Do we love God enough to send our Son’s, Daughters, & grandchildren?

Lie #4: I have made a bargain with God. If I work hard in my own church, then God will not call my children to the nations. There is no way God would want me to be with out my children and grandchildren.

Listen to the story below.

“He was the toughest man the interviewer had ever met. From a Muslim background, the man agreed to meet in a Central Asian city where he was not known. His hawk-like features were arresting; his eyes chips of coal. His presence seemed to fill the entire room.

For years, he had been a freedom fighter, leading a squad of fifteen men in attempts to run the foreigners out of his Muslim country. As a freedom fighter, he reveled in stalking his enemies until he could slit their throats with his own hands. Those from his own country who cooperated with these godless foreigners often met the same fate by his knife. He rejoiced to feel their blood wash over their hands. He could not number the dozens, perhaps hundreds, he had personally put to death. He planned, he led and he killed.

He recalled when the day came that he could not get the blood off his hands. He saw the blood every waking moment and he saw the blood in his dreams each night. This went on for weeks. However, one night he had a different dream. In this dream, Jesus came to him and told him that he, Jesus, could remove this bloodstain forever This divine encounter led this freedom fighter to investigate the man named Jesus and his claim of cleansing. The blood of Jesus washed this fighter dean of his bloodlust by cleansing his soul.

The change in his life was so dramatic that he began to carry the good news to others in his own country. He smuggled Bibles through the mountain passes of his homeland. He did this until, one day in an isolated mountain pass, he came face to face with the fifteen men he had once led. They had been looking for their former commander, this one-time freedom fighter now turned believer. They threw him to the ground and broke his wrists and ankles with the butts of their rifles. Before they could kill him, however, a secret believer in the group spoke up: “If we kill him, we will not be able to uncover others who might be helping him spread this foreign faith. Let me take him to a village nearby. I will patch him up so that we can beat the truth out of him
and uncover other apostates.”

They placed their former leader into this man’s care. Traveling to the nearest village, this man patched the man up. Together, the two of them crossed the border into a neighboring country.

Hours went by as the interviewer listened to the faith story of this man. Then, the interviewer asked this man to talk about his wife and his children. With a cry of despair, this nail-hard follower of Jesus pleaded, “How can God ask this of me? I will sacrifice my own life. But how can God ask this of me? I have already given so much, but I lie awake at night worrying that my son, my daughters and my wife will pay the same price that I have paid to follow Jesus. How can God ask that of me?”

The author adds

"There is only one thing more difficult than releasing our own lives into the hands of God—and that is releasing the lives of our loved ones. What risks are we willing to shoulder for the sake of the Kingdom of God? What is the hardest task? Going? That is difficult; however, going is not the hardest task. The hardest task is sending: sending our loved ones to serve the nations."

(Five Lies about Missions, Nik Ripken & Barry Sticker. EMQ, Jan 2008, Vol 44, No1, p.37-38)