Coming to God as a Little Child — Daniel Punnose

Oh, so you didn't get my dad, so you got second best, I'm here. Thank you, thank you. I'm really grateful to be able to be here to share with you what God is doing on the other side of the world. Most of the year, I'm either in Texas, which is a completely different country altogether, or I'm over in India serving with our missionaries and sharing the gospel over there.

Gospel for Asia started about 30 years ago with a small prayer meeting in my parents' living room. They both wanted to do something kind of in missions. They've always been involved in missions, but they wanted to see what God would have them to do.

And so they would gather their friends together every Tuesday, and they would just say, let's just pray and see what God would have us to do. They put the world maps out there and the country maps and began to pray.

And from that small prayer meeting, what God has done is he's raised up about 16 ,000 national missionaries. These are people from their own country. They like the bugs. They like the food that'll melt your face off.

They like the culture, but they know the language. They know the people and they can easily connect with people to be able to share the gospel with them. And through these national missionaries, these people from their own country, loving their own people, we've seen almost 20 ,000 to 30 ,000 churches and fellowships started in 10 Asian nations.

The Unreached People of India

Praise God. And if you were to go with me through India and through the slums of Bombay, I mean, it would break your heart to see the physical condition where people are living in the slums, 10 million people just in a couple of slums, you know, Calcutta and Bombay, some of the largest slums on earth where there's sewage, just raw sewage running down the street.

Kids are playing in it. I mean, when it rains, all the houses are flooded. The government will come sometimes and just bulldoze half the slums and say, okay, everyone move. And the living conditions that these families live in is terrible.

But what breaks your heart even more than just a physical condition of seeing the slums and seeing the poverty and seeing the conditions these people live in their life is to realize they don't know Christ.

They have never even heard about Christ before. People often ask me, what's the biggest difference between America and India? Besides the food that'll melt your face and temperatures and those kinds of things, bugs.

Probably the biggest difference between America and India is that it's really hard not to hear the gospel here. It's true. Just driving down the street to get to church here, I saw at least five churches.

All kinds of different, you know, Texas, we have, it's bizarre. Texas is weird. I mean, we have churches on every corner, under every bush, on top of every tree, we have a church. You know, some have steeples.

Some are flat purple. I mean, you know, some are pink. I mean, it's just weird. All kinds of different churches. But praise God, you can actually walk into church, get a Bible, or someone can share the gospel with you.

You know, the hymn that we sang, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, early on the worship service, that was written by a guy named Robert Robertson. And he wrote this hymn. He got saved. Actually, he was going to a service to make fun of the preacher.

Him and his buddies were going to go make fun of the preacher at the service. Went to the service. They heard the preacher and he thought that message was just for him. And he gave his heart to Jesus.

Later, he wrote that hymn and then walked away from the Lord. He backslid. He's riding in a horse coach, you know, like a little, at that time, like a little taxi. Riding in this coach. And this lady is humming this hymn beside him, which is the song that he wrote.

And she turns to him and says, What do you think about this song? He says, Lady, I'm the poor guy that wrote that. And I would give a thousand lives to get that back. And that changed his life once again.

And he came back to the Lord. Here's something that's incredible to realize that, you know, it's such a blessing to be born in this country, to be able to walk into any church, turn on the radio. There's Christian radio.

Go to Walmart. You can buy a Bible. I bought a Bible from Walmart. Guess where it was printed? China, China. Yes. Think about this. We smuggle Bibles where? Into China. They print them for us. I mean, it's bizarre.

It's insane. You can walk in the street. At least someone will be cursing Jesus' name. At least his name is being proclaimed. But I've driven in India for 200 miles and not seen a single church. Doesn't exist.

Do you realize there's not an official Christian radio station inside the country? We have 111 languages preaching the gospel. We have to broadcast from outside India. Into India and Nepal and some of these countries.

There's no official Christian bookstore. Oftentimes we'll go to villages and we'll say, excuse me, do you know Jesus Christ? And this is what they'll say. You know what? I've lived here all my life. My friends are here.

My family's here. Your friend Jesus isn't here. Check the next village down the road. I'm sure your friend Jesus will be there. No idea. One of my friends was going down the street talking to the shop vendors and he said, you know, excuse me, do you know Jesus Christ?

And the guy said, listen, we got Pepsi. We got 7-Up, Coke. We don't have Jesus Christ. I'm sorry. He thought Jesus Christ was a soft drink. Do you realize how blessed we are in this country here to be able to be exposed to the gospel, to be able to be exposed to this exchanged life?

The Exchange Life in Christ

So the Christian life is not a life of praise, God, I'm going to heaven. It's an exchange life. When Jesus said, I've come to give you life and life more abundant, doesn't mean I get everything I want.

It means I exchange this rotten life for the life that he has for me. Because I'm helpless on my own. I can't figure it out on my own. Even Robert Robertson, who wrote that hymn, realized he's stuck. He can't fix his own life.

It's when Christ comes into my life and I give up of myself and I say, okay, you take over. And Psalm 139 is one of my favorite passages in all of scripture. It talks about how God knows me through and through and how he knows my thoughts, which is scary.

He knows my words, which is even more scary. And he knows where I'm going or where I'm planning to go, which is super scary. And yet he still loves me. And even though he knows me through and through and I'm like glass compared to his eyes, what he can see, it says that he has a special plan for my life and all of his thoughts are good for me.

He says, I can't even count how many good thoughts he has for me. It outnumbers the stars, outnumbers the sand. And if I would just get that through my dense head, that he does care for me and he wants me to exchange this rotten life that I have and give it to him that he can put his life into me.

And if I would follow his plan for my life, my life would walk straight. See, the Christian life is not a life of making myself better. The Christian life is giving up of myself and saying, Lord, I give up.

Here I am. And praise God, we get the opportunity to hear that in this country. But over there, what breaks your heart is there's millions of people who have never even heard about Jesus. They don't even know that he died on the cross.

Knowing Christ and Making Him Known

And our challenge for us, my brothers and sisters, is this, that we would never live our life consumed with just ourself, but that we would open our eyes and see what is more important than our very life, which is eternity.

We're only here for a very short time and then we go into eternity, either with God or without God. But we will be in eternity. And as believers, the most important thing is not how many times I've read the Bible and how often I went to church.

Those are important things and we should do that. But how has my life impacted others to bring them to Christ? Because when we're gone, that's all that will matter. That's it. And that only happens if I follow what Christ said to deny myself, pick up my cross, and follow him.

And for Gospel for Asia, that is our heart's passion. To know Christ more fully and intimately. Know him above everything else. And secondly, make him known. That is a Christian life. To know Christ and then to make him known.

Receiving the Kingdom Like a Child

In Mark's Gospel, if you have your Bibles, you can turn to Mark's Gospel, chapter 10. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Mark's Gospel, chapter 10. Starting with verse 13 is kind of an interesting little story about Jesus and the disciples and some kids.

The disciples were really slow. I'm not sure if you realize that. Jesus picked a group of losers, actually. I mean, think about it. Two of the guys wanted to burn an entire village. You know, one guy was cutting ears off of people.

You know, one guy was stealing money for three and a half years and the tax collector who was on his team didn't even figure it out. I mean, these guys were pretty sad guys, you know. And Jesus picked these guys on purpose.

He prayed all night before he picked them out. And he picked these guys to prove to the world that when they did something for God, it had to be God working through them because there's no other explanation.

Praise God for that. But in Mark's Gospel, chapter 10, verse 13, it says, talking about these parents, then they brought little children to him that he, Jesus, may touch them and bless them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them.

But when Jesus saw it, he was greatly displeased and said to them, let the little children come to me and do not forbid them for as such is the kingdom of God. Surely I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.

And he took them up in his arms and laid his hands on them and blessed them. Here, Jesus is kind of over here in the corner. You know, he's kind of just sitting down, resting. And parents are bringing kids, little children, to Jesus so he can bless them, which is a nice thing.

I mean, we like to have our kids blessed by Jesus. You know, it's fine. We even have, you know, child dedication services. And the disciples, these great men of God, who really were clueless half the time, were surrounding Jesus and pushing babies away.

I mean, these guys are pretty sad. You know, I'm sorry your baby smells funny. Keep him over there. You know, there's a changing table over there. Go change him first. You know, and Jesus is like, oh, come on, guys.

Let the little kids come to me. Let me bless them. In fact, let me tell you something else. Unless your heart is like a child's heart, you're not even getting into the kingdom. And I'm sure this surprised the disciples.

But here's the thing. Let me ask you this. What makes a child special? How many of you have children? If you don't have some, borrow some from the Sunday school. You know, but think about this. What makes a child special is simple faith, simple trust, simple obedience.

When kids read something or hear something from their Sunday school teacher, they're like, all right, let's go do it. But what do we do? Oh, let's explain this away so we don't have to do it. I remember praying, you know, that Tuesday prayer that we had starting the ministry.

We still, every Tuesday, get together. We still pray, not as a tradition, but to come before the Lord and say, Lord, we really don't know what we're doing. Please help us. And so the first part of the prayer meeting, we have all the little kids, you know, together with us.

And we pray with them for like two or three prayer requests. And there was this one little guy. His name was Josh. And Josh was about, you know, two and a half, three years old. And the prayer request was, we need to pray for our missionary to get a new horse because the horse got struck by lightning.

I don't know what was with that horse. I had a lot of metal fillings or something. I'm not sure, but it got struck by lightning. And so we need to pray for this missionary to get a new horse because he uses the horse to climb up the mountains of Sikkim, which is a very kind of hilly mountainous area to share the gospel in the villages.

And so I'm there. I'm praying this awesome, eloquent prayer. And Josh, this is his prayer. Jesus, horsey, amen. And I'm thinking you can't do that. That's that's against the Bible somewhere. But you know what?

The next week that missionary got the horse. Let me ask you whose prayer was answered. Not mine. That guy's prayer was answered. He had enough faith in his little heart to believe that God could provide a new horse for this missionary.

And this missionary kept sharing the gospel. Children are so special and innocent and unique in their hearts. And what God wants us to be is childlike in our hearts, not childish in our nature, but childlike in our hearts that we would come before the Lord and say, Lord, I'm an idiot.

I need help. Lord, if this is what your word says, man, please help me to live this out. Lord, I need your help. Please just help me to understand this. You know how often I've read the scriptures and I never ask God to help me understand it.

And I'm like, man, this does not make sense. I'm like, oh, yeah. Okay, Lord, can you please help me understand this? And I read it again to make sense. To come before the Lord with that innocent childlike heart is the key.

The Bridge of Hope Ministry and the Dalits

And you know what's unique is that Jesus always was ministering to kids. And in Gospel for Asia for all these years, we could not figure out how we would do children's ministry. We like kids. I have kids.

I have two kids. You know, but we were really good at church planting. We have all these missionaries. We do evangelism. We share the Gospel, pass out Gospel tracts. We produce like 50 to 60 million pieces of Gospel literature and pass it out and give it away.

But we can never see how can we do, you know, a child's ministry and yet stay faithful to what God was calling us to do, which is church planting. We couldn't figure that out. And so through a series of events, what God did is he started the Bridge of Hope ministry.

The Bridge of Hope ministry is, we minister especially to these families called the Dalits, this group of people. Have you ever seen Slumdog Millionaire, the movie? Great movie. If you guys haven't seen it, you need to watch that movie.

You know, so everyone tell the pastor you need to watch the movie now. Okay, so Slumdog Millionaire is an incredible movie. Of course, it's a Hollywood production. It has a happy ending. But those kids and those families in that movie are the Dalits.

Those are Dalit families. The Dalits are a group of people, almost 300 million of them. That's about the population of America, 300 million of them. And they are born into a category called the Untouchables or the low caste.

In India, in Nepal, in some of these countries, everyone is divided into some group. You're either a high caste, a low caste, a Brahmin, or you're in one of these categories. Each category defines your life.

You are predestined. You are stuck into this category for the rest of your life. If you're on the top, you get all the benefits. You're good to go. If you're on the bottom, if you're an Untouchable, your life is pretty much doomed.

It defines your name. It actually, your name is picked out according to your caste, your name. It defines how you eat, how you dress, what kind of job you can get, what kind of education, if you can get an education, who you will marry, and when you die, how you're taken care of after death.

It defines everything for you. And you're born into it, and you're stuck into it. And most of the kids are stuck into some kind of bonded labor. They work in matchbox factories, firecracker factories, carpet factories, brick keels.

They work in the most terrible jobs possible because they have to work to help make money for their families. I remember looking outside one of our Bible colleges in Bangladesh and seeing a family sitting on top of a pile of bricks with little hammers, breaking these bricks into smaller pieces to fill potholes in the street.

And there was a three-year-old little kid sitting with them, breaking bricks. I'm thinking, my daughter's three. I can't imagine her sitting there all day long on a pile of bricks, breaking bricks into smaller pieces so she could earn a few pennies to help pay for food.

The parents of these Dalits, they have the worst jobs possible. They clean the sewage with their bare hands. They take the dead bodies off the funeral pyre after they've been burned and the remains are thrown away because no one else wants to touch the dead bodies.

They are in bonded labor. They're kept uneducated. They can't read or write many times. And that's what breaks your heart is to realize on top of all this poverty, they don't know Christ. One of our missionaries, and I'll tell you a story.

The Ganges and the Need for Forgiveness

It's an extreme story to paint a picture to help you understand how desperate people are for the forgiveness of sin. It doesn't happen every day, but you hear about it once in a while. There was this missionary walking along the shores of Ganges.

And the Ganges River is a very holy river in India where millions of people will come and descend upon this river to dip themselves in this nasty river, believing that the water will wash their sins away.

I mean, it's disgusting. It's one of the most polluted rivers in India. And there's like dead animals floating in it and disgusting. You know, they throw all the dead bodies, parts in there. It's just nasty.

But people believe you dip yourself in this river, your sins will be forgiven. So sometimes 12 million people will come at one time to dip themselves in the river. And our missionaries walking along the shore of this river sees this woman on her knees, beating her chest, wailing out loud.

And in India, when you see that, that's not normal. That does not happen. That's not something publicly you do. Unless something really, really bad has happened. And so he approached her and said, listen, is there anything I can do for you?

Are you okay? Do you need any help? And she said, my sins are so many. The burdens of life I carry is too much for me. My husband lost his job. He's sick. He's at home. He doesn't have a job to provide food for the family.

And the kids are starving. I don't know what to do. To find the answer to life's problems into the sin that I carry and this burden of this life that I have on me, to find the answer for the forgiveness of sin, I've given the best offering gift.

I knew what to do. I've taken my three-month-old baby boy and threw him into the river. And she went back weeping and wailing. And our missionary began to explain and said, you know, Jesus came just over 2 ,000 years ago, died on the cross just for you.

He spilled his blood just for you. His blood washes you as white as snow. He is the reason and the purpose for your life. And he said, that's the answer. She wipes her eyes, wipes her tears, looks straight into our missionary's eyes and said, why didn't you come half an hour earlier?

It's too late. It's too late. And she went back weeping. So, my brothers and sisters, this is the reality of millions of people who are on their way to hell, who've never heard about Christ and who are desperate for the forgiveness of sin.

See, in this country, when we hear the gospel and we're exposed to the gospel, we have a Bible, we have no excuse. And it breaks your heart to realize that there are people who are desperate and they want the forgiveness of sin.

They just never heard about Jesus and they're waiting. Through the Bridge of Hope ministry, we've seen thousands and thousands of families changed and turned to Christ. This one village, this one little boy, his name was Naboon.

Children Bringing the Gospel Home

Naboon's mother was really, really sick. Every day, the Bridge of Hope ministry is this. We help the kids, these Dalek kids to be able to go to school. We provide the uniforms. We help them with medical checkup, give them a hot meal a day.

After school, we get to meet with them, share the gospel with them, help them with their homework. And on the weekends, we meet with the parents and teach them things about hygiene and how to take care of the kids, but also the gospel.

Naboon was coming every afternoon after school and meeting with our Bridge of Hope ministry with other kids, and he would hear stories about Jesus healing the leper and setting the demon-possessed man free and, you know, saving this person and helping this person and blind man's eyes are open.

And he would go home and tell his dad about all these stories. And so one day, his dad shows up and says, excuse me, I hear you have a Dr. Jesus here. Can you send Dr. Jesus to my home? My wife is really sick.

And so he said, what do you mean, Dr. Jesus? Well, my son keeps telling me about all these stories. Dr. Jesus healed this man. Dr. Jesus healed this lady. And, you know, can you please send Dr. Jesus to my home?

He's like, oh, okay. So he went to the home, explained who Dr. Jesus was, explained the gospel to them, and then prayed for Naboon's mother. And the Lord healed her instantly. Praise God. The whole family gave their hearts to Christ.

The neighbors heard about, they gave their hearts to Christ. Because there was one little boy who was able to share the stories that he was hearing from basically Sunday school. And in another village, 80 parents gave their hearts to Christ because the kids kept bringing the story home of Jesus to them.

80 parents taking public water baptism is not a small thing in India. Baptism is not done inside the church. It's done in the river or, you know, in the ocean or the stream outside. And everyone that hates you comes out to watch what you're doing.

Because they have kind of a parade. They go right to the middle of the village. They have the drums. They beat the drums. They have a big parade. And everyone's like, oh, what's going on over there? And so everyone goes out to the river.

The pastor gets into the water, explains what baptism is, the symbol of what Christ has done inside our life. And then he asked each of the people wanting to be baptized to come to the river. And he asked them, have you accepted Jesus as your Savior?

Yes. You have to answer for everyone to hear you. Will you stand for Christ even if you face persecution or death? Yes. Will you ever deny him? No. Okay, then you can be baptized. And you have to say that for everyone to hear.

And usually it's when you are baptized that everyone hates you and you were kicked out of your home and that you are rejected for the name of Christ because you've chosen to follow him. And so 80 parents did that because their kids were bringing home these stories.

Miracles Opening Doors for the Gospel

One of my favorite stories is in this one village, this missionary was going house to house sharing the gospel. And he came on this one house and they heard the gospel and said, you know, listen, we heard what you said about Jesus.

Could you pray for someone in our house? They're sick. And he said, sure, I'll be happy to pray. So they led him through the house. And the backside of the house, there was a water buffalo. And everyone needs a water buffalo, I guess, you know.

So what happens, this family would milk the water buffalo, sell the milk, and that's what they would use to buy food. Buffalo's sick, no food, pretty simple. And they said, can you please pray? And so our missionaries laid his hands on the stinky water buffalo and said, Lord, if there's ever a time to do something, this is the time to do something.

Pray for that water buffalo. Lord, heal that water buffalo. The whole family gave their hearts to Christ. The neighbors said, hey, we heard about that water buffalo got healed. Can you tell us about Jesus?

We want to hear about that too. So many people in the village got saved that a church was planted in the village because that one water buffalo. It's pretty amazing. You have Calvary chapels here. We have buffalo churches back there.

It's awesome, you know. There was this one small missionary. His name was Sam. And after the story, I want to show you a short little video kind of about the Bridge of Hope ministry. There was one little missionary named Sam.

Sam’s Call to a Dangerous Mission Field

Just graduated from our Bible college. Felt like God was calling him to go to this place called Boondi, Rajasthan. Boondi was known as the graveyard of missions. My dad was beaten in Boondi when he was a missionary there.

One of his guys on his team was beaten with an iron rod, split his head open. I mean, just blood was gushing out. This is not a good place. As a missionary, you don't want to go there. It's like the place you go everywhere except that place.

And so Sam was praying and he felt like God was leading him to go to Boondi. He shared it to his friends and his friend said this, Are you sure that was the Lord speaking to you? Not the other guy. No one goes to Boondi.

God loves you. He doesn't send you to Boondi. He says, No, I'm sure. God wants me to go to Boondi. He said, Okay. And they prayed for him and sent him to Boondi. He began to give out gospel tracts and began to share the gospel with people.

And pretty soon, these very large guys showed up and said, Hey, what are you doing here? He said, I'm sharing the love of Christ. He said, We don't want any of your love of Christ. They beat him up. One guy held him upside down.

This guy is kind of small. So he held him upside down and said, We will actually tear you apart like a little chicken. We will kill you if you ever come back here. They beat him up some more, kicked him some more.

He ran back to the pastor's house, knocked on the pastor's door and said, They're going to kill me. He said, Who's going to kill you? He said, Those big guys. He said, Sam, what are you doing here? He said, What do you mean?

What am I doing here? They're going to kill me. He said, Yeah, it's okay if they kill you. He said, Sam, did God call you to go there? He said, Yes. Then what are you doing here? He said, The pastor, you don't understand.

They said they're going to kill me. He said, Listen, Sam, if God called you to go there and you're sure of that, like you told us, man, you be faithful and you go back there. And if they kill you, heaven's a better place than Boondi anyway.

You wait for us in heaven. We'll follow you shortly. He says, God's calling is what is important. They prayed for him one more time, sent him back there. He began to give out the gospel tracks. Again, I'm sure he's looking over his shoulders.

Hey, one of these guys are coming back. You know, give him the gospel track. The same guy showed up. And he said, Are you insane? We told you if you come back here, we will kill you. You have to understand we lose about 10 to 15 missionaries every year.

This is not like empty threats. One missionary that we were supporting, they would actually in that village, they would tie the missionaries to the tree. And then someone would come with a machete and skin them alive.

I mean, they'd actually peel their skin off their bodies and throw them into the ocean. And by God's grace, they couldn't find the guy who would do that. So they escaped. But when someone threatens you with death, that's for real on the mission field.

That's not just that we're trying to scare you. So the guy said, Hey, listen, we're going to kill you now. Sam said, OK, heaven's a much better place than Boondi anyway. Go ahead and kill me. They thought he's insane.

They left him alone. So he continued to give out the gospel tracts and continue to share it with people. And one by one, the people in that village got saved. A church was planted in that village, the very village where he was beaten.

My dad was invited to come and kind of dedicate the church in the service. And my dad freaked out when he heard about Boondi too, because he remembered all the bad stories and bad events from his time.

And while he's walking down the aisle of the church, little Sam, Pastor Sam was like, Hey, that's the guy that beat me up. That's the guy that held me upside down. That's the guy that kicked me. They were the first believers in the church.

Surrendering Life to God’s Mission

Why? Because of praise God. See, it takes a real man or real woman to walk with the Lord. Anyone can walk in the world. But when you experience that exchange life, when you give this life that we have to the Lord, and you accept this exchange life, his life into you, the Lord can use you to do incredible things.

I will say this, you know, because I see a lot of my young brothers and sisters here. God has a special plan for each of you. He does. And I know you don't know my dad's story. But if God can use my dad to do this ministry, he's the most unlikely person to start this ministry.

Didn't wear shoes till he was 16. Comes from a small little village in South India. My grandmother never traveled outside her village. My dad had never traveled outside of state. Didn't know a single word of English.

Someone asked him, what is your name? He couldn't understand. Sat at the back of the class so he wouldn't have to answer any questions. Never joined a sports team. He was too scared. Hated standing up in front of people.

In fact, the missionary that came to his village, he was too shy to even hear what he had to say. So he climbed a tree to listen to the message. And on top of that tree, he said, Lord, I have no talents.

I have no giftings. I have nothing. But if you want my life, you can have it. And that's how he joined the mission field. God has a special plan for each of our lives. That's true. And man, you know, God uses young people more than you can imagine.

Most of our missionaries in the mission field are young. And God is using them to do incredible, incredible things. And, you know, Pastor Sam, this young guy who just felt God's call in his life and said, OK, I'm going to go wholeheartedly after that.

God used him. My mom comes from a small village in Germany. It's kind of weird. I'm like half German. Can't you tell? You know, I married my wife. I mean, she's from California, but her parents are from Mexico.

So my kids are like completely confused. You know, Mexican, German, Indian, you know. But my mom comes from a small village in Germany, you know, a tiny little village. And she became a believer and then got excommunicated from the whole community because she wanted to follow Christ.

It takes a real man, a real woman to follow Christ. And to experience life how God intended, you have to really give your life to the Lord. And even as believers, this life that's given to us is not our own.

It's a life that we give away so that other people can come to Christ. And that, my brothers and sisters, is a call of God upon our life that will be there until we see Jesus on that day, that we are to know him.

But then with every fiber of our being, we are to make him know. That's it. When we go to heaven, a lot of things we care about, it's not going to matter anymore. I'm not taking my car, not taking my ring, not taking my house, not taking my insurance with me.

I'm not taking any of this stuff with me. The only thing that will matter in eternity are those people who came to Christ. And that's it. And the heart of gospel for Asia is to share the gospel with people who've never heard the gospel even one time.

And then on this side of the world, challenge people to live with eternity in mind and make those decisions and invest their time and resources and family in what really, really matters. And so I want to show you a short little video.

It's like a four or five minute little video on the Bridge of Hope ministry. And then right after that, we'll come back and we'll look at some practical ways what we can do to really kind of implement this missions lifestyle.

Because missions is not for pastors and missionaries. It's for all of us. All of us who are believers are called to live a life of mission. And how can we do that practically? So let's watch a short little video and then we'll come back and look at some practical applications.

Practical Ways to Live a Life of Mission

How we can live a life of missions. And all these suggestions, we can all fit into one of these categories at least. Number one, I would challenge all of us to commit to at least 15 minutes a week of prayer.

I mean, this is besides our morning devotion or our Bible study or Sunday. 15 minutes a week, sometimes in the week where we stop everything, we turn everything off, turns our phones off, everything off, turn the radio off.

And we pray, not for ourselves, not for our church, but we pray that God would send more people to the mission field. That God would help these children with 160 million child laborers, 300 million dollars, you know, a hundred and something million people that go to bed hungry every night.

That God would burden our heart with the things that burden his heart. 15 minutes a week is like three songs on the radio. I think we can do that. You know, get your family together. But let's pray 15 minutes a week, we can all do that.