Well everyone, I'm back in America and now have time to write in more time and with more detail about all the craziness of this summer, as I'm just resting all of today and tomorrow. I'm still not going to tell everything because I have to leave something to tell you all when I meet you in person lol.
God has done and taught me so much, I honestly am not sure where to start. Let me give you the big picture, and then hone in on details. If you've been reading my blogs up to this point then you'll have read about a lot of it. You'll have read about how God has broken my heart for the lost and especially the 10/40 window. You'll also have read about how God tore down sinful pride that was filling my heart but covered up on the surface level, and taught me how to live a life that makes much of Him instead of myself. I didn't actually mention in my blogs but at the end of the summer we counted up and between the 16 of us over the course of 6 weeks we shared the Gospel about 1,000 times with over 450 DIFFERENT people. 9 people put their faith in Jesus Christ and in doing so despite the sacrifices that it required, gave God glory. They decided that no matter what they had to give up, He was worth it. One example in particular of someone who had to give up much was a Muslim background young man who has decided a relationship with Jesus Christ was worth more than potentially his family relationships. Then there was Etienne who decided that in light of his new relationship with Christ he would drop everything and begin to be an ambassador for Christ, I am so proud of him. God already has and is going to continue to use him to do big things in Senegal. These are the major points of what happened this summer, time to elaborate.
Point one: heart for the lost. The 10/40 window is the area from 10 degrees latitude to 40 degrees longitude that contains nearly all of the world's remaining unreached people groups. An unreached people group is a group of people that does not have any access to the Gospel. How that is actually measured and quantified varies I believe but the gist of it is that they would walk for days and day and not find anyone who could share the Gospel with them. Senegal is included in this window. If you lined up all the people who are unreached in a single file line they would circle the earth 25x. Can you imagine a line of people as long as the earth, 25 people wide, trampling to destruction? This was just a statistic to me until I spent every day for 6 straight weeks driving past a huge graveyard full of people who had never heard the name of Jesus or seen a Bible. I will now spend the rest of my life doing something about this problem, whether God calls me personally to go live overseas or not I will always be involved prayerfully and financially in sending the Gospel to the 10/40 window.
Point Two: brokenness. There is an entire post about this, so I'll keep it relatively short. I was living a life to glorify myself, all under the pretense that it was for the glory of God. That's not an easy confession to make, but it's true. Even my God given spiritual gift of evangelism I was using so people would say "wow look how successful he is!" God spent all summer showing me how not one single aspect of my life is to make much of myself, not even my salvation. All of it was to make much of Him. Even the fact that I have had access to a Bible and the Gospel for my entire life is an undeserved gift of God that I took for granted until I collided with a people group who hadn't been exposed to either, ever. The fact that I even know who Jesus is is entirely a work of God, and has nothing to do with me. Why did he do it? Did he do it because he wanted to make much of me? No. He did it because he loved me, yes. But not an American definition of love, where you make much of the person you love. A Godly love where he loves me enough to give me himself, so I can be satisfied in Him and in being satisfied in Him, also glorify Him. Life is not about making much of me, its about making much of Him. By consequence, this means making little of myself, and I'm okay with that now.
Point 3: 16 people, 6 weeks.The Gospel was shared 1,000 times with over 450 different people, most of whom had never heard it before. 9 people put their faith in the Lord. Because of point 2 I want to take time to emphasize that none of this had ANYTHING to do with me or my team being awesome. We were only faithful, God did the rest. Because of your prayers, and because of God's Spirit, we were able to see and be a part of these incredible things.
Point 4: my Muslim background friend. He is from the Wolof people group, which is one of the unreached people groups I was talking about above. There are over 5 million people in this people group, and only 150 believers, there is no complete Bible in Wolof. It is 0% Evangelical Christian, and my friend is being discipled to begin to share his faith. In case your faith isn't that big of a deal to you, this guys family might not ever speak to him again. I can't even begin to imagine sacrificing the things he will have to sacrifice, but God gets the glory because guess what? My friend looked at the Bible, saw Christ for who He really was and said if this is really true then it is worth giving up EVERYTHING that I have. He hasn't actually sacrificed a thing either, he has gained.
Point 5: Etienne. I can't say enough, and I've said a ton already, so I'll summarize. I hope Etienne is reading this right now. I'm so proud of him. First I saw him go from death into life, talking about how big of a decision it was whether to open his life to Jesus or not, because he knew he'd have to follow it his whole life. He decided Jesus was worth it and he never looked back. The Spirit came into his life as promised, and God began changing him from the inside out. He quickly became bold and passionate about Jesus, and before long was sharing his faith with family members and friends. 3 weeks after becoming a believer he had helped me lead 3 more people to put their faith in Christ. Then I left Dakar to go to debriefing, and he led another guy to invite Jesus into his heart without me even being around. He has grown so much, truly he has grown into a man of God. Being a part of his life this summer and a part of his growth was an honor and a blessing. God is going to use him for huge things, and I can't wait to hear all about it. Glory isn't to Etienne though, glory is to God. Before God came into his heart, Etienne was a cool guy, but I couldn't have said any of what I just said about him. Etienne is a living testament to the radical life change that is supposed to happen once you open your heart to Jesus. I love you dude, I'm proud of you, and I'm praying for you.
In summary, I will say one more thing that God has taught me. My last post was titled Home Sweet Home, and now that I think about it thats not totally true. When I come back to America, I miss Etienne and other dear friends. When I go back to Senegal, I miss my family and my friends here. I miss my Bible study. Home is heaven, where I won't miss any of them. I'm settling back into life in America, but I'm not settling for just any life. I'm following Etienne's lead, I'm living in light of the Gospel, living passionately for Christ. I'm not wasting my life.
In Christ,
Matt
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