Last week, I received the following in an email from Gospel for Asia:
- 2 out of 5 people in our world – that means 2.5 billion people – have never heard of Jesus’ love for them.
- 80,000 people in South Asia die every day without ever having a chance to hear the name of Jesus. That means every time your heart beats, someone in Asia plunges into hell.
- Although 97% of the world’s unreached lives in the 10/40 window, less than 0.05% of our total resources as the Church in the West are being sent to help share the Good News.
Their website shared additional sobering statistics:
- 500,000 villages in India alone have never heard the Gospel.
- Over 80% of the worlds poorest people live in the 10/40 Window.
In the face of such overwhelming odds, is there anything we can do?
It’s a cliche that I’m sure you’ve heard before, but it carries a truth worth repeating: One with God is a majority. Think about it. In ancient times, God chose one man and his family to preserve the entire human race. He chose one man to become the father of an entire nation. And many years later, God used twelve men who knew Jesus to change the Roman empire and the world.
The message is clear. Odds don’t matter to God.
But how can we help make a difference? Above all, we are called to pray. “And He was saying to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.’” Luke 10:2
There are many ways we can pray. One way we can pray for the lost is by praying for the national missionaries who are serving them. What is a national missionary? A national missionary is a man or woman who already lives in Asia, knows the language or a related dialect, and is not restricted in his or her movement due to being a Westerner. More than 75% of Asian countries do not allow Western missionaries to come and openly share the Gospel.
There is a printable prayer reminder of specific requests to keep on your heart for national missionaries. They face the every day trials and temptations each of us do such as being too busy, focusing on the wrong things, and growing tired doing the right thing. They also face threats most of us do not face, such as direct opposition and persecution for their faith in Christ. I hope you’ll join me in seeking to remember them in prayer often.
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