"No Chocolate Solder: The Life of CT Studd" Sunday Evening Worship Service

What I have for you tonight is more of a teaching than a sermon.

It's more biographical than it is biblical.

And the topic is frontier missions.

This is Mission Among the World's Unreached, where evangelicals make up less than 2% of the population.

Now to keep this teaching from being just full of charts and stats and maps, and I have plenty of those.

I might have a record number of slides here tonight, so you can watch the screen, starting with this delightful one that Stephen Procopio put together, of Charles Studd looking at a map of Africa with a with a chocolate soldier melting in front of him.

But to keep it from just being stats, I do want to talk about this man named Charles Thomas Studd or C.

T.

Studd, who surrendered much.

He went to great lengths to serve effectively as a frontier missionary.

I introduced C.

T.

Studd to the foundry a couple of months ago.

And now we're back by popular acclaim, right?

But truth be told, this is a message really I think younger people need to hear, even more than some of the rest of us.

They're the ones most likely to eventually engage in frontier missions.

So on this topic of uh frontier missions, I have some good news and I have some bad news.

What do you want first?

Well, if you said bad news, too bad.

You can do a lot of things in this world, but you can't cross the AV, guys.

They have too many ways to get back at you.

Globally, there are 2.3 billion people who claim to be followers of the Christian faith.

That's 29% of the world's population.

Christianity is the world's largest religion.

Along with this, there are followers of Jesus Christ in every one of the world's 195 nations.

Even in places like Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan or North Korea, church in North Korea could be one believer encountering another believer in the latrine of a prison camp and whispering together, Yeshu Nun Shui Da, Jesus is Lord.

This is a joyful fact given that the church was conceived in ethnic diversity.

In the verses that I read this morning, the day of Pentecost, there were Jews in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven.

This was not a coincidence.

And all of them heard the word of God in their language.

The church reaches its climax in Revelation chapter 5, with people of every tongue and tribe and language and nation worshiping the Lamb around the throne.

Revelation 5 · chapter mention

This is our destiny.

This is where we're headed.

This map shows the pink and the red in this map show all the countries in the world where Christianity is the dominant religion.

For me, it stirs thoughts of Isaac Watts' great hymn.

Jesus shall reign wherever the sun doth its successive journeys run.

You've got from one end of the globe to the other.

His kingdom stretched from shore to shore till moons shall wax and wane no more.

This is another good chart.

It shows all of all the major world religions, the Christian faith has indeed stretched from shore to shore.

Up at the top, 99% of Hindus live in Asia.

But you can see at the bottom that the Christian faith, Christians have sizable populations in all the different regions of the world except the Middle East.

Another piece of good news.

For every unreached people group or ethnic group in the world, there's 1,000 existing congregations.

In 8100, there were 12 people groups for every one congregation.

Officially, Fairfax County lists 505 churches of every Christian denomination.

Let's suppose that that number's a thousand, right?

So you would think surely that's enough resources to engage and bring the gospel to just one people group, right?

Every church in Fairfax County?

Well, stay tuned because there's also some bad news.

Bad news is there's over 3.5 billion people around the world who are unreached.

The vast majority of these have no knowledge of Jesus Christ or the gospel, and worse, they have no way of hearing it.

42% of the world's nearly 18,000 people groups are unreached, which, as I said, is defined by having less than a 2% evangelical population.

You see, there are believers within the political boundaries of all 195 countries in the world, but not within every ethnic group, not by a long shot.

And when Jesus said in Matthew 28, go and make disciples of all the nations, the word was ethne, where we get our word ethnic, often identified by a particular language or occupation or cultural trait.

These are groups that Jesus commissioned us to reach.

Let me give you an example.

Nigeria in West Africa is one political nation.

They have one vote at the United Nation, they have one team at the World Cup.

And yet, that country of Nigeria is composed of 538 different ethnic groups who speak over 500 languages.

48% of Nigerians are Christians.

They send missionaries to other nations.

5,000 seats in the choir.

Ha ha, that's a church.

Here's some data on just one of the Nigerian unreached groups, the Falani, who live in northern Nigeria, numbering over 16 million.

The Falani are 99.9% Muslim.

Christians are less than one-tenth of 1% of the population.

And Falanis are fiercely opposed to the spread of the gospel.

They burn churches, they kick Christian families out of their region.

And this is but one example of 7,400 around the world.

Surely there is much mission work to do.

Which brings me to more bad news.

Today there are approximately 430,000 missionaries from all branches of Christendom that work around the world.

It seems like a lot, but 97% of these are either laboring in countries that are already reached, where the gospel's already well established, or they're working in some kind of administrative or support role.

I get it that not all members of an army can be frontline troops, but surely 3% is too small of a fighting force.

This chart shows the remaining task of world missions.

Orange identifies the evangelical church in various regions of the world.

Yellow is other Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant.

Green shows people who live near, they may have Christians living near them from whom they could possibly hear the gospel.

This is particularly true in China.

You see a large green section there where the house church movement has flourished throughout the country of China.

Blue represent the unreached, the frontier areas in different degrees.

This is frontier missions, but only one in 30 missionaries is going to these places.

Why?

Well, many of these people live in remote, difficult-to-access places.

They may have laws against missionaries and conversions.

This is a map of what we call the 1040 window.

You may have heard of this 1040 window, which is defined by the 10th and 40th degrees north latitudes across Africa and Asia.

85% of the world's unreached people and the unreached groups exist inside of this triangle.

Here's another look at the task.

Each dot here represents one of the 7,400 unreached people groups.

Some are scattered around the various continents, but the overwhelming majority of them are in North Africa, the Middle East, Central, and Southern Asia.

Look at India.

Nearly completely shaded.

Fully half of the unreached groups in the world are in the country of India.

When it comes to finances, the numbers are smaller still.

Only one half of 1% of Christian giving goes toward reaching the world's unreached.

I'll read that again.

Only one half of 1% of Christian giving goes towards reaching the world's unreached.

Let's break that down for a person making$100,000 a year.

Christian giving to church averages 2.5%.

Hey, you could do better, right?

So we'll say$2,500 a year.

And of this, 95% is spent on home-based ministry, salaries, benefits, buildings, children's ministries, local outreaches, concerts, etc.

5% on average is what churches do for missions.

Our church does much more.

And we're much more active in these remote regions, by the way.

But 5% on average is from churches go into cross-cultural missions, but the vast majority of this money goes to support works and workers, you guessed it, in already reached places.

Only 0.5%, which would amount to$13 a year, goes to the vast and difficult work of frontier missions.

So the average Christian bringing home$100,000 a year sees a dollar a month if they go to frontier missions.

In fact, American Christians spend more on Halloween costumes for their pets than they do on frontier missions.

And that's a hard one to say.

Unreached groups like the Falani are shielded from outsiders, high walls of culture, of language, of religion.

What will motivate us to give and to pray and to go?

That's the triad that sustains all work of missions in the world.

To help us in this, I'd like to take some time to look at the life of a frontier missionary named Charles or C.T.

Studd.

He was a true soldier for Jesus, and he once wrote a book called The Chocolate Soldier, in which he disparages Christians whose resolve melts like chocolate when confronted by hardships or obstacles.

I've been fascinated by this man for decades.

I've prayed for God to make me half the man and half the Christian Stud was, but I don't think that God has answered my prayer.

Most of the information that I have about Stud comes from this book, C.T.

Stud, Cricketeer and Pioneer by by Norman Grubb.

I believe this is the 1982 edition.

Mine is from an earlier time.

And though it's falling apart, I love this little book.

I especially love the notes I scribbled in it when I served in Africa for 10 years.

I had this book in Africa with me.

It's stamped with my uh address when I was in Côte d'Ivoire.

If this message disturs uh a desire in you to know more about uh this man and the work of uh his mission, uh this is the book you need to get.

Although the bookdoor tells me it is on back order.

You may be able to find it at that place that starts with an A that I'm not allowed to mention.

Stud left us with many fine, pithy mission quotes.

If you don't know him, you probably know some of his quotes.

Here's one that shows that his heart beat for frontier missions.

Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell.

I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.

With apologies to Stud.

I would modify it to most.

Most wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell.

Stud was born in 1860 into the British aristocracy.

The palatial uh Tedworth House was uh was where he was born.

And his father, Edward, had great wealth and a great interest in racehorses.

Edward became a Christian when a friend took him to a meeting to hear the famous evangelist Dwight L.

Moody.

Doesn't it always seem in these stories that somewhere along the line there's just something simple?

Some guy told his friend, hey, let's let's go to this meeting.

These simple things that we can do, and you have no idea in the eternal scheme of things what God is going to do with that.

But a friend took Edward to hear Dwight Al Moody, and he and he listened to him several times, gave his life to Christ.

Over time, he sold off his racehorses and replaced the furniture at Tedworth's grand ballroom with benches and pews, and the studs began hosting church services and prayer meetings.

There were uh six stud boys.

The three oldest were very close in age, and all of them were excellent cricket players at Eton and eventually at Cambridge.

Uh cricket was uh Britain's top sport then and probably still is today.

I don't know.

Soccer maybe, but cricket is very, very popular in England, and Cambridge was the number one team.

Sometimes these matches were viewed, you might be able to see in that picture, by upwards of 20,000 people.

Of the three brothers, Charles was by far the best cricketer, and he was uh twice voted the all-England player, something of a national MVP.

That's him in the back row uh right side uh with the uh the national team from England.

Uh Edward and Dorothy Studd often had preachers or evangelists stay at Tedworth House and preach for Sunday services.

There was one man named Mr.

W who came and preached.

He must have uh had a slight build because the uh the muscular stud boys called him a milksop.

But uh Mr.

W got the best of them.

All three of the elder stud boys gave their lives to Christ on the same day without knowing what the others had done.

But cricket was still C.T.'s major passion through his college years, and he was at best a lukewarm believer.

But in 1884, his brother George became seriously ill, and it became a crisis of faith for Charles.

He asked himself, what is all the fame and flattery worth when a man comes to face eternity?

He had to admit that since his conversion six years earlier, he had been in an unhappy back sitting state.

Studd dropped to his knees at one point and sang a hymn we're familiar with: Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee.

Take my lips and let them be filled with messages for thee.

Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold.

Take my will and make it thine, it shall be no longer mine.

Take myself and I will be only ever all for thee.

He would spend the rest of his life being tested in these heartfelt aspirations.

Take my talents, take my health, take my wealth and fame, take my youth and vigor.

All of these would be given and given again on the altar of frontier missionary service.

Soon after this, uh Studd heard of the great need for missionaries in the interior of China.

He and his good friend Stanley Smith, who was also a renowned athlete at Cambridge, met with representatives of Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission, and they were accepted.

Mostly through Moody's influence, there were five other mission candidates from Cambridge, all wealthy, all great successes in either sports or academics, and together they became known as the Cambridge Seven.

Their story was a sensational one in England.

Imagine seven of the brightest and ablest of the nation setting off as missionaries in native dress.

The newspapers carried stories of them regularly.

There was a pamphlet that was written about it in Queen Victoria, asked for a copy.

Imagine in our day, if uh, say, uh famous uh quarterbacks, you know, Tom Brady or basketball players, you know, uh LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, if if they put on kimonos and the pigtail and said, we're going off to China's missionaries.

Imagine what people would say.

There would be a shock in the sporting world and throughout all of our society.

And this is really what happened from the Cambridge Seven.

They began, uh, one historian has written, in the history of missions, no band of volunteers has caught the imagination of the public as these seven, and their going gave new impetus to the whole cause.

The seven began traveling and speaking on college campuses.

Hundreds gave their lives to Christ, and their testimonies had a huge impact on applications to the China Inland mission.

One historian said the Cambridge Seven helped catapult the China Inland mission from obscurity to almost embarrassing prominence.

And their work helped to inspire many recruits for the CIM and other mission societies as well.

The seven arrived in China in 1885, and Charles Studd remained there for ten years.

They received orientation and language training for seven months, and then they scattered throughout the interior of China.

Three of them traveled 1,800 miles together up the Yangtze and Han rivers, and then Studd traveled north on foot for hundreds of miles where he would meet Hudson Taylor for the first time.

He insisted on wearing only Chinese clothes and eating Chinese food, staying in homes and dirty little inns along the way.

The Chinese shoes caused tremendous blisters and ulcers on his feet.

Each step was like a knife going through, he wrote, but I have never sensed the Lord's presence nearer.

He has taught me so many, many lessons by this suffering.

Feet were just one of Stud's many health problems.

Throughout his years and missions, he was afflicted with asthma, malaria, gallstones, bad teeth, heart disease, many other ailments.

One writer said when he left China, he was a museum of tropical illnesses.

And then he went to Africa and picked up many more interesting specimens.

Studd had long stated that he wished to remain single, focused on his calling.

But he said, if I'm to marry, let it be to a real hallelujah salvation army lassie, who is a devoted soldier of Christ.

God honored this desire, even if it really wasn't something he prayed for.

Priscilla Stewart came to China from Ireland with the Salvation Army, and she was indeed a devoted soldier.

They worked on the same station for a time and then continued their relationship with correspondence.

When they began to consider marriage, Studd wrote If I did not know you to be a woman of God, I would not dream of asking you.

I would ask you to be a fellow soldier in his army to live a life of Faith, a fighting life, remembering that here we have no abiding city.

This too would be tested and tested again.

At their wedding, Mrs.

Studd wore a sash that said, United to Fight for Jesus.

There was a marriage here yesterday, and I'm not supposed, I don't suppose we saw it.

No.

No, United to Fight for Jesus.

Trends these days.

While in China they had four girls, also a son that died at childbirth.

None of them were born with the assistance of any doctor or even a midwife.

On two occasions, Mrs.

Studd nearly died, and this would forever break her health.

Charles said that God gave him girls to teach the value of them to the Chinese, who often abandoned baby girls to die at birth.

The stud girls would give them tremendous opportunities to meet and witness to the Chinese.

After ten years in China, they went home for a season to England.

C.T.

regained his health somewhat, but Priscilla did not, and they sadly realized they would not be able to return to China.

Interesting here, someone, when they went back there, offered to send their three oldest girls to the best boarding school in Europe that was in Switzerland, paid for all of their ways all the way through.

God took care of their needs.

But they sailed to India and they labored for six years as a pastor in a more colonial setting of Tamil Nadu.

But again were forced to return to England because of Priscilla's health.

In England, Studd attended a meeting led by a German missionary who had traveled deep into the interior of Africa.

Studd had seen an ad for the missionary's presentation in a newspaper, and the headline was cannibals want missionaries.

Studd chuckled and said, indeed they do, for more reasons than one.

But I must go and hear this man.

And it was to change his life.

It's funny how things work out, isn't it?

On hearing that there were hundreds of tribes teeming with humanity, to which no Christian had ever gone with the gospel, Studd later reflected that shame sank deep into his soul.

He was so burdened with the need for frontier missions.

And friends, that's one reason I'm talking about it tonight is I think we need this burden in our soul as well.

He tried arguing with God that his health would never permit such an undertaking, but the response came: Am I not the good physician?

Can I not take you through?

Can I not keep you there?

God was leading him into what he would later call the greatest venture of all.

He committed before God to go to the interior of Africa, and he formed a committee around a new venture called the Heart of Africa Mission.

The committee eventually declined to send him out and advised against going because of his health, to which he responded, God has called me to go and I will go.

I will blaze the trail, though my grave may only become a stepping stone that younger men will follow.

This would cause him to sack that committee and form a new one, about which he later said, The new committee is a conveniently small one.

It is very wealthy, wonderfully generous, and always sitting in session.

The committee of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

But talk about sacrifices from 1912 until his death in 1931, 20 years, they would only be together twice.

Very, very hard.

Together with uh a man named Alfred Buxton, who would later marry one of his daughters, Studd made the arduous journey down the Nile to Khartoum and Sudan.

Then they followed the footsteps of pioneer Henry Stanley traveling through Kenya and Uganda, uh, even Rwanda.

If you've been to the uh game park in uh eastern Rwanda, who's who's been to the game park in eastern Rwanda?

A number of y'all.

So there's a uh the lake that's there is uh called Lake uh uh Ehima, Lake Ehima, which means tent lake.

And the reason they call it Tent Lake is that Charles Stanley once uh had uh uh pitched uh Henry Stanley, excuse me, had once pinched his tent.

So uh possibly Stud had gone right through uh that region.

Told the Belgians will never let you in because you were British, Stud responded, that remains to be seen, and I go to prove it.

Only chocolate soldiers get stopped by obstacles like that.

Stud and Buxton did manage to cross into the Belgian Congo, and then several more months hacking their way through thick jungles inhabited by fierce cannibalistic tribes who were known to eat white hunters who dared to venture into the region.

Malaria afflicted them almost every day.

About this, Stud wrote, I was permitted to sample the African fever so frequently as to know it by heart, but without any increase of affection.

In 1913, at long last, they arrived at their destination, an utterly remote town called Nala, at the very heart of Africa.

He had once heard an explorer say if you draw two lines through the center of Africa, one north-south and the other east-west, where is that, you uh you mark the town of Nala.

And with this pioneer spirit, uh Studd immediately thought, that's where I want to go.

You know, the Apostle Paul shared this spirit, didn't he?

Uh, always wanting to take the gospel where Jesus was not known.

Over the next two years, Studd and Buxton and a few brave souls that Priscilla and the mission sent to them procured land, they built four mission stations, and they traveled ceaselessly, evangelizing eight different tribes in the area.

Eventually, Studd took a trip farther south and encountered village after village of teeming masses, all boisterous, joyful at his arrival.

This extraordinary reception led the mission to establish a new base there in Ibambi.

And this is where Stud would make his final home.

And his most fruitful years were his last ones.

He became a living legend.

He was called Boana Mukubwa, the great wife chief.

Thousands were baptized.

Churches of 500 to 1,000 people sprung up.

Missionaries spread out until they covered a territory nearly as large as Britain itself.

Right in the heart of Africa.

Native believers became evangelists and missionaries themselves.

Studd aged and was afflicted by numerous illnesses.

He was eventually felled in 1931 by a series of heart attacks and untreated gallstones.

To the end, he gave his all, working 18 hours a day on a Bible translation.

The day before his death, he led a five-hour worship service.

Talk about chocolate soldiers.

I think we all would qualify for that, right?

How many of us would stay for a five-hour worship service?

2,000 people attended his funeral, including numerous chiefs.

And Heart of Africa Mission grew to 30 missionaries under Stud.

Later it became the worldwide evangelization crusade.

Today it's known as WEC International and has grown from the original 30 missionaries to 1,800 today in 40 countries.

I worked with WEC missionaries when I was in West Africa, including an elderly gentleman who had been with Studd in the Belgian Congro.

WEC International is still ministering and bearing fruit for eternity in difficult, unreached places to this day.

So, what can Charles Studd teach us about frontier missions?

Well, lots.

He demonstrated that a frontier missionary can only be sustained by God's word.

In China, he became practically a man of one book, spending hours a day reading and meditating on the Bible.

He would take a new copy of scriptures each year, and by the end it was scrawled with notes throughout.

He once said, The Lord is so good and gives me every day a large dose of spiritual champagne, which braces one up for the day and night.

Generally, he would spend two to three hours in the middle of the night reading the Word.

Same amount of time in the morning and more reading in the evening.

He rarely worked on sermons.

His messages flowed from his hours alone with God.

Studd also helps us embrace frontier missions with his willingness to surrender and sacrifice his life.

He famously said this: if Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him.

This resolve was sorely tested.

Frontier missions would require his health, his fame, his fortune, his son who died on the mission field, his wife from whom he was separated for decades.

He and the mission he founded live by faith, trusting God's financial provision.

Frontier Missions requires that to this day.

Christine, where's Christine Holbeck?

There's Christine Hollebeck.

Raising support to go as a frontier missionary inside of the 1040 window to an unreached group.

She gets paid pretty well, I'm sure, as uh as a physician's assistant.

I don't know what they make, but probably do pretty well.

But they're not going to give you that there.

And it's going to take walking away from that and and trusting God to provide finances for her to be able to go.

She was accepted by Pioneer's Mission to go and do that work.

Christine, we are behind you.

Stud based his life and ministry on the truth that we can trust God too little, but we cannot trust him too much.

This observation was also profoundly put to the test.

While in China, Stud received notice that since he had reached the age of 25, he could now take possession of his inheritance, which was valued in today's money, it would have been about$6.5 million.

That day, he wrote checks totaling$5.5 million and sent them off to Dwight L.

Moody's ministry, the China Inland Mission, George Mueller of Bristol, and the Salvation Army of India.

He had about$1 million remaining when he married Priscilla.

When he told his fiancee of the money, she chided him.

Charlie, what did the Lord require of the rich man?

Sell all.

So they did.

She wasn't a chocolate soldier either.

They started their married life with$5 and some betting.

The Heart of Africa mission made no appeals for funds, took no offerings at meetings, guaranteed missionaries no fixed salaries.

Hmm.

Incurred no debt ever.

Funds received were divided equally among the missionaries.

Neither C.T.

Studd nor his wife ever took any money from the mission.

And there are some chocolate-flavored pastors and leaders of Christian organizations that need to look hard at that example.

He was sustained in his work by a passion for evangelism.

Early in his Christian life, Studd wrote, I have tasted almost all the pleasures that this world can give.

I do not suppose there is one I have not experienced.

But I can tell you that those pleasures were as nothing compared to the joy of the saving that one soul gave to me.

Here's another good one that shows his passion for evangelism.

Let us not glide through this world and then slip quietly into heaven without having blown the trumpet loud and long for our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

Let us see to it that the devil will hold a Thanksgiving service in hell when he gets news of our departure from the field.

Oh, I think I would like this guy.

Like the Apostle Paul, this passion for souls gave him an incredible drive to preach where the name of Christ had never been spoken.

He approached his life, his work, his marriage as a soldier.

Soldiers sometimes have to go to extraordinary lengths with a wartime mentality to accomplish the mission.

Okay, Marines too, Alex and Stephanie.

Marines, Marines do too.

There's no room for chocolate soldiers who melt away when the sun gets hot.

How is this for a wartime mentality?

It's a little blurry.

Christ's call is to save the lost, not the stiff-necked.

He came not to call scoffers, but sinners to repentance, not to build and furnish comfortable chapels, churches, and cathedrals at home in which to rock Christian professors to sleep by means of clever essays, stereotype prayers, and artistic musical performances.

But to capture men from the devil's clutches and the very jaws of hell, this can be accomplished only by a red-hot, unconventional, unfettered devotion in the power of the Holy Spirit to the Lord Jesus Christ.

That gets you a little hot under the collar.

In fact, Studd went back to Cambridge after years on the mission field, and he preached about chocolate soldiers.

And several professors walked out on him.

Finally, eternal perspective.

How important is that to fruitful frontier missions?

Very.

Perhaps Studd's most repeated quote is this one.

If you've heard of just one of his, it's probably this.

Only one life, to soon be passed.

Only what's done for Christ will last.

That was true for him, that's true for us.

And it puts uh evangelizing the loss in a different, in a brighter light.

It's only the word of God and people, the souls of men and women that will last for eternity.

That's where our investment needs to be.

This picture contrasts the home that Studd was born into to the one that was his when he died.

I wonder what his home looks like now in glory.

It's worth looking at these and reflecting on while I read from one of his obituaries.

C.T.

Studd's life stands as some rugged Gibraltar, a sign to all succeeding generations that it is worthwhile to lose all this world can offer and stake everything on the world to come.

His life will be an eternal rebuke to easy-going Christianity.

He has demonstrated what it means to follow Christ without counting the cost and without looking back.

A rugged Gibraltar.

I was right, wasn't I?

His life is inspiring and intimidating.

But I hope his passion, his sacrifice warms our heart to the importance of frontier missions.

I hope the example of one who looked at a world with unreached groups and said, Hear my Lord, send me, will inspire us to give, to pray, to go so that unreached people hear the good news of the salvation of Christ.

It's only good news, you know, if it gets there in time.

Younger people, does this make you more willing to go?

Older folks, does it make you more willing to let your kids and maybe more importantly, your grandkids go far from you?

I remember all the times we left for Africa, and my wife was just so close to her parents, and we always departed in just buckets of tears as we'd go away for Africa for three years, taking our little kids in tow.

We recognize now what a sacrifice that is.

Keep this image in mind.

The 1040 window, 85% of the world's unreached people and unreached groups are in this area, and yet this region has less than 10% of the world's missionaries, less than 1% of the world's uh uh funding from the church.

As a church, we're trying to get more and more people and resources into this area.

This is important to us.

I mentioned this morning we sent uh$7,000 off this week to India, you know, squarely in this.

So many unreached people there, so much uh difficulty there right now.

We love getting people and resources into this part of the world.

Our percentages are so much higher than the things that I gave earlier, and yet we can't rest.

We can't rest.

There's always so much more uh to do.

To learn more about the remaining task of missions, even something as simple as just just picking a group and praying for them.

You know, you look at them and say, who's praying for these people?

Joshua Project was put together by U.S.

Center of World Missions, IMB, that's the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

They've done a lot of work on the unreached.

Uh finishing the task is a good work that's mobilizing lots of churches to embrace this work and to take on unreached groups and to and to pray and give and go so that something happens within them.

They're all doing good research and they're all worth looking into.

Uh, one more resource.

This is a great uh e-book to read.

It's a short little book.

It's John Piper's Reflection on Frontier Missions through the life of a of a pioneer missionary.

Missionary to Burma, Adam Iram and Ann Judson.

Man, he he took a page out of my playbook.

It's a free download on Piper's Desiring God website.

Uh and uh well worth a read.

Easy uh to read quickly, but hard to digest.

Don't forget also that on the uh back table, the information table back there, some pages of uh mission stats and quotes that uh I think you'll find uh interesting.

Charles Studd.

Frontier missions.

The commitment of the church to give, to pray, to go.

Let's pray.

Lord, we're so often convicted by your word that we see um dark places in our hearts, and we know that uh by your grace, Lord, you forgive and you you strengthen, you you wash it away, you replace with things that are pleasing to you.

Lord, we we realize in this area of missions we fall short often as well.

Lord, too often we are just just so comfortable and content to be hearing that chapel bell ringing.

We don't want to be anywhere near the gates of hell.

And yet, Lord, we know that that the masses are streaming to it.

Narrow is the path to salvation, broad is the gate that leads to destruction.

I pray, Father, you'd strengthen our hands and our hearts and our resolve as a church to do more, more resources, more people.

I pray you'd put it on people's hearts right right here in this room, right here in our midst, Lord, to embrace uh that work.

Lord, we we do hold it on our hearts that uh there is good news and there is a great commission.

And your call is still for us to make disciples of all the nations.

Strengthen us, Lord, help us lead us by your spirit.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.