Day 2 of 6 — Glow in the Dark. About 3 minutes.
After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands;
Revelation 7:9
Adoniram Judson and his wife Ann reached Rangoon in July of 1813. They had no church waiting for them, no believers to join, and no Bible in the language of the people they had come to. Judson set himself to learning Burmese and began building a dictionary nobody had written yet. Years went by. He preached, he translated, he buried a child, and still nobody believed. Six years after they landed, on the twenty-seventh of June in 1819, Judson baptized a thirty-five year old labourer named Maung Nau. One man. Six years of work for one man. Today there are more Christians in Myanmar than almost anywhere in that part of the world, and every one of them stands downstream of a labourer who was the only convert a missionary had to show for six years.
John was shown the end of that arithmetic. A great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues. Read the list slowly, because it was written to be read slowly. Not nations in general. Nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, four words piled up to say that nobody who has ever spoken a human language will be missing from that crowd.
That was always the plan. God told Abram that in him shall all families of the earth be blessed, and the last book of the Bible shows the receipt. Which means a missionary learning a language with no dictionary is not attempting something God merely permits. He is working on the one picture God has already shown us the finished version of. Nobody labours over a tongue that will not be represented at that throne.
Over the next few weeks you are going to hear from some of the families your church helps send. Listen to them differently than you would listen to a report. They are not telling you about a project that may or may not work out. They are telling you which language group they have been given, and every one of those groups has somebody standing in that multitude. Pick one of those families today, learn the name of the country, and start praying for them by name. Not for missions generally. For them.
Growth principle: God’s plan was never one nation blessed, but a multitude out of every nation that has ever spoken.
Take it with you: Pick one missionary family your church supports, learn where they serve, and pray for them by name today.
Pause and pray: Lord, thank You that no language is missing from the crowd You have already seen. Give me a real love for the people You are reaching, and make me faithful to pray for those who have gone. Amen.
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