Day 6 of 6 — Glow in the Dark. About 3 minutes.
We therefore ought to receive such, that we might be fellowhelpers to the truth.
3 John 1:8
Luther Rice sailed for India in 1812 on the same venture as the Judsons. On the long voyage out, studying what the Bible actually said about baptism, he and the Judsons changed their convictions and were baptized as believers, which cost all of them the support of the board that had sent them. Judson stayed and went on to Burma. Rice turned around. He came back to America in 1813, not because he had lost his nerve but because somebody had to go and tell the churches that two of their own were out there with nothing behind them. He spent years at it, thousands of miles by horseback and stagecoach, church after church, making the same plea. In 1814 Baptists across the country joined together for the first time to fund the work. Rice never returned to the mission field. He raised the rope for the man who was already down the hole.
John wrote to a man named Gaius who had done something similar on a smaller scale. He had taken in travelling preachers and sent them on their way supplied. John’s verdict on that is the line to sit with. We therefore ought to receive such, that we might be fellowhelpers to the truth.
Fellowhelpers. Not sponsors, not an audience, not people who admired the work from a safe distance. Partners in the same work. Gaius never crossed an ocean and his name is in the Bible anyway, attached to the going of men whose journeys he paid for. That is not a consolation prize handed to people who stayed home. It is the plain arithmetic of how God has always moved His word, with some going and some making the going possible, and both of them inside the same sentence.
In just over a week, on the eighteenth, you will have the chance to turn in a Faith Promise card. Do not let that land on you cold on a Sunday morning. It is not a bill and it is not a pledge you can be chased for. It is you telling God what you are trusting Him to help you give toward getting the gospel to people who have not heard it. It might be five dollars a month. It might be far more. The amount is between you and God and nobody else will ever know it. But settle it with Him this week, before you walk in, so that what you turn in is something you prayed about rather than something you guessed at.
Growth principle: The one who holds the rope and the one who goes down the hole are in the same work.
Take it with you: Pray this week, before October 18, about what God would have you trust Him for toward missions this year.
Pause and pray: Lord, I want a real part in getting Your word to people who have never heard it. Show me what You would have me give, and give me the faith to trust You for it. Amen.
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