God's Heart For the Nations

“May God be gracious to us and bless us

and make his face to shine upon us,

 So that your way may be known on earth,

your saving power among all nations.

Let the peoples praise you, O God;

let all the peoples praise you!"

I started following Jesus my sophomore year of college and by God’s grace, very early on in my discipleship journey, I was taught the truths in these verses of Psalm 67. 

And of course, on the heels of tasting this sweetness, I also felt other things. Like shame over past failures. Surely they disqualified me. Like fear, over whether I would be able to truly live as a new creation in Christ and not fall back into my old, bad habits.

I rehearsed the gospel to myself often that school year. I remember walking to class and reminding myself of the gospel statement I was just then learning–"that the just and gracious God of the universe looked upon hopelessly sinful people and sent His Son, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, to bear His wrath against sin on the cross and to show His power over sin in the resurrection so that all who turn and trust in Him will be reconciled to God forever." 

By God’s grace, if you are in Christ, you understand this too. But, let’s look again at verse two of this Psalm, which tells us something that not all Christians understand, and that my spiritual eyes were just starting to see. God has been gracious to us and blessed us “so that, your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.” The reason we exist is to know Him and make Him known.

So many Christians avoid evangelism and missions because they feel like they have not yet arrived spiritually, but the exact opposite was true in my case. The Lord ironically used evangelism and missions to further sanctify me. I quite literally stumbled into loving the nations because this wonderful guy, who I had just met and later would become my husband, was planning to spend his college summer break spreading the gospel among the Wolof of West Africa. The Lord somehow made a way for the girl who had just woken up to the gospel herself to begin sharing it with others. 

I will never forget how it felt that summer to share the gospel at a coffee shop with a young, Muslim woman from West Africa, who providentially happened to be in Spain at the time I was. It was in that moment that I felt what it was like to join God in His good work of drawing the nations to Himself.

Psalm 67 is not the first time that God tells us this in His Word. It is a recurring thread that weaves through the pages of the Old Testament until it reaches its climax with Jesus’ final words to us in Matthew 28 to go and make disciples of all nations. The book of Revelation paints a picture of where all history will end. Revelation 7:9-10  says, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”

The gospel is not just for us. The gospel is not just for our culture. God wants and commands us to extend His love to others, so that He gets more glory, they receive His love, and we get the joy of doing the very thing we were made for! 

I want to pause to say that this is not just my unique call. Jesus’ command was for all of His followers. This is the call of the global church. One way that I see the enemy at work is that he takes the reason we exist and turns it into a program in the church for just a few people to care about. This does not sound like God’s plan for drawing the nations to Himself. This sounds like Satan’s plan in keeping the nations away. This is why we all exist, the reason we were all made, the good work that God has given all of His people to do, and the call which requires full participation from the Body of Christ.

So, after I first got to experience the Father inviting me to partner with Him in this work, my husband and I never really got over it. The Lord has given us opportunities to keep doing so, opportunities that we have felt ill equipped for, opportunities where both failure and harm felt imminent, but opportunities for which He invited us to trust in His promises and step out in faith. And I rejoice to tell you, opportunities where He was faithful to His Word and we have had the privilege to see Him move in astounding ways among the nations.

I have seen Him move in the Sumatran jungle of Indonesia in calling a female witch doctor and her son to Himself. I have seen Him move among the impoverished and oppressed in the ghettoes of the inner city. I have seen Him move among one of the world’s most hostile, unreached people groups in the world, who have been dispersed throughout the globe due to war and famine. I have seen Him move in the heart of an image bearer behind an intimidating black burqa in the Middle East. I can tell you with full confidence that our great God is on the move and He invites us to bring our loaves and fishes to Him. He is the one who miraculously multiplies our efforts to accomplish His purposes. 

I have also chosen to obey scared. Many told that we were unwise to sacrifice our careers for this mission, to face danger by choosing to live in the inner city, and to uproot our children, lives, and positions, to move overseas. I can also tell you that I have suffered. That I bear scars and wounds from being burned by the fiery arrows of the enemy. I have been tempted by idols of comfort and ease. I have looked longingly at the easier road. I have grieved the cost of transition and loss so hard that I thought my heart would break.

And somehow, in the midst of this good and hard road that the Lord has called me to walk, He has been faithful to me the whole time. He said He would never leave me, nor forsake me, and He hasn’t. He is well acquainted with suffering and grief and has never stood far off from me. He says in His Word that there is grace for those who choose to forsake family and homes for His and His gospel’s sake, and there has been. I love Him and His glory more now than I did then. He is precious to me and the nations are precious to me because they are precious to Him. 

I can tell you all this started with prayer. I ask the rhetorical question, which is still just as convicting to my own heart, how many of you are praying for unreached people? There are 3.2 billion unreached people in the world, which means that they have no access to the gospel in their heart language and nobody to tell them otherwise. Do you know any of these people’s names? Have you brought any of them before the throne in prayer?

James K.A. Smith in You Are What You Love writes, “What do you want? That’s the question. It is the first, last, and most fundamental question of Christian discipleship…This is the most incisive, piercing question Jesus can ask of us precisely because we are what we want… Discipleship, we might say, is a way to curate your heart, to be attentive to and intentional about what you love.”

God wants His Kingdom to come. Do you want it? He wants a great multitude from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before his throne. Do you want that? I firmly believe the way you curate your heart to want these things is on your face before Him in prayer. 

Our earthly treasure reveals where our hearts are. If you want your heart to be aligned with God’s heart for the nations, then I also encourage you to give your treasure to this work in declaring the Gospel among the nations.

Finally, I want to open your eyes to what it might mean to go as there are some creative ways that you may have never considered. God has literally brought people from unreached areas of the world to our doorstep. Unfortunately, statistically speaking, “evangelical Christians” in the United States are the most resistant to this movement of peoples. What if we opened our eyes to see that this is not primarily a political issue, but quite possibly the means that our greater King Jesus is using to proclaim His Gospel to the Unreached.  

Another change in how we go is due to the globalization of the world and the marketplace. Now, many of the unreached nations will quite literally pay you to come work there. And we know that where Christians go, they will bring the Gospel with them. The leaders of these countries of course don’t see this, but a better question to ask the church is, do we? 

What if in our ministry to families, we developed a culture where families want to raise up their kids to spread the true gospel to all the nations. What if we encouraged our children to pursue strategic jobs, not just to pursue the American dream, but to enter the global marketplace and find ways to spread the gospel with their work. 

I do not know what or how this call might look like in your life, but I can tell you that we were made for this. And I can tell you, that this work will be for your great joy and satisfaction in God. And I can remind you that whenever you seek to step out in faith and do anything for the Lord, it always looks like the floor is not going to catch you. But it will. Because the One who has called you is faithful.

So, let’s grab each other by the hand and encourage one another to step out in faith to obey Him, wherever He might lead. Let’s obey His great commission, directly or indirectly, by being a part of declaring His glory among the nations through praying, giving, or going. This call requires full participation from the Body of Christ. Let’s not settle for anything else!

Are you interested in learning more about being a family who takes the Great Commission seriously and disciples their children with this end in mind? Leave a comment to let me know.