When I watched Beyond the Gates of Splendor for the first time last evening, my eyes filled with tears as I watched the five wives of these courageous men give their account of telling their husbands goodbye for the last time and then hearing that their husbands had been pierced at the end of the spear. We as Christians have all been called to surrender our lives completely to God and to submit to his Lordship over our lives but yet so often we think we know what is best for us. We spend so much time asking, "What is the will of God for my life" when I think we should really be asking, "Who is the God of my life." When we know who God truly is, we will see his heart for ALL nations, ALL people groups, and EVERY single person on the globe today.
The song that these five men sang the evening before they were murdered was, "We Rest On Thee."
We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender!
We go not forth alone against the foe;
Strong in Thy strength, safe in Thy keeping tender,
We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.
Yes, in Thy Name, O Captain of salvation!
In Thy dear Name, all other names above;
Jesus our Righteousness, our sure Foundation,
Our Prince of glory and our King of love.
We go in faith, our own great weakness feeling,
And needing more each day Thy grace to know:
Yet from our hearts a song of triumph pealing,
“We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.”
We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender!
Thine is the battle, Thine shall be the praise;
When passing through the gates of pearly splendor,
Victors, we rest with Thee, through endless days.
Here are a few quotes by these Missionaries that have given me a great burden for the spread of the Gospel regardless of what it might cost us:
- Nate Saint
- “And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives…and when the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.”
- "As we have a high old time this Christmas may we who know Christ hear the cry of the damned as they hurtle headlong into the Christless night without ever a chance. May we be moved with compassion as our Lord was. May we shed tears of repentance for these we have failed to bring out of darkness. Beyond the smiling scenes of Bethlehem may we see the crushing agony of Golgotha"
- “During the last war we were taught to recognize that, in order to obtain our objective, we had to be willing to be expendable … Yet, when the Lord Jesus asks us to pay the price for world evangelization, we often answer … It costs too much … God didn’t hold back His only Son…”
- Jim Elliot
- "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
- “Forgive me for being so ordinary while claiming to know so extraordinary a God.”
- “It makes me boil when I think of the power we profess and the utter impotency of our action. Believers who know one-tenth as much as we do are doing one-hundred times more for God, with His blessing and our criticism. Oh if I could write it, preach it, say it, paint it, anything at all, if only God's power would become known among us.”
- “We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with. But we are "harmless," and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the Cross. We are "sideliners" -- coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous!”
- Ed McCully
- "I have one desire now - to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy into it."
- "I'm taking the Lord at His word, and I'm trusting Him to prove His Word. It's kind of like putting all your eggs in one basket, but we've already put our trust in Him for salvation, so why not do it as far as our life is concerned?"
- Peter Fleming
- “[The Lord] has been leading my meditation to the stringent statements of Christ regarding discipleship specially those words of Christ to His disciples before He sent them out…’He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.’ I have been directed to these and similar passages again and again. I should like to put these truths to the utmost test … Seemingly God delights in many instances to place men in situations which magnify their weaknesses for the simple delight of showing Himself strong to all observers”
- Roger Youderian
- “A missionary plods through the first year or two, thinking that things will be different when he speaks the language. He is baffled to find, frequently, that they are not. He is stripped of all that may be called “romance.” Life has fallen more or less into a pattern. Day follows day in unbroken succession. There are no crisis, no mass conversions, sometimes not even one or two to whom he can point and say: ‘There is a transformed life. If I had not come, he would never have known Christ.”
There are many more quotes attributed to these incredible men of faith, but I want to leave you with one final thought. Right after these Men of God were killed, much of the church in America asked, "Couldn't these men have been more useful in the Kingdom of God rather than to live a reckless life and be killed with nothing to show for it?" This kind of thinking is exactly the same kind of thinking that Judas had when he asked Jesus, "Why didn't this woman sell this ointment and give the money to the poor?" So often we do not recognize the kind of Jesus we serve.
One Final Challenge, "I urge you to abandon everything in this life and live for the Kingdom of God wherever he calls you to live."
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