by ALAN Ch’NG
What if we were increasingly known as people who trusted God?
When our focus is on doing and obeying the Great Commission (a very good thing), the immensity of the task can be overwhelming. The responsibility is too much for us to bear.
God invites us to another way. From His promise to Abraham in Genesis to the worshipping multitude in Revelation, His commitment to bless the nations reminds us that this is His work. We just get to join in!
An example from the past
I first experienced this as a young believer in Melbourne, Australia.
When I finished school, I didn't want to return to Malaysia. At the time, I wasn't sure I could survive at home spiritually. God used Isaiah 43:4 to invite a complete surrender in my life. So, in May 1976, I prayed:
"God, I'm precious and honored in your sight. I give You my whole life. Now I expect You to give me people in exchange."
The next day I led someone to Christ. The day after that, another. A week later, one more. I was hooked.
In the years that followed, a group of us began trusting God together. We were reading His promises and pleading for people to come to Christ. The first year, we asked Him for five; He gave us eight. Figuring it would be terrible to now ask for less, we believed Him for ten. We saw fifteen. The next year we prayed for fifteen, and He gave twenty, most of them from non-Christian backgrounds.
Our faith grew inch-by-inch as we saw God work. We trusted for thirty-five, then sixty-five, and eventually saw a hundred come to Christ.
When people ask me when I started the ministry in Melbourne, my answer is always the same: "I didn't. God did. I just happened to be there!"
He was working out His purposes.
Trusting God Today
I see this spirit of faith across our work. Here are two examples:
In Africa, leaders are trusting God to send 100 missionaries across borders in the next five years. Humanly speaking, it seems impossible. But God's promises invite us to look beyond ourselves and toward the Promiser. Already, missionaries are preparing to go to Benin, Gambia, Senegal, Botswana, and beyond Africa to the Caribbean.
Asia-Pacific is trusting God for gospel movements among unreached peoples and for His kingdom to advance in places where Christ is not yet known. They are seeing many turn to Jesus from other religions. The gospel is moving through WhatsApp messages and family dinner tables.
Persevering into the Future
In Isaiah 54, God tells the barren woman to sing before the children arrive and to enlarge her tent before there is any visible evidence. That is the nature of faith. We prepare because we believe God will act.
My hope for the future is that we will stand together on the firm ground of God’s promises. That will mean we pray together. And keep the promises in front of us. It means we’ll invite people to join us in trusting God before we can see exactly what He’ll do (or how He’ll do it). And it means we’ll get to celebrate as lives change.
As Dawson Trotman said, the need of the hour is for people who believe that God “can fulfill every promise he ever made, and that nothing is too hard for him.” Let’s be those people.
