Celebration Dinner Recap with Greg Kelley: Inspiring Movements to Reach the Nations
This is the Unknown Nations podcast where we'll be sharing about reaching the nation where Jesus is unknown. Welcome to the Unknown Nations podcast. We highlight what God is doing in the most spiritually dark places in the world.
Now at Unknown Nations, that's where we focus and have the honor to serve God by helping reach the most zero access, barrier ridden, spiritually antagonistic, spoken word reliant people groups in the world giving birth to the church in impossible places. And we love celebrating that. We do that through scripture.
We do that through our personal experiences, but we love to do that through testimony because that encourages all of us. In fact, scripture says that we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. So testimonies are critical for us.
We all need to be encouraged, especially when you think about the hardest, most desolate places in the world. We need to know that victory is taking place. And all of us at Unknown Nations, we are driven, of course, by the word of God, but there's a very specific scripture that today we're kind of kind of zero in on.
We just had our annual dinner celebration. It's just a magnificent time for us to get together with family and friends, supporters of this amazing organization where we celebrate what God is doing. We all have the privilege to be participants in it, but God is ultimately doing the work.
And so we celebrated that, but we zeroed in on the scripture. You maybe have heard us speak about it before. It's Paul's mission statement.
Now I was mentored by an amazing man and one of the principles he instilled with me was, Greg, if you want to be successful, follow someone who's been successful. And in the world of missions, who could we possibly say is more successful of a model than the Apostle Paul, the greatest missionary of all time? And if I were to tell you, if we could bring Paul together and ask him a question and say, Paul, what drove you? What was your north star? What were you primarily focused on? What was your mission statement? I believe he would take us to Romans chapter 15 and 20 where he said, It's my ambition to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ where Christ is not known, rather than on someone else's foundation. That takes an attitude.
That takes courage. That takes a focus. That, yeah, there's people that you know, maybe who know Jesus.
And think about Paul. He knew people. He planted churches in all kinds of places and the people loved him.
Yet he was constantly being driven by this notion that there's someone who has never heard of Jesus and I need to go there. Now, from the time of Paul until today, we see manifestations of that. We can point to examples.
And I want to encourage you with a few testimonies of people who really understood that scripture and they were driven by it. And we can go back. Let's go back to the 1700s.
The reason the 1700s are important is we pick up a group of Protestants, a denomination that was really the first significant Protestant denomination called the Moravians. These people were persecuted in Europe and they themselves understood this idea of the sacrifice required to share Jesus where he has never been heard before. And so we're going to go to a prayer meeting.
Here's what I find interesting. Movements of God, whether it's revival movements or missional movements. I mean, Jesus' last instruction was to go make disciples of all nations.
So whether you're talking about a renewal movement, a personal renewal, or revival movements, or a unique expression of outpouring towards missions to Great Commission, you will always see it predated by prayer. There was an emphasis of prayer that took place that called upon Jesus. Here's what we say at Unknown Nations.
We say you're horizontal. You can get stuff with your horizontal. The horizontal being your strengths, your giftings, your abilities, your relationships, your network, your resources.
Friend, whatever that is, that's your horizontal. That's the giftings, the toolbox, if you will, that God has given you. And if you were just to settle upon what you could accomplish in that, you'd be settling for table scraps.
Now, if that horizontal is anchored in a vertical that is calling in the presence of God and you're relying on the power of the Holy Spirit, that horizontal all of a sudden becomes exceedingly abundantly beyond what you could ask or imagine because it's anchored in the vertical. And the Moravians understood this, and so they prayed. They set out.
Imagine this, 48 people gathered together. This is on August 12th of 1727, the first gathering of Moravians for a prayer meeting. And they said, let's pray for 24 hours straight.
Can you imagine that? 48 people. The average age, by the way, was only about 30 years of age. 24 men, 24 women.
They came together, and they understood we need to get our vertical anchored properly on Jesus. Let's pray for a renewing of our own self. It wasn't about an agenda.
It was about being closer to Jesus. And the closer we get to Jesus, the more in alignment we will become with His agenda. And His agenda is for the nations of the earth.
And so they gathered together in this 24-hour prayer meeting that didn't last a day, didn't last a week, it didn't even last a month. No, for 24 hours without ceasing, this prayer movement lasted 100 years. And all of us can trace our Christian lineage.
And one way or another, back to that very meeting that lasted 100 years, the first awakening of cross-cultural missions was birthed out of this Moravian group. Now, they were far from perfect. They had their own issues and quarrels and things that went on.
But because they anchored their vertical on the cross of Jesus Christ, amazing things happened, including leaders like John Wesley, who was launched out. Amazing leaders who really understood that the only way Jesus' last words get accomplished is through a trusting of Him. And then you move forward to the turn of the 19th century.
So we're in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And just like the Moravians got the idea that Paul said, my ambition is to preach the gospel where Christ was not known. It infected Paul.
It infected the Moravians. And then it infected this group of people at the turn of the 19th century who were called one-way missionaries. And they got a hold of this in their spirit.
And what did they do? Well, they believed so firmly in that notion that they packed all their stuff in caskets. And they canvassed the world. They crisscrossed.
They went to the Caribbean where all the slave trade was very active. They went into Latin America, North and South America. They went into Sub-Saharan Africa.
They went all around the world, living maybe five years. The men, the women, the children, they would die of typhoid fever. They would die of malaria.
They would be killed by the indigenous people. Friends, they were so committed to the idea of making Jesus known that they gave their lives. And at the end of the day, if you were to ask these people, are you afraid to die? They would have looked at you and gone, I'm already dead.
I literally have surrendered my life to Jesus, and there's nothing more important than this. Then we can even fast forward a little bit closer. Some of you may have been alive during this time, but think of the year of 1956 where one of the famous martyrs in our modern Christian era took place.
That was Nate Saint and Jim Elliott, who, of course, went to the Auca Indians, known as just a fierce warrior tribe in the jungles of Ecuador. The tip of the spear is a famous story many of us have heard. That gets a little closer to home.
We're now only going back about something like 70 years, right, 75 years. And so Jim Elliott, the famous martyr, he said, and it was in his journal document. This is what he said.
He captured the essence of what Jesus said through Paul in Romans 15-20, making Christ known. And this is what he said in his journal. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
That was Jim Elliott. He gave it all. He ultimately gave his life for the cause of Christ so the Auca Indians could become Christian, and they are today.
They are majority Christian today. So, friend, it's going on. It's going on.
And from the time that Paul said it throughout these amazing examples to today, and there probably is no more of a critical time in the history of the church than right now to get this right. We have to get this right to make Christ known where he's never been heard before. Why is that? It's because there's about a third of the world.
If you were to say how many people in the world fall in that category of what Jesus called the ends of the earth, places that, not that they're not Christian. This is not just Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist. That does not make someone the ends of the earth or unreached.
What makes them unreached is they have never had access to the gospel. They've never met a Christian. They've never had a missionary target them.
The Bible, they don't know what the Word of God is. It may be translated in their language. Think about this.
The Somali people, a great example, they've had a Bible for well over 50 years, yet less than 1% of Somalis are followers of Jesus. Most of them have never contacted a Christian. They've never seen that Bible that's been translated.
So it's not just about the translation, as important and vital as that work is. It's about the engagement piece, having access to the gospel. And that's about a third of the world.
Today, right now, on our watch, and by the year 2050, it will increase by 500 million. Friends, we need to tap into that spirit that motivated the Moravians, that motivated Nate Saint and Elliot and the one-way missionaries. Today is our opportunity.
Now, the way this is going to happen, how is this going to get done? It's going to get done through the multiplication of leaders. We all know the assignment. Jesus gave us the words in the Great Commission.
All authority in heaven and earth is given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations. And we've talked about this.
Nations is not about country. I was just in the country of Nigeria that has 542 nations. So the question that we need to ask ourselves as we are making Christ known is not what is the spiritual condition of the country.
The question is drilling down one layer. What is the spiritual condition of the nation? Because the nation of the Yoruba and the nation of the Hausa, which are two of the very largest, millions and millions of people who live in Nigeria are Yoruba. Millions and millions of people who live in Nigeria are Hausa.
Two different nations that Jesus died for. The Yoruba are more Christian than the Bible Belt in America. The Hausa, meanwhile, over 30 million people.
Less than 1% followers of Jesus. No one even having access to the gospel. That is what Paul meant when he said making Christ known.
And we need to raise up these leaders who will multiply. So we know the assignment to make disciples. How are we going to do it? This is a beautiful scripture in 2 Timothy 2.2 that tells us how it's to be done.
He says, the things you've heard me share, and this is Paul again. Remember our great example. Paul said, the things you've heard me share in the presence of many witnesses, share with faithful men and women who will share with others.
I love that because that is about multiplication. That is doing discipleship intentionally. That is me sharing the gospel with someone, not in a transactional way that says, and I'm going to come back and we're going to do that again.
You're going to receive and I'm going to share. No, it's intentional. It's seeing that person you're leading to Christ, and you are immediately mobilizing them into the second generation.
And then beyond that to the third and the fourth generation. That is how we reach this world. I saw that with my own eyes.
I was in one of the most persecuted areas in the world, and this is near the area of Afghanistan. And we were in a border area, and some Afghan leaders came out to meet with the underground church. They had been receiving our audio Bibles.
God was moving in power among them, and they wanted to meet with us. What a privilege. I don't know if you've ever met someone who when they left you, you could literally hear that in a couple hours they could be dead.
Why? Because they left at the wrong time. They broke their curfew. The Taliban are patrolling this area and overseeing these people.
They were literally breaking the law to leave and to come to this meeting. And they looked at us, and they were like, we're so thankful to be able to meet you, but we might be killed soon. So we probably won't see you again.
And they were totally okay with that. What do you have to share with that kind of a person? I was digging, and I was asking the Lord. And he said, Greg, share with them 2 Timothy 2. Seed that principle inside of them.
Encourage them for how Afghanistan is going to be reached with the gospel. So what I asked very simply among them, I said, who's the first one that came to know Jesus among you? And they kind of looked at each other. And this one guy who was like sort of the initial champion of the gospel and brought Christ to all of them raises his hand, and I motioned.
I said, come on up here. And then I asked him, I put my arm around him, and I said, who's the first person in this group you've led to Christ? And he found a guy, and he pointed at him, and I motioned to him. I said, come on up.
So you get the idea. So I then talked to them. I said, who's next, and who's next? And before long, we had a line of over 20 leaders from the first one who knew Jesus to the very last, who had just come to Christ, by the way, a month earlier.
And these people were in line, and I said, this is how your country and the nation, like the Pashtun, which is a people group considered that's where the Taliban come out of, this is how your country is going to be reached with the gospel. Friend, the line doesn't end with them. It includes you and I. Everything we do at Unknown Nations is about making that happen, making Jesus known.
We invite you. Go to our website, unknownnations.com. You can learn more about us, how you can find your place in the line of making Jesus known to the places that are still without their first gospel witness. We're so thankful.
Please share this podcast with your friends and family. We encourage your positive ranking. It helps us to make Jesus known and to tell others about the great things God is doing in these places on the earth.
We'll catch you next time. God bless you.