Commitment

       This issue of "The Other Sheep" started off talking about how rapidly things were changing in China. China went from being ultra-conservative and very closed in, to building railroads, rapidly increasing telegraph lines, starting newspapers, and creating post offices. This was a very immense accomplishment for this country, a much needed change for its' people. For a while the article continued to talk about the major changes in the Chinese economy and government, and the impact those had on the country. One thing that interested me was to read that for many years prior, China was thought of as an impossible country to convert. The converts to Christianity were painstakingly low in 1834, only 3 converts. In 1842, a whopping 6 people became Christians, encouraging right? But as the article then said in that present time, there was what seemed like an unbelievable number of converts, nearly 70 years later there were 375,000 people that became Christians. It is obvious to me that God was doing alot of work there!
       A quote from this article that really encouraged me was this, "A little over a century ago it was said that it was impossible to translate the Bible into Chinese. In 1916 more than 2,500,000 copies of the Chinese Bible were sold by the British and Foreign Bible Society alone." A place man thought was unreachable was a place God was able to show Himself and how through Him all things are possible! This really encouraged me because many times in life we encounter things that we think are impossible to deal with, but God can help us through those times and work in ways we could never have imagined.
       The rest of the article was updates from missionaries around the world. Like in nearly every issue there are updates from different countries, but todays' reading in particular made me stop and think. It was not necessarily what they said that made me think, but it was the common theme among them. Each of those missionaries encountered tremendous hardships: famine, war, disease, and death are just a few of them. Yet through these times, they still had the strength to spread God's word and rely on Him alone. Many times Christians give up so easily on God because things dont go their way. God didnt give me that job I wanted, or God didnt let me do this or that particular thing.What if we had everything stripped away from us, family, friends, home, health? Would we have the spiritual strength to continue?