I just spent the last week with my Mom and Dad. They live in Virginia. What remarkable saints and witnesses of God’s grace! Mom and Dad were missionaries to Honduras for 25 years. Then Panama. Then Mexico.
Dad made an interesting statement as I asked him about what he felt he had accomplished. He said, “I just feel that all we did was lay the groundwork for believers to come to finish the work, and I pray that they will stay faithful and follow up.”
It occurred to me what a great debt we owe to those believers that have gone before us.
Do you realize that you have been prayed for by untold thousands and thousands of believers that have lived before you?!?!? It began way back with Jesus prayer for you:
20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,
21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:20-21)
That’s pretty amazing! Jesus prayed for you! And He specifically prayed that through you others would believe!
See, you are part of a great mission. It’s not all about you. It’s about what God wants to do through you. And throughout history believers who understood that have prayed for you and laid the groundwork for you.
What will you do with that charge?
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. (Hebrews 12:1)
