God's Work in China

Many thanks to John Piper for highlighting the 200th anniversary of Protestant missions to China in his article Mark This Day and Marvel at the Work of God. What immediately struck me as I read was the time lapse between Robert Morrison's arrival in China on September 7, 1807 and the baptism of the first Protestant Chinese believer on July 16, 1814. That's over 6 years and 10 months before any visible fruit was evident from Morrison's labors! Praise God for his faithfulness.

As today's missionaries continue to press forward in pioneer fields among people groups where few, if any, people have ever heard the name of Jesus, we need to be willing to wait for the fruit. Yes, it is crucial that missionaries employ good strategy and minister with boldness, possessing full faith that God can change the heart of a person in an instant. Still, I sense a great need to guard against the widespread cultural value of instant gratification. In America and the West, but increasingly throughout the world, society conditions us to expect immediate results. When the results seem slow, the principles of instant gratification cause us to assume that there is some problem or inherent flaw in what we are doing.

This sort of pressure can have multiple undesirable effects. Missionaries get frustrated and burned out for the wrong reasons. Sending churches and agencies diminish their support (even sub-consciously) because of their need to 'see results.' Missionaries may make compromises for the sake of speeding things up. For example, they might pay less attention to language and cultural study because it takes too long. Some will sacrifice depth of spiritual life in new believers in favor of quickly spreading breadth in evangelism. Others will insist on forcing fast, simple models of church regardless of cultural factors that may or may not suggest otherwise.

Bottom line: Let us all remember Paul's example from 2 Corinthians 6:2-10,

"Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. ³ We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, ⁴ but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, ⁵ beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; ⁶ by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; ⁷ by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; ⁸ through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; ⁹ as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; ¹⁰ as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything."

Yes, 'now is the day of salvation.' Praise be to God! We just need to remember all that is involved in leading up to this glorious day.