The Need Is Great

I just watched a video by Christian apologist Dr. Jay Smith telling his story of how he started working among Muslims. He mentioned two statistics:
1)    1,500—the number of missionaries to the Muslim world (That was in the late 1970s!)
2)    2%—the percentage of all missionaries sent out, that those 1,500 people represented.

Statistics motivated Dr. Jay Smith to give his life to arguing for Christ in hostile environments among Muslims.

That is what first motivated me to go to the Muslim world too.

After all, our agency’s slogan was “be one in a million” because there were 1,000 workers among the 1,000,000,000 Muslims in the world at that time.1

Statistics Grab You But Don’t Keep You

I moved to Kazakhstan with a church-based team in 1997. I was privileged to live with a Kazakh Muslim family (I was single then). The father of the house was a hulking, barrel-chested man, with a love for his wife and kids and an alcoholic. In my third month, he got drunk and raised his hand to hit his 18-year-old son and absolutely scared me to death. The honeymoon was over. I stared out the window of my bedroom saying, “I didn’t sign up for this.” I found that the statistics really didn’t matter that much when I encountered my first conflict with a Muslim. At that point, I didn’t care that there was only one worker per 1,000,000 Muslims. I wanted out.

In my head, I hear Tina Turner singing, “What’s love got to do with it?”

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself: Easy, Right?

The Lord graciously allowed me to stay in that house for two years, and I learned to love Kazakh people. I learned to love and pray for the father of the house. I loved and forgave the 16-year-old daughter who stole money from me, even though it brought so much shame on her family. They threatened to disown her. I loved the family celebrations, the teas late into the night, the wedding festivals for days, the sharing of a room with two teens, and all the sacrifices they made to have me stay in their home. I think I found 1 Peter 4:8 to be true: Love really does cover a multitude of sins.

I left Kazakhstan and moved to Uzbekistan. We experienced some back-stabbing pain from locals on whom we had poured out our lives. In addition to that, the government didn’t renew our visas and asked us to leave the country after just two years of ministry. I began to ask, “Love covers a multitude of sins, but there’s a limit, right, Lord? There’s a point where we can stop loving people that hurt us, right, Lord?”

We then settled in Türkiye: third country, third language, third culture. We were also going for the “hat trick” of country expulsions. We had finished language study in the capital and moved to a rural, touristic location to settle our family and start church planting. After just a few months, the police shut down our community center. I was so angry with the police, the immigration office, the government.

“We’re here to help people learn English. We’re helping people get better jobs. We’re strengthening marriages and parenting. Why are you kicking us out?” I argued in my head, as I left an unpleasant meeting with the immigration officer responsible for my residence permit. I really didn’t have any more motivation to keep doing what we were doing. No more statistics. No more love for the people. “Lord, I can’t do this anymore, if we get kicked out, we’re done,” I said in utter frustration and lack of faith.

As I left that nasty meeting, I prayed in the car on the way home, “God, I’m so sick of being at the mercy of the government.” The Lord responded to me by saying, “You’re not at the mercy of the government. You’re at my mercy, and my mercy is good.”

Something changed in me in that prayer interaction. “You’re at my mercy, and my mercy is good.” I really do have a good, good Father who loves me. What helped me see that was experiencing his love, which covered all my sins. He loves the immigration officer—no limit on love for people who hurt me. He loves the Uzbek government—no amount of injustice disqualifies them from the love of God. He loves my Kazakh father, too— his love repays evil with good. Receiving the love of the Father that day has helped me love others to this day. He loved the world and gave his Son. That's why I am still on the field today.

The Steadfast Love of the Lord Never Ceases

Aren’t the two greatest commandments to love God and love others? I love God because he first loved me (1 John 4:19)! I love God because he showed his love for me in this: that while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me (Rom 5:8). There is no greater love than this (John 15:13), and because I have so freely received this love, I want to freely give that love away (Matt 10:8).

Statistics change. People fail you. Governments can persecute you. How do you persevere in serving the Lord in those situations?

The steadfast love of the Lord NEVER CEASES (Lam 3:22)! His love ENDURES FOREVER (Psalm 36…the whole thing!). NOTHING can separate us from the LOVE OF GOD that is in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:31–39; there’s a pretty good list there that helps explain what “nothing” means!).

My love for the lost will not last long when faced with difficult circumstances, difficult relationships. But when I’m walking in the love of the Father, whew, that’s a game changer! I am nowhere near loving people with the unconditional love of the Father, but I am growing. When I am full of the sacrificial love of the Father, I can love my Turkish friend who is so desperate to taste that love for himself. But whether he gets there or not, I can rest in God’s mercy.

In closing, I return to Tina Turner’s question with a definitive answer: Love’s got everything to do with it!