Pray
Once you’ve learned a bit about the nations coming to the  World Cup, I want to encourage you to begin praying for the teams and the fans that will accompany them. This is an important first step we can take to engage the nations among us. Here are a few ideas to help you foster prayer during the  World Cup.

Prayercast
Prayercast has created some amazing prayer videos for every country in the world. As the  World Cup approaches, begin prayerful watching and praying through the Prayercast videos for each of the countries coming to play. Watch the Algeria Prayercast video below. [Find a Nation at Prayercast]

One of the biggest reasons Christians hesitate to share their faith—with friends, co-workers, neighbors, or even strangers—is a deep sense of insecurity. Maybe you’ve felt it too. The fear of being unprepared, facing tough questions, or things not going as planned can be paralyzing.

Perhaps you feel unqualified.

But Jesus directly addresses this fear in the Gospels. In Mark 5, He crosses the Sea of Galilee into the Decapolis, where He encounters a demon-possessed man. It’s a dramatic moment—the demons, calling themselves Legion, are cast into a herd of pigs, which rush into the sea and drown. Overwhelmed, the people beg Jesus to leave. And so He does.

But…

What does Jesus require for someone to share the good news?

Simply this: that God has done something for you.

The man in this story had no formal training—no seminary degree, no deep theological knowledge, no long-developed prayer life. For much of his existence, he was the outcast, the "crazy demon-possessed guy." But then he met Jesus. And Jesus changed everything.

As a follower of Christ, Jesus has changed everything for you too!

Of course, growing in biblical knowledge and prayer is important, but notice—Jesus didn’t require it before sending this man out. In fact, when the man begs to go with Him, eager to learn more, Jesus says no. Instead, He gives him a mission:

"Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how He has had mercy on you."

And the man doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t make excuses about his lack of training or experience. He simply obeys. He goes and shares his story—and the people are amazed!
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The next time you feel unqualified or uncertain about what to say, remember this: You have more knowledge, more experience, and more access to Scripture than this man ever did. If God could use someone with his past, He can surely use you.

“I can’t see anything dad.”

     My seven year old son squeezed my hand ever tighter as we both recognized the obvious truth of his statement. He and I along with my wife and five year old daughter had scrambled up the canyon wall in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey where we were hiking and had climbed into the entrance of a man made cave, a tunnel actually, that angled back into the cliff face and into what we knew from our guidebook was probably a complex of tunnels and rooms; the ancient homes of an ancient people.  We had walked the sandy path for nearly twenty yards when we came to a right hand turn. The tunnel was four feet across and just over five feet tall, a rectangular shaft cut straight and true. A few steps into our right turn and we had run out of light. There was a shadowed outline of what appeared to be another tunnel or perhaps a doorway a few feet further into the gloom but beyond that we could see nothing. Darkness stretched out before us.
     
     I crouched to rest my bent back and together we discussed our options. We had taken a tour of an amazing underground city the day before which had ignited the flames of our inner explorers. Unfortunately, while none of us wanted to turn back, we didn’t have a flashlight. The flip phone I had at the time didn’t have a flashlight and the gray green glow of its one inch square screen gave barely enough light to see our hands in front of our faces. What we did have was our compact digital camera which had a flash. It was worth a try and so I pointed the camera into the smothering darkness and took a picture. In an instant the tunnel burst into light and just as quickly receded back into darkness.  In that moment however we had seen a vision of the future; there wasn’t just one doorway on the left, there were three evenly spaced entrances off of the main tunnel we were in, a tunnel which disappeared ahead in a distant darkness.

     Dragging my hand along the wall, we made our way into the darkness until we came to the fist cleft in the sandstone. Another flash and we knew it was the entrance to a small and rather insignificant room. The next was the same but the third entrance led into a room that had a very large and rather deep pit carved into its floor. From our tour the day before we knew this had most likely been used to store grain in ages past, however the possibility of stumbling into one of these deep pits was unnerving. We squatted for another conference, reiterating to the kids to stay together and agreeing to not take any unnecessary risks. We proceeded another thirty yards or so when we noticed light ahead. We made our way forward and found a tunnel returning to the face of the cliff. It was another way out and it brought both relief and courage.

     We turned back into the darkness and continued to explore. When we ventured deep enough, the light was non-existent and we rarely knew what was beyond the edge of our flash. Ten feet at a time, we wandered this complex of tunnels and rooms, discovering what felt like ancient secrets, including a large room where we imagined the community gathering for meals or worship. Fear and joy mingled as we spent the next hour chasing the light into the darkness.

     As I read the Biblical stories, it seems that in many ways, faith is the simple act of chasing light into the darkness. When Moses’ mother coated a papyrus basket with tar and pitch she was simply taking the next step of faith. She hadn’t seen the whole story but in faith, she had followed the flash of God’s grace into the darkness. Moses’ sister had only seen a glimpse of a better future but she knew her God and so she took tentative, faith-filled steps into the river where she waited, standing in the shadows, standing in the muck and mire of the river, standing in the light of expectation.  Joseph’s dream was followed by a pit and slavery and prison but he held on to hope, trusting that God was working behind the scenes and would remain true. When the twelve disciples watched their risen Lord ascend into heaven, the great commission was still ringing in their ears. Go and make disciples of all nations. The whole world was the vision Jesus had given them and yet they had no budget, no buildings, and no infrastructure to speak of. They did have a promise, that Jesus would be with them until the very end of the age, and they’d spent three years watching Jesus do the work of His kingdom and so they simply moved forward into the next thing God showed them.

     The story of the book of Acts is the story of the disciples peering down dark tunnels expectantly looking for the light to flash. They lived with a deep trust that God was working and that His kingdom would expand. They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what they were supposed to do - Go make disciples of all nations - but they didn’t necessarily know how it would get accomplished. They prayed and planned and took daily steps of faith, all the while trusting that God was orchestrating His will. As the disciples took those daily steps of faith, God stepped with them into their context to infuse it with His power in His timing. It is the faithfulness of the disciples that is paramount. The planning was helpful. The strategies were important.  But as Andy Stanley points out,  “believers with vision live with the knowledge that “how” may come about independently from their planning. But it will not come about apart from their faithfulness. Faithfulness is critical to success.”*

     This is the pattern I watch weekly in the volunteers who serve in Crescent Project’s Embassy ministry which I help lead. Embassy works to equip followers of Jesus to go into the online spaces where Muslims congregate. There they build rich, lifelong friendships through which they’ll have the opportunity to share the good news of Jesus as they share their lives. Every interaction is an act of faith. The will of the Father is clear - He desires that none should perish so he sent his only begotten son to seek and save the lost and to give His life as a ransom.  In Jesus is life and that life is the light for all mankind. While the vision of the Father is clear, how it will actually come about is another question all together. Meaningful scriptures shared with Muslim friends are met with smug comments that give no hint of interest in the gospel. Honest probing questions are deflected and avoided. For many of our volunteers it can be a long, bent-backed slog through tunnels of darkness as Muslim friends respond with seeming indifference. And yet as we look to the scriptures we find hope that the Father is drawing people to Christ. He is at work behind the scenes whether we realize it or not.  Seeds are planted which the Holy Spirit will water in His time.

     This truth was highlighted in the story of a young lady from Central Asia. One of our Embassy volunteers had been laboring for nearly two years, meeting only indifference and the needy immaturity of a nineteen year old teen wanting to learn English even as she became a sort of surrogate aunt for this young lady. But then Covid-19 spread across the globe carrying in its wake a growing sense of anxiety and fear. This young lady was swept into a dark tunnel of despair and insomnia. And then suddenly a light flashed in her heart as the prayer of our volunteer struck a nerve. A prayer in Jesus' name broke down a door of insomnia. A prayer in Jesus’ name brought a bright calm into a heart swirling in the darkness of increasing anxiety. An invitation to read the scriptures was hesitantly accepted and a few months later this young lady placed her trust in Jesus. The blinders fell off and she stepped into the light.

     It is a truth that you can can almost certainly trace back through your own journey of faith. Someone took a risk to share with you. Someone stepped through their fear to point you to the truth. Something happened that in the moment seemed like disaster. Faith always requires the active pursuit of light into darkness. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”.

     We rarely know what lies on the other side of the darkness, but as we take steps of faith, as we move forward in prayer and hope,  as we step into the light - even the dim flashes born of our weak faith - God shows up. 

* This quote is from Andy Stanley's book, Visioneering: Your guide for discovering and maintaining personal vision (2016). Multnomah Publishers. (pg. 58)

Learn more about Crescent Project and Embassy.
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In the first few chapters of John an interesting pattern emerges.  The numbers of those following Jesus begins to grow as his followers simply invite their friends, family or, in the case of the woman at the well, entire village to "come and see."

• They don't invite them to read a book about Jesus.
• They don't invite the to come to church where someone else - a professional most likely - can tell them about Jesus.
• They don't try and explain who Jesus is theologically or convince them of their sin.
• They don't simply focus on doing kind things for the person in hopes that one day they'll be asked why they're so nice.

To be sure, none of those activities are wrong and God uses all of them to help people come to faith - they are simply not the example of Jesus' first followers in the first four chapters of John (John 1:39; 1:41-42; 1:45-46; 4:28-30).

For them, "come and see" was enough.

It seems they knew that if they could just get their friend to spend some time with Jesus - even a cynic like Nathanael - that would be enough.  And Jesus is still enough today.  Like his first followers, we can ask our friends to come and see Jesus by sharing the stories of Jesus from the gospels and by inviting them to read these stories.  

We can do this by inviting them read through one of the gospels with us or we can invite them to into a discovery Bible study using one of several story sets:
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• Creation to Christ (short version)
• Creation to Christ
• Stories of Hope
• Signs of John

My default has been to invite people to church or to open up deep philosophical conversations with my far from God friends. God has of course used both of these tactics, but increasingly I'm learning (and trying to learn) to default to simply asking them to come and see Jesus for themselves by inviting them to read the gospels with me. 

How about you?  How have you been inviting people to Jesus lately?

As we immerse ourselves in the story of the scriptures, we allow the Holy Spirit to use them to shape our view of the world, of ministry and of ourselves.  Scripture hammer trainings allow a trainer to step out of the way and allow the Bible to do the heavy lifting of the training.  They require little charism on the part of the trainer, are hard to argue with and place a tool in the hands of those we are training that is immediately reproducible.

The basic idea is to create a list of scriptures that all point toward the basic Biblical principle or lesson you are wanting your trainees to grasp.  A scripture hammer study is best done in groups of 2-5 and then debriefed as a group.  You can create your own for any topic you'd like to train on. 

I've created a one page handout with six scripture hammer studies that I've learned from others and that I've been using to train.  The focus of these particular studies are:

• Discovering the Father's Heart
• Gospel Conversation Hammer
• Discovering the Person of Peace Principle
• Discovering the Relational Network
• Discovering Obedience in Scripture
• Discovering Disciple Making Prayer

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[CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE SIX STUDIES]

I've written previously about a few of these topic and you can check those out at the links below:

• The Father's Heart
• Person of Peace
• Disciple Making Prayer

It was noon and I was meeting my new friend Musa* for an hour over my lunch break. We’d decided to meet at our favorite coffee shops to connect. I’d first met Musa when he had reached out looking for someone to practice his English with. He’d had a lifetime of classroom instruction in his home of Cairo, Egypt* but had few native English speakers with whom he could practice.

The first time we met we covered the bases of getting to know one another. Where are you from? What is your family like? What do you like to do in your free time? The sounds of Arabic were all around him in the busy Cairo coffee shop where he sat.

I then asked Musa what he did for a living. He is a young guy, in his early twenties and had just gotten started working as a mobile phone app developer.

Then he returned the favor and asked me what I do. I’m in full time ministry so this is always an interesting question to answer. But I dove in.

"I help people in churches in America understand and follow Jesus. That is pretty broad but it involves teaching, training, coaching, encouraging and casting vision with leaders and regular people. I'm not going to get rich, but I do find tremendous fulfillment in doing the things that I believe that God has made me to do. I bet that sounds a little crazy, but that's what I do and really it's who I am."

I could tell He didn’t completely understand what I was talking about so he asked a few more questions but then moved on, wondering if I’d been to Turkey. He’d recently visited Istanbul and loved the city. I told him of our four and a half years living there and how much we loved the people we knew there.

We meandered in and out of topics and then he asked a serious question, “I hope to hear an emotional situation you have been through?”  

I thought for a few minutes and then told him about a recent struggle I’d been facing and about how our family had spent time praying for God’s wisdom and healing. It was good to be transparent with my new friend even though it felt a bit hard and I wasn’t sure he was following everything.  Musa’s English is good but he hasn’t had a lot of experience talking about personal topics.

When I was finished, I said, “What about you?  Have you been through any hard situations in life?”  

Musa was contemplating his answer when he looked at his watch. He gave me a wry smile. “I’ll have to tell you next time. I’ve got to go now. But let’s make sure and meet again.”

As Musa left, I wondered about our conversation. Had I said too much about what I do? Should have I asked more questions about his faith and beliefs?  Should I have offered to pray for him before he left? What if I had said something wrong?

I spent some time praying for our time together asking the Lord to use it for his glory and to reveal himself to Musa.

And then I removed my headphones and shut down Whatsapp on my laptop computer. I got up from my seat in the corner of my coffee shop in South Dakota, grabbed my mug and headed up to the counter for a refill.  

Though we were half a world away, Musa and I had enjoyed a great cup of coffee and better conversation.

We continue to connect regularly, oftentimes just texting back and forth, sometimes hopping on a video chat to say a quick hello and at other times, setting aside an hour to grab a cup of coffee for an extended talk.  

To my surprise, Musa had quickly moved into questions of faith. I’ve introduced him to the Bible and we are slowly working through a creation to Christ story set.  We read a passage of scripture - I paste it into Whatsapp and he reads the Arabic and I read the English. We then ask some simple questions to help us discover what the story says about God, about people and about how we should live our lives.  

It’s been slow because Musa often brings up his own questions - questions that are stretching me and forcing me to dig into my own faith and theology. We started with his questions about the Christian idea of a triune God. We’re now pressing into the validity of the Bible. And those conversations are packed in between talk of family and culture and food and movies and dreams for life.  

It’s a whole lot of fun.

I am the only true follower of Jesus that Musa knows. I’ve been able to pray for him and continue to pray for him regularly. Musa is one of many young guys that I am connecting with online all across the Muslim world and someday, I hope I will be able to meet all of them in person, if not in this life, then in the eternity of heaven. That is my prayer for each of them.

There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world today and collectively, Christians are sending one missionary into the Muslim world for every 405,000 Muslims.[1]  

This has to change.  

John Stott has said, “We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.”

Because of advances in technology and the globalization of our world, millions of people throughout the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Animistic and un-religious worlds are working to learn English. They are going online to try and find people with whom they can practice speaking.

A new door of missionary activity has opened and it is open to everyone who is a follower of Jesus and has an Internet connection. Geography is no longer a barrier to your relationship with a Muslim like Musa.

C.T. Studd said, “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”

Will you sacrifice an hour a week to invest in a relationship with a young man or woman in the Muslim world who is looking for friendship and someone to practice English with?

Let Us Help You
Online Outreach Training: Schedule a zoom meeting to learn how to start an online outreach time at your church.

Let Speak Truth Cafe Help You
Speak Truth Cafe will connect you with individuals from around the world who have agreed to read and discuss the Bible as a way to practice English. Learn More.
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*For security, names and places have been changed.
1 - http://www.thetravelingteam.org/stats

Are you using "Shema" statements to start spiritual conversations?

One of the tools that I was trained to use to help start spiritual conversations with non-believers was the "Shema Statement".

The Shema is the passage of scripture found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

If we follow the example of scripture and believe that God is drawing people to himself (John 6:44), then the more shema statements we make with strangers, the more likely we are to discover the people that God has been preparing to hear the truth.

The basic idea of the Shema Statement is to make statements in our conversations with the people we meet each day that naturally lead to spiritual conversations.  The idea is not to share the full gospel but rather to say things that lead to conversations that lead to sharing the gospel.

It is through making shema statements that we can find the people who are seeking the truth.

Here are some examples of Shema Statements:

• Isn't this a beautiful day that God created.
• If God could do a miracle in your life, what would you want Him to do?
• Can I tell you something I am learning about God?
• That reminds me of something I read in the Bible recently.
• Do you ever wonder what God thinks about you?
• I hope that you experience the blessing of God today.
• Do you ever have dreams about God?

Again, these statements are not said to share the full gospel.  We say them prayerfully and then listen prayerfully for the response of the person we say them to.  

Some will not respond at all. Some might respond negatively.

But others - those God has been preparing - will respond in ways that lead to further conversation and opportunities to share about Jesus and what He has done in our lives.

Application

1. Take out a notecard and write down 5 - 10 Shema Statements that you can try in the next few days in your context.
2. Pray for  boldness to share Shema Statements today.

Learn it. - Apply it.  Share it.  Today.

Read More:
http://globalfrontiermissions.org/shema-statement/


Shema Statements are one of the tools we train everyone at Everywhere to Everywhere events to use and then we go out and practice using them.  Come to our next E2E event or bring it to your city. [learn more]