One thing I love about the Gospel in my walk with the Lord is knowing that the Gospel speaks grace for believers not just for every season of life, but especially for those seasons in which the believers’ home surroundings and comfort zones are being totally reconfigured and uprooted and believers are left wondering where they are to go to next for their security.  Knowing the Gospel with the Lord means knowing the Gospel as a good word for enjoying spiritual rest in Christ beyond all the whims and ebbs and flows of changing and shifting cultures, and sinners’ touchy-feely sentiments about trends and culture identity, with the Lord.

And knowing the Gospel with the Lord means knowing the Gospel as an expert foundation for speaking grace onto unbelievers’ lives during their radical culture shifts and high expressions of suspicion toward civil authorities and civilian unrest in their home surroundings, all in winning new converts to saving faith and spiritual rest in Christ with the Lord.

“And in these days prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch.  Then one of them, named Agabus, stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar.  Then the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea.”  (Acts 11:27-29)

God provides His inscribed Word, the Holy Scripture, as a prophetic and apostolic Word that speaks grace onto His people’s lives in such a way that Christians seek rest in the Lord alone as their only true home and their only true Father, beyond all the whims and follies of culture shifts.  God wants His believers to know true security in Himself rather than in their comfort zones and their home surroundings.  The Gospel is an ironic word of grace in that it radically shakes up believers from their comfort idols onto seeking rest in the power of God alone.

During Sunday worship service my pastor introduced a fellow pastor from Egypt, a pastor who watches over the spiritual growth and evangelical witness of individual churches in Egypt.  Several of the visiting pastor’s insights made an impression on me.  One insight was that the pastor’s churches have the burden of evangelizing nominal churchgoers in traditional established churches in Egypt.  These churchgoers are familiar with the Christian heritage from many previous centuries, but they have no saving faith in the Gospel.  And so the pastor’s churches have the burden of reintroducing the Gospel as a fresh word onto the churchgoing unbelievers who make up a small self-protected minority within the larger culture of Egypt.

And the reason that the nominal churchgoers are such a minority in Egypt is because the ninety percent majority of people in Egypt are Muslims.  The visiting pastor’s churches not only have the burden of sharing good news with nominal church people, but they also have the burden of sharing this good news with a very strong Muslim majority in Egypt.  Planting and harvesting the Gospel in Egypt is a much harder experience than in America, as Egypt provides a culture in which religious freedom is a fringe idea at best.

And the insight from the visiting pastor that really got my attention was the pastor’s burden for seeing churches planted and grown in Arlington specifically for the purpose of reaching out to Muslims in this city.  One of the fasting growing areas for Muslim populations along the East Coast is the city of Arlington, combined with the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church.  Muslims are moving here to Arlington to start a new life after shifting away from their home cultures overseas.  And the visiting pastor wants churches to be planted in Arlington specifically for Gospel witness to these new incoming Muslims.

These insights from the visiting pastor warm my heart.  I want to see the Gospel being preached onto unchurched unbelievers and unreached people-groups, and to see the Gospel sown and harvested among regions where the Gospel was not established in previous times, in longing to see new believers raised up to the grace of the Gospel from very spiritually barren surroundings with the Lord.  “And so I have made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man’s foundation . . .”      (Rom. 15:20).  My hope with the Lord is that individual churches would be planted for Gospel witness onto newly arrived and well situated Muslims and other diverse ethnic neighbors in Arlington, for bringing these diverse unbelievers to a radical encounter of the grace of Christ beyond the spiritual brokenness of culture shifts and civil unrest among fallen sinners from their former home lands.