As we have been sharing our vision for the ministry that we will have in France, the proverbial "elephant in the room" was finally spoken out loud the other day. It was good that they had the courage to say what some others might be thinking. Greatly paraphrased, the thought was that "your monthly support is difficult to justify, when there are many other places in the world that someone could send a mere fraction of that money and it would be much more cost-effective and better stewardship of God's money in regard to people getting saved." This was spoken in utmost love, and I appreciate the courage that it must have taken to share the thought.
That conversation, and others like it, reminded me of an exercise I had seen on TV many years ago. Down in the depths of my basement, I've been saving an old VHS tape which I was able to convert to a digital format. I believe it was around 2002 when Dr. Phil McGraw was still doing his weekly visits on Tuesdays on the Oprah show. It shows a clip of a show where heused a now controversial 'game' called "I Have No Medicine for You".
For years, I've thought about this episode because it just reminded me how every day we make choices about who we are going to give Christ’s ‘medicine’ to. Frankly, as witnessing Christians, we have THE most powerful medicine available known to man, and we either make the choice to offer the medicine saying, "I have medicine for you", or we, through our inaction, silently say, "I have no medicine for you". I suppose that sometimes, we also are forced to make very tough decisions about who we will send the medicine to around the world through missions. Unfortunately, there are areas of the world, however dark and needing of the ultimate antidote they are, that we conscientiously make the incredibly difficult choice to say, "I have no medicine for you", because the ministry cost seems too great in relation to other areas of the world.
We don't take our cues from Dr. Phil or Oprah, but as he says in the clip, the good news is that THIS exercise is only a game. I suppose what is missing from his "Get Real Challenge" is any sense that the REAL exercise is about taking the REAL antidote to every tongue, every tribe, every nation, and every people group so that there can begin a movement of disciples who can then work at evangelizing their entire people. We feel passionate about the work in Lyon, France, but the mandate is global. Hey world! We have medicine for you.
