A Refreshing Perspective

This email message recently arrived from a friend of mine serving in the Middle East--thought you might enjoy it:
Dear co-worker,

If you're like me, you might have spent several years in the field and be discouraged by an apparent lack of success in your ministry. My team has been in place for 10 years, with about 10 unbaptized Muslim-born believers (MBBs) to show for it. Of them, most are not extremely interested in growing mature in their faith, nor do they want to meet with each other.

While sustainable at first, a good attitude under adversity becomes harder to maintain over time and with the accumulation of difficult experiences. One is tempted to allow nasty little questions to float through the mind. "Why isn't God answering our prayers?" "Is this really worth the effort we have spent, not to mention the expense footed by supporters?" Or worse yet, "God, have you found me unworthy of bearing fruit?"

We all want to see the fruit of our labors. And when I say fruit, I mean shiny red apples or bright oranges hanging in trees; clearly visible against the healthy green leaves. We want reproducing fellowships of MBBs. What I would like to suggest to you is that the vast majority of us are laying groundwork that will later lead to that fruit. However, since we are working in the ground, we should look for the fruit of the ground: Potatoes, carrots, turnips... Let me explain.

I surveyed my team last week, and asked them to give estimations about the work that we have done here. After we had finished, everyone agreed that they believed their numbers to be conservative. After calculating the totals, I came up with the following statistics:

32,000 hours of prayer have been spoken over our city by our supporters and us
2,600 people have been mobilized to pray regularly for our city
900 copies of the Injeel (New Testament) have been discerningly placed into responsive Muslim hands
2,200 people in our region have been influenced by our reputation in the community
3,000 hours have been spent "good-newsing" (gospel and other godly subjects)

Now I know that God can do anything that he wants to without our
\help, but I can't help wondering if maybe none of this would have been true if we hadn't responded to God's call.

This is the ground fruit that I am talking about. When we arrived, we had the option of building immediately on the sand, but we started about the work of placing the Rock first.

There is a building going up next door to ours. I watched the builders carefully as they were putting in the foundation, wondering how they would stabilize the structure when there was only sand to work with. As I watched, they spent 6 months digging a single floor depth into the sand, filling the depression with several tons of intricately bent and arranged rebar, and finally poured an incredible amount of cement into it. After all that work, they were still at ground level. Except for a few vertical strands of rebar, they hadn't accomplished anything!

Sure, nobody wants to point to the footings of a building and say, "Look what I did!" We all want to see the finished new building, standing tall and strong. But be encouraged! The work that you have been faithful to complete is as beautiful in God's sight as the end product, which he is faithful to produce and finish.

Let me finish by giving you one of my favorite scriptures, and an explanation for it.

"Who despises the day of small things? Men will rejoice when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel." (Zech 4:10)

When the children of Israel were returning from exile, there were with them old people who had once lived in Israel and young people who had been born in exile and never seen their home country. The plumb line is a tool used to make sure that the foundations for a new building are level. When the foundations for the new temple were being laid out, the old people who had seen how much bigger and grander the first temple had been, started grumbling and despising this day of small things. However, the young crown were rejoicing at the start of the new project, even though it was just a small beginning.

Rejoice! The kingdom of heaven is being built in our day among Muslims!

Salaam,