unchecked.

  • Children as young as 18 months old are trained to be Jihad soldiers.

(http://win1040.com/)

For many of us reading this, we are more unknowing than unreached. Yet it remains, even if we are reached by the gospel but unknowing to God’s love, we are unreached.  While the 10/40 window remains in desperate need of truth of Jesus, I am more fully grasping that the unreached are not only those who have not heard the gospel, but those who have not felt the measure of its love. Many people we live among and live with are unreached. Parts of each of our own hearts remains unreached by God’s love.

To each brother and sister reading this, that is a conviction. As I read through old journals, I knew the lessons I would soon learn. My retrospective eyes saw the solution, felt the embrace, knew the renewal, accepted the outcomes. But, the hand that wrote those entries was full of unknowing. And as I grow in Christ, I continue to understand that tangible answers are not the knowing. Accepting and embracing surrender in deep places leads to an intangible knowing of God’s love. Trust is what leads us to knowing His love. As we listen to and accept His invitations, we ought to be humbled. As a servant of Christ, I know I am empowered and enabled by His grace, not my own goodness or intention. Reading through young journals reminds me again of God’s grace that paints over each life. But isn’t life, old journal entries, striving, overcoming, struggling a good reminder that we have not arrived at the measure of fullness God intends to bless us with? In places within our hearts that are unreached, to people who are completely unreached—God wants to go deeper. He is on the throne and will remain there.  As I continue to seek discovery in who God is and who He has made me to be, the unknowing in my soul illuminates by His breath in surrender and communion. A quaint morning cherishing, celebrating and remembering the blessings of my childhood reminds me that there is more. The Love I have come to know is a Love that cannot remain my own. If we know Love, we must sink deeper into our unknowing. If there are ones who don’t know Christ, we must share the miracle. The mystery of His soveringty is absolute; the truth of that must extend to all peoples— the knowing, the unknowing, the unreached. 

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever. (Psalm 136:1)