...And Then The End Will Come
My heart quickened and tears trickled down my face.
YES! My soul exhaled as I closed my Bible.
The tension of reading the news and God’s Word was becoming unbearable. I couldn’t reconcile the two.
Like you, I’m witnessing unemployment skyrocket and the stock market plummet. Theories, speculations, charts, graphs, special reports, end-times predictions, expert conjecturing—it seems as if the writing is on the wall. This is an intensely complex and devastating season. The earth is having collective birth pains, and we need to pay attention to what is being born inside us.
I’m floored by the universal cries for LOVE, PEACE, PATIENCE, HOPE, KINDNESS, GENTLENESS, GOODNESS, and SELFLESSNESS flooding my social media feed. Have we ever heard such a collective cry of Kingdom adjectives chanted so loudly? The world is preaching the ways of Jesus, and it doesn’t even know it.
As believers, we should be filtering all of this through the lens of the Kingdom. Yes, we must and should mourn with those who mourn, but we should not grieve as those without hope. This prescription looks foolish, shortsighted, and blurry to the world, but we know it is the truth. May it cause us to behave and speak radically differently.
My Bible also says there is a SIGNIFICANT event that MUST take place before Jesus comes back, and it isn’t a global virus. This verse evoked a visceral response in me:
Matthew 24:14: “And this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
At The Good Story, we serve one demographic: missionaries. According to the latest statistics from The Joshua Project, there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups in the world that have not heard the saving message of the Kingdom. Reread the verse above. THE WHOLE WORLD needs to hear, and THEN the end will come
THE WORK IS NOT DONE. The story is not complete.
Nothing would make me happier than to be the generation that takes the Gospel to the ends of the earth and ushers in the second coming of Christ. Would you like to be part of that?
What’s happening right now is challenging the heart of every person to consider two things—their mortality and their resources. How should we steward our finances through job loss, stock market crash, and recession? Our faith is forged in these seasons when it would be easier to pull up anchor and protect ourselves and our assets. It is a radical act of faith to give when our eyes scan the horizon and we cannot see if those resources will be replaced.
This is not a thinly veiled, passive newsletter to get you to send money to The Good Story. We wholeheartedly believe the Lord will give us manna for each day. We are making a plea on behalf of the thousands and thousands of missionaries around the world, God’s Kingdom army, who are choosing to stay put and serve the people groups to whom they are called. We are pleading for those waiting in the wings currently raising support who are ready to go. Let’s get them sent!
As an organization, we are committed to staying in the fight. Just this week, we’ve helped missionaries/agencies in France, Haiti, and Cambodia help communicate more effectively. The church needs to hear their stories and be reminded who is on the throne. We stand on the side of victory!
They NEED your prayers, encouragement, and resources to stay in the battle. Be faithful to steward your small story, but remember we're invited to be active participants in the greatest, grandest love and rescue story ever. Don't just give when there is surplus, give like the widow, out of your poverty (Luke 21:4). Reach out to the missionaries you know and ask them what is the best way to support them right now. Visualize yourself in heaven seeing faces of brothers and sisters who came to Christ because of your active participation in The Great Commission. Can you see it?
Revelation 12:11: “They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.”