UNREACHED
In Revelation 7, John shares his vision of heaven with members from every tribe, tongue, people and language standing in the throne room before the Lamb.
Yet today there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world.
For the last six years, my family and friends have been on a journey to find, vet and fund the task remaining.
Come journey with us to the ends of the earth as we share the supernatural stories of God at work through the men and women he has called to reach the UNREACHED.
UNREACHED
"Is Jesus Worth It?" - Nik Ripken
Nick Ripken shares his 30+ year missionary journey into the heart of persecution and suffering, confronting the profound question: Is Jesus worth it? His experiences in Somalia during civil war and the tragic loss of his son transformed his understanding of faith and led him to document the stories of persecuted believers worldwide.
• Defining a true missionary as someone sent to engage those with little or no access to the gospel
• Witnessing unimaginable suffering in Somalia while feeding 50,000 people daily and burying 20 children
• Experiencing personal tragedy with the death of his 16-year-old son on Easter Sunday
• Discovering how persecuted believers maintain vibrant faith despite severe opposition
• Learning that Western Christians often approach Scripture as past tense while persecuted believers live it in present tense
• Understanding that leadership in persecuted churches comes through evangelism, not education
• Realizing that the best way to support the persecuted church isn't through pity or rescue
• Identifying with persecuted believers by fully committing to Jesus and sharing Him with others
The greatest way to identify with believers in persecution is to give your life to Jesus and then share Him with others. If you keep Jesus to yourself, you're identifying with their persecutors—because the worst persecution is having no access to Jesus at all.
www.nikripken.com
Also, to watch "The Insanity of God" documentary (and you definitely should!) check out the link below.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b0ASd2A2YMA&pp=ygUTdGhlIGluc2FuaXR5IG9mIGdvZA%3D%3D
Follow @unreachedpodcast on Instagram for more!
In Revelation 7, john shares his vision of heaven, with members from every tribe, tongue, people and language standing in the throne room before the Lamb. Yet today there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world. For the last six years, my family and friends have been on a journey to find, vet and fund the task remaining. Come journey with us to the ends of the earth as we share the supernatural stories of God at work for the men and women he has called to reach the unreached.
Clint:Hey friends, thanks so much for tuning in to a new episode of the Unreached podcast. Today we have a special guest. Nick Ripken is a over 30 year missionary veteran who has literally traversed the entire globe, lived in different countries around the world and interviewed the persecuted church. He's actually one of the world's experts on persecution and the church and what God's done in that. He is here today to help us answer the question is Jesus worth it? Nick, thanks so much for being on the podcast.
Nik:Hey, it's our joy, especially to answer the question that you posed.
Clint:Well, all right. So here's where I want to start. Today there's a movie, there is a book. You're an author, a filmmaker, a really good storyteller. There's so many different resources where I want our folks to be able to be pointed to early on in the podcast here. So I'm going to point everybody to nickripkincom. I want to point everybody to the Insanity of God, which is a book that you have written, but also a documentary that has come out. My wife and I watched it last night. We were just absolutely moved and cannot wait for everybody to hear some of these stories of God at work. But there's a moment early in your ministry where you have moved out of the hills and hollers of Kentucky and you've moved across the globe and you and your wife are going through the book of Acts together and you wrestle with the question what is a missionary? And so I want to start right there, nick what is a missionary?
Nik:Well, no one's ever defined it for us. My wife and I have a bachelor's from the same Baptist college. She has a master's there, I have a master's in doctorate from seminary, was on the mission field for 10 years and they were asking to move us in a place that was less strategic, not more strategic, and had more to do with the non-mational identity than true church planting. And so we're in a country that's had workers like ourselves for close on 300 years off and on. I hope your listeners know it's not a biblical word. You don't ever find that word anywhere in the Bible and it's a concept of being sent out. I'm not sure of the etymology of the word, I'm really not sure of its origin, but we sat down and I wrote the word missionary on a piece of paper. And we just more than devotionally, because we read chapters a day together and tossed them back and forth, and at the end of that we wrote on that piece of paper someone that sent out, according to Matthew 28, is to engage those who have little or no chance to hear have access to the gospel.
Nik:And two months later we had moved from South Africa into Kenya. We were told it would take three to five years to get in Somalia, because it was the civil war and violence and starvation was just heating up, and violence and starvation was just heating up and so, two months after learning our three third language, I tried to get into Somalia. Two months later, I'm in Somalia for the first time in six months. We're feeding 50,000 people a day, burying 20 kids a day and starting to mobile medical clinics, dig water wells, resell to refugees, just whatever we could do, and there's only like four groups of us, small groups, tiny groups that found different ways of getting in and out of the country, because we were in there about a year and a half before the military folks came in and everything changed and then, when Black Hawk went down, everything changed again and there were like four of us left in there for another year until we all got chased out.
Nik:But still, if your listeners are not aware, I follow often, clint, the number of people who are supposed to be unreached and unengaged, and from the people I respect the most, that figure goes from 2.some billion people to 4.3 billion people who have no scripture, not one verse, no songs, no missionaries, no bodies to attend. And when you have that big a variance in billions of people. What that says about us Christians is we don't know says about us Christians is we don't know. We have not today gone to the ends of the earth to know where they are, how many of them there are, what languages they speak, what food they eat. We do not know. Seventy-three percent approximately of all missionaries today are in Christian countries, so what is our response?
Clint:What are we supposed to do?
Nik:Well, I've had people basically put my career in jeopardy when I was paid for what we were doing or we had a stipend for doing it, because I was told by someone in very high-level importance. They asked me about the Somali work and I said hey, I know you're here, I can get you on a C-130 tomorrow, go with you to Mogadishu, show you what it's like. He said no, no, no, I just need to do this. On a conversation on the phone they said when I come in tonight with my 30, some volunteers, we would have baptized probably an average of 150 people. What have you done? How many people have come to Christ last year in Somalia? How much money have you spent and is it cost effective to be there?
Nik:And I knew then this was not a brother to brother conversation. I said listen, I explained a number of things. I said we spent a little bit over two million dollars. We had three believers martyred and one Somali come to faith. And he said how can you justify wasting God's money and throwing it away and things like this? And I said, sir, I don't have to justify it, but I have to be obedient. Jesus said go to all the world. And he didn't say go where it's responsive only, to all the world. And he didn't say go where it's responsive only. And I said, matter of fact, we don't know whether Somali people are responsive or not, because they've never been given a chance to respond.
Nik:Clint, Muslims who have access to Jesus are responding in higher percentages 100 times over than Americans who have access to Jesus. Wow, Muslims are seeking God in ways that would baffle Americans and the more that they seek God and they can't find him, the angrier they get. Because can you imagine your whole life's endeavor, you pray and you fast and you give and you pilgrimage, and still you know that the inner man has not been satisfied, has not been reached, and they live in fear of that one percent, that they believe that sin is not passed on and if they face Allah and they have one bad deed over one good deed, they go to the hell. And they have one good deed over one good deed, they go to the hell. And they have one good deed over the bad deed, they go to the paradise and they live in abject fear of the 1%.
Clint:What a terrible way to be able to live in absolute fear of what's going to happen to you in the afterlife. So when the gospel of Jesus, the grace of Jesus, goes into this broken, busted up soil, I can't imagine the hope that it brings to people. But Somalia specifically. This was an insanely difficult assignment for you guys. Tell me about what you saw in Somalia and how it changed your path.
Nik:Well, it changed my whole way of looking at God. I'm a risk taker. Both my wife and I, as I said in the film that you watched, are PKs. She's a pastor's kid, I'm a pagan's kid, but I know what it's like to be lost and be in a Christian environment. Nobody would let my family in, and so we were praying about not wasting our lives And'd have found who this missionary was.
Nik:And what was coming up on our screen was Sudan, and it was confusing about Christian north or south or Muslim north. But Somalia was rated at the number one human tragedy place in the world, and for Somalis, christian was military, was government. Anybody from the West was Christian. Anybody from Islamic world was, of course, a Muslim, and they wrote that in over us. And so people who came in Somalia committing adultery with their different you know secular organizations with the military, drinking alcohol, pushing people around they are as much a Christian as our team was. And what would happen? After about six months? A random it was weekly, two or three times a week or more Somali would walk up to me in a market and just in a normal, out loud voice are you a missionary? Well, that's like asking me if I want to be shot. What I've learned and forever changed me and those who mentored me, is that the content and the context of the Bible are equally authoritative. And yet if you just preach the content, you'll turn Jesus into a white guy from the South and people always read that into that and they'll get bent out of shape by demons and people being overtly healed.
Nik:What other choice did God have? I walked into the only hospital no roof, no windows or anything that was still running in all of Somalia. A Russian trained lady was the only doctor in the whole country. All the men had fled. I'd met some of them in Nairobi and I walked in and sitting on Bear Springs was this starved, emaciated, swollen baby, staring-eyed little girl. She was three years old, she weighed 11 pounds. I walked over to her and I shouldn't have not supposed to and I took my index finger and rubbed it down her cheek. All of a sudden she just locked in on me and she looked at me and she just smiled a more beatific smile, and I recoiled from her in heart because I thought, god, where in the world did a smile come from in that little girl? And so I just said to God. I said this one goes home. There was no borders and I had so many relationships in the embassy and different groups of people I could have got her to Nairobi and I could have adopted her. And so the doctor came and got me. There had been a little accident. We had to set a little boy's arm and leg. I went out the car and got rope and cardboard boxes and helped set his arm and I came back and that little girl was gone and I said where is she? And the doctor said well, I think it's time for her bath. And she came back in 10 minutes later and she said Dr Nick, she died while we were working on that little boy.
Nik:And I went to village after village after village in the South, probably more Southeast, where no one had been for three to five years, and most of those villages there was not a person left alive. And I would follow skeletons from a main dirt road and there would be a skeleton for every kilometer and then there'd be a skeleton for every half kilometer and every hundred meters and then every 15 feet. And you get back in the villages and they're so dry in the air so you know no moisture in the air. I walk in a in a hut and there's a granny stirring grass in the middle of the hut and there's a 14 somewhat year old, beautiful somali girl on the bed and she died pulling a comb through her hair. Granny had died stirring the grass trying to prepare to eat and it looked like they died for 15 minutes before.
Nik:I got there and we would drive through these small towns that were like ghost towns, and the first one I went through that the US Relief Organization military rented two pickup trucks, six guards, two drivers. They gave us all the diesel fuel and MREs for a month out. We stopped in a small town. There was nobody there. All of a sudden, men and women came through the windows and out these broken doors and they're trying to shove their children in my lap saying in Somalia, all my kids are dead. This one gets to live. And I'm starting to open the door and the driver hit me in the chest and the guard behind me pulled me back and they went, tearing out of this town. They got about 10, 15 kilometers out. They stopped and they circled me and they said Ripken, if we had stopped there they would have taken our weapons, they would taken our trucks, they'd taken our food and we would be dead, like right now, and if you do this again, we will shoot you ourselves.
Nik:So I had to learn on the spot, every time we approached the urban area, that there might be someone alive. We'd park outside, walk in at midnight, be there at daybreak, listen for the voices of children that were gathered somewhere, try and be kept alive, and then that's how we would begin a conversation on how to meet some needs if we could meet some needs and yet preserve our own lives at the same time. And so Jesus said Clint, I'm sending you out as sheep among wolves. I have a bachelor's, master's and a doctorate from the denominational schools. I had one class out of all of that that engaged the nations. All those other tens of thousands of hours taught me how to be sheep among sheep. And as we're gathered in churches and the more we throw stones at lost people and think government solves our problem, we're just building thicker walls, taller walls problem. We're just building thicker walls, taller walls, and we want to stay with the sheep.
Clint:Nick, it sounds like that you were trained to be a New Testament Christian in a New Testament church, but God threw you into what sounded like the Old Testament in Somalia. You just walked into the Old Testament.
Nik:It was a hiatus because I grew up in the Old Testament. Then I got all those years in college and seminary and they taught me how I couldn't even talk to my own family because they gave me tools for Christians. You're very insightful, because what our main task is is for outsiders. We don't have to do this for insiders or those who come to Christ out of you, know Islam or communism or Buddhism or Hinduism. They already know the price that they're going to pay. We really have to help them understand what it means to be sheep among wolves. But how to be smart sheep, you don't have to be dumb sheep.
Nik:Every believer in Somalia 150 when we got there four left alive when we were kicked, died and only one died of natural causes. They took their corpses and threw them in pit toilets and threw them in garbage heaps and let them burn, threw them in the Indian Ocean where the sharks fed, and so preparing people to go from the New Testament to the Old Testament. People just sort of stare at you and think, well, that's exciting, until they get there and the Old Testament eats them up. I watched non-believing Somalis given the 13-pound Somali green Bible and 30 minutes after they were giving it. They had a bullet put in their head and they were killed and they went to eternity without Jesus because somebody who didn't learn the language, learn the culture and tell all what these people really need is the word of God. This guy could not read a right word, not a word. And they were told this is a book from the God and it's a book of power. Why wouldn't you want something like that? And when the fundamentalists saw him walking in the market with that, they didn't ask him his name or anything, they just shot him dead with that. They didn't ask him his name or anything, they just shot him dead.
Nik:Believers in persecution have lived under this well, like in China since 48, in the old Soviet Union since 1917. They've learned this over and over and over again and they know how to be people of faith in virtually an Old Testament environment. A believer in Turkey. When I said something an Old Testament environment, a believer in Turkey. When I said something. It was horrible what I said to him. He talked about praying that the government would change so that they would be free to have open churches, and I said the stupid Western person that I am, why don't you just do what God's told you to do. And he looked at me. He said oh, you're that kind of Western Christian. He said what did you read in university? I said I got a double major in history, religion. He said I hope you learn from your religion, majors. Obvious, you learn nothing from your history, major. And then he changed my life. He said he said, ripken, there's two types of law codes in the world.
Nik:All of you Westerners were born under common law, and common law says you're born with the right to everything. Republicans, democrats, fight over really how big or how small government should be, but you're born with the right to everything. Under Roman law, every believer in the world today that is persecuted for their faith that I know of live under Roman law. And Roman law says you're born with the right to nothing and it's the job of government to tell you who you can marry, where you can work, what school you go to, what area of the country you live in. And I can give you thousands of examples of this. And yet Jesus was able to integrate into that Roman law world where you're born with the right to nothing, and honor God in it.
Nik:We come with our common law and we read that into every culture on earth and just say this is your God-given right. And they'll say when did he get it? Show us the stories in the Bible where, as followers of Jesus, we have the right to be partners with Caesar. And when Pilate says shall I not give you back your God? And our religious leaders said we have no God but Caesar. I can hear that echoing all over the place through Christian voices today. Believers in persecution help me, get my kingdom stuff in order, the worst thing that we have done and where you can help us probably the most. Satan doesn't care. You can say that the Bible is an errant, infallible, authoritative word of God and it's exact words and deeds that God used to do. Edible is content as long as you put the Bible and the acts of God in past tense. And the kingdom of God is something we study about and read about and talk about those people while we're with our people.
Nik:But if what Ruth and I can say after 37 years overseas is that everything that God and also evil has ever done in human history, that war is still going on and we will choose sides, but Somalia, I would take all this stuff and sort of put it in a closet in my mind, my soul, and then, when I'd get out after four weeks, six weeks, I'd spend all the appropriate time, ruth and I, telling our boys what's going on, age, appropriate, and then she and I would lay in the bed till about three o'clock in the morning telling her things. I wouldn't tell anybody else and I met with five guys the day after I'm home for accountability and support and what I'm doing is I'm getting all this evil stuff that's lodged in the different closets or rooms of my mind and not allowing it to become a cancer that affects my family, my life, the rest of my life In two months' time. We got kicked out of Somalia. Our 16-year-old son died on Easter Sunday morning, eight days after his birthday, and then two months to that day that he died, ruth's mother died.
Nik:And the outpouring of love from our Muslim neighbors, our Hindu neighbors there's 1,200 mission organizations in Nairobi and we didn't fix another meal from March until we came home in June to put our oldest in the college. But our Kenyan pastor came to us and he said Ripken, he always talked to me like the commander on the field. He said Ripken, when your neighbors and all these white people stop coming to your house and your church is going to come in the evening. And I said Pastor Mwanji, I can't take it. I can't take white people and neighbors all day and then worship with my church four hours at night. And he was so hurt. He looked at me and he said do you know us so little? I said I don't even know what you're talking about. So the answer is yes. So you're going to have to tell me what you're talking about.
Nik:So for the next 10 days and night, around dusk when we finished evening meal, they watched and we're getting our living sons ready for bed and doing our family devotions. They quietly came into the house, stood in the living room, seven different tribes, praise team of about 10 people. If you've never heard African harmony, I don't think you've heard music and they sang us to sleep every night. I don't think you've heard music and they sang us to sleep every night. And we're holding our kids and crying, and I'm holding Ruth and we're praying and crying and we're hearing this African melody go into every nook and cranny of our house and the last thing that we ever knew for those 10 nights they sang us into the arms of Jesus. That's what we call church.
Clint:And there's not a body of Christ anywhere in the world that can't do that kind of stuff. Man, nick, that's incredible. Thank you so much for sharing that story so far. This is just unbelievable to hear the work of God and how he's used this incredible tragedy. I can't.
Clint:First and foremost, it just is so impactful to me that once you see what you saw in Somalia, inaction is not an option. Like you, you are called into action by God to do this work at that point because you've seen the cost that it takes. And then so for you guys to see the cost there and then to pay the cost yourself as your son passes away and to see the church come around you. I understand why the question in your soul at that point had to be is Jesus worth it? You and your community surrounds you, that's one thing. But then you went out to the rest of the persecuted church to go and find their answers to that same questions. I want to hear how God called you or moved you in that moment of you guys could have just been like I'm out, I'm done, I've seen too much, I've paid too much, but instead you wanted to go deeper. Why, why?
Nik:You know, I think, to give justice to your question, we had been everywhere we could in the Western world to find help and couldn't find any. We had people that signed up to pray and to give, and seminary professors, college professors, church leaders. They, just as we told the story, they just said, dude, what do you need? Do you need money? What do you need Not say I need your people, I need you to come and touch it and taste it and feel it. I think I came to the point. If Jesus isn't the answer and if he's not worth it, then we're back to the Old Testament Job issue. Do you just live and die, like a lot of people do? And you live and die without hope, because you never had hope. And people have asked me this a hundred times why in the heck would you do this? I said what would you want me to do if those were your kids? I don't know that this is anywhere. No, it's not anywhere.
Nik:Our son had just died, my wife's over a few feet away, communing with Jesus in a way that only she can, and I'm standing over our son and, of course, weeping, but my prayer of God was God, why? Why has this journey only cost me one child. I know of no family in Somalia that lost each child. I know most families in Somalia. Only the husband or the wife is dead and they left them alive as a punishment. I know of no women over 13 in Somalia that haven't been raped eight to 18 times. Why is it that I only have to pay a lesser price? And it doesn't mean that I grieved any less than anybody else, but I could breathe. I could pray and breathe in and out in context of what that event meant on a global stage. You see, what I'm hinting at. For us to fail to go is to fail to understand the very nature of God and put our fingers on his pulse. It is God's investment in us is why we go, as well as God's investment in donations. It's a win-win situation.
Clint:This is the shaking awake that I want the church to hear. I read scriptures and I feel like the stories that you're telling me. It's right there.
Nik:One of the things that's not. I don't think it's in the book or movie. I sit in what we would call an elder or deacon meeting in Russia and then in one in China, and the topic of the day was when we go to prison, which other deacon elder do I want to go with? Because I know the hardest thing is to go into incarceration by yourself but go in with a piece of the body and then go in and they know the number one way to end their persecution is to win their persecutors and their cellmates to Christ. But I thought how does that translate to my audience back home?
Nik:But you, just what I was taught to do that has saved my life spiritually and physically is those who mentored me said Ripken, where you're making your mistake in evangelism and church planting is you're. You're using the Bible in past tense when what you've got to do is ask of the story in this story, who am I in this story? Where's my family in this story? Where's my team in this story? And every time you have an evangelism, church planting issue, it's because you're not writing yourself in the correct Bible stories and you can't allow the Bible to remain in past tense and do that. But when you make the Bible in present active tense, then you don't have, you're left without an excuse. And see what Americans want. We want to inherit the resurrection, but we don't want crucifixion. You can't have it, Yep, Can't have it, and that's the cost.
Clint:Again, that's the cost that we're talking about.
Nik:Well, leaders in persecution are chosen because they exhibit the fruit of the Spirit and they are evangelized. In China, you lead five people to Christ. You can teach a Bible study. Once you've led 25, 30 people to Christ, then you're considered to be an evangelist, a church planner, a pastor, teacher. So how many pulpits would be empty this Sunday if the main criteria for being a leader was evangelism? We're chosen based on our education and the gifts of the Spirit rather than the fruit of the Spirit. We can be mean as a snake and have a PhD in theology.
Nik:I'm sitting with these guys in East Asia and the first question they had from me is Nick, has Jesus made it to other countries or has he just made it to our country so far? And when I told them about faith here and in places like Somalia and Saudi Arabia and places around the world, they had a party. They, they wept with joy, they held each other, just thrilled that Jesus had made it to other countries. And one of their biggest concerns today is many of those who want to go outside of East Asia can't because they've been arrested and therefore they can't get a passport. Asia can't because they've been arrested and therefore they can't get a passport, and yet I'm sitting on the border of the country, that's just to the northwest of China, with a family of four and they've been talking the stories of the Bible quietly, and then they came to the point where they're going to sing and they pull their four chairs together I'm watching this and their knees are touching and they say the words of their praise songs, but they let no sound come out. And when I queried this later, they said listen, if our voices go through the paper, then walls of the apartment are out, the windows of a small house. Our neighbors have to turn us in and before it turns dark today, the security police will be here and three generations of our family will go to the labor camp and we never know of anyone that comes out. I've met great grandchildren that were born in those camps and they'll never, ever come out, because they're trying to sing praises to God and we men stand in church, we let the women sing and we just stand there, and yet the most powerful tool we have in our repertoire is to sing God's praises back to him. That's Paul and Silas in prison. We're not left without how to do this. We have both the why we do it and how that we do it, both the why we do it and the how that we do it.
Nik:And still I go in and I find this faith that's off the charts or so biblical. I know that I can't begin to live up and I just say where did you learn to live like this? Where did you learn to die like this? And it just crashes out of my soul and they say Nick, I remember my dad taking me and my little brother and my sister into the kitchen, the only room in the house with heat, and my mom's there crying, and my dad takes us in his lap, said kids, you know the friend in the security police that we have helped his family and his kids when they were sick just called me.
Nik:And because I will not give up being pastor of the church, tomorrow, I'll be arrested, I'll be put to prison. He said kids, all over this extended area they are systematically hanging Christian families to death who refuse to give up Jesus. If, while I'm in prison, I hear that my wife and three children are hung rather than deny Christ, I'll be the most proud man in jail. And I just said no, where do I put this? Where does this fit and I go to another place in the Ukraine and I asked them where did you learn to live like this, how to die like this?
Nik:But the father gathered his kids, his wife, together and said kids, they are systematically starving people. What they were doing, though, they killed over 11 million people. They started with the Christians and this guy told me, said my dad holding us all time. He said kids, if we are called to starve for Jesus, this family will do so with joy. And I'm saying God, there's no place for this to stick. And now I understand that I'm not going to be critical of the bride of Christ ever again. I'm just pointing the finger at myself, because, outside of a dynamic believing community in the Holy Spirit, this is just supernatural work. This is supernatural grace.
Clint:So tell me this, nick, or I'll call you Ripken, because that's what everybody else calls you. So, ripken, tell me this. I think the Western church, so much of us, we want to go in and rescue the persecuted church. What should we be doing for the persecuted church?
Nik:We feel pity for them, we feel sorrow for them, we want to pay them and we want to rescue them, and that's exactly what Satan wants us to do. You know what they do in Afghanistan. Somebody would become an active believer. The last one was this older man, and they couldn't shut him up, and so they got the mosque there at that place to agree that the United Nations could take him to Europe. That's all they wanted. They just wanted to get him out there. Well, if they stayed they'd kill him, but if they would extract him and take him to Europe, then they've just lessened the power of the kingdom of God right there. And yet we do the persecutor's job for them by thinking what they need is our pity and that they need to be rescued. I'm going to tell you something that nobody that's listening to this broadcast will believe.
Nik:I've been with believers in Taliban held territories that led 35 women to Christ. A single lady Never met anybody like her in life. She's one of two people that found Jesus by herself, was literate, read the Bible. No one else ever witnessed to her, and by the time I caught up with her, she'd led 35 women to Christ. They'd been baptized by each other and were in small groups, and they were out to kill her for three different reasons. She'd led 35 women to Christ, they'd been baptized by each other and were in small groups, and they were out to kill her for three different reasons. The Taliban had three thoughtless on her on her, and the United Nations is trying to relocate her to St Louis. And I begged her not to leave. And she said, uncle Nick, you know they're going to beat me.
Nik:So we took a half a day and we looked at those stories in the Bible and she said, uncle Nick, you know they might put me in jail. And we looked at some of those stories, old and New Testament, and she said, uncle Nick, they might kill me. And we had to talk honestly. See, I'm not near as dangerous to the local faith system as this lady is.
Nik:The unbelievable thing is I'll just describe to you people who are the Apostle Pauls, who are the Phoebes, who are the Esthers and Lydia's of their country, and when they are brought to the Western world, they have scars on their wrists, women on their back where they've been flayed, they have scars on their soul and after 10 years, every 10 believer we keep up with, after 10 years of being in America, only one of them are still practicing their faith, because they thought that Christians were like the ones that came to them and brought them the gospel. And when they meet Western Christianity and they say this is what I was going to die for, this is what I was beaten for, Nick tell us how.
Clint:How do we go about counting the cost? We, as the Western church I think I'm really being so convicted by entitlement how do I go about learning how to count the cost in the context? And I'm asking, on behalf of our listeners, the same thing we like to say on this podcast. We'll hear these incredible stories all the time, just like yours, and we'll say look, how could you not give your life to this? And, to be honest, what I'm saying oftentimes when I say that statement is how could you not want to give your time and your treasure and your effort towards these things? That's what I mean by life. But what you're calling us to today is to be willing to give your life your actual breath, your final breath. How do we count the?
Nik:cost. My hardest adjustment to Africa was my grandfather and father would say these pithy Kentucky sayings. One of them was I'd rather be a poor man and go to heaven than a rich man go to hell. I thought that was from the Bible, never found it out. And then I have been critical of and preached from the rich young ruler passages. And then when I got to Africa, I realized that if my kids had access to medical care, access to clean water, access to food, access to homeschooling these things, that I'm in the top 3% of the richest people in Africa. And when I realized I am the rich young ruler, it was crushing. It was crushing Our churches. Western Christianity is filled with the rich young ruler and what Jesus says lay it down and let's go. And the only way that you learn this, you can't study it. It doesn't matter how many degrees in missions or theology that I get, this is Christianity applied or theology that I get. This is Christianity applied.
Nik:Brothers and sisters in persecution are experiencing what they are for two reasons. I think this is maybe the one thing I would want your listeners to take from this. Number one, they've given their lives to Jesus. And number two, they share Christ with their family members, their neighbors. They're creating community for themselves, real community, by evangelizing, witnessing.
Nik:80% of Muslims come to Christ through having meals with folks like us in their homes and in our homes, and it just lowers the temperature and it's just. The most fun thing I ever do is sharing faith in those type of settings. And so if I want to identify with believers in persecution, it's not through my money, it's not through rescuing them. The way I identify with believers in persecution is I give my life to Jesus and I give Jesus the other. Now if, like a lot of Westerners, I give my life to Jesus and I keep them to myself, I'm no longer resonating with believers in persecution. I'm identifying with their persecutor, because the worst persecution on earth is to have no access to Jesus. So you're either identifying with the persecuted or you're identifying with their persecutors.
Clint:I don't know any neutral ground I want, I want everybody to just hear this again. This is our call to action. You know we we heard incredible stories from from nick today and and I do want to encourage everybody to go and watch the documentary and to read some of these resources that he has. But you know we like to have action items. What can we do for the persecuted church? And you heard it directly from the man himself. He said first you give your life to Jesus and then you give that away to everybody that's around you. That is how we can partner with the persecuted church around the world. Nick man, I'm kind of blown away and just so, so thankful for just the encouragement that you've given and the conviction, I think, that you've given, even to me personally. I'm just so thankful.
Nik:What final kind of parting word would you like to have for our Un unreached podcast audience? Today, man, Ruth and I teach what we have learned from believers in persecution overseas for five full days. We've taken those five days that we teach for people who are really serious in the midst of this God's battle and, professionally, have recorded us teaching it, and now we have 21 hours and 19 segments. And for those who sinned or go across the stream or go across the ocean, here's what 100% of this comes from 650 plus interviews in 72 countries from believers in persecution teaching us how to be sheep among wolves and knowing that Jesus said yes, and you're going to be arrested and they're going to do terrible things to you.
Nik:You don't have access to Caesar and Pilate, so through your persecution, I'm sending you as a witness up the ladder, all the way up the ladder. And Paul defers they're going to kill him in a local level and he deferred to Rome and he got to witness all the way to Rome. I watched somebody do that last week overseas. He's not going to make it out, but by the time he ends his race, he is going to be a witness to his family, to his local community, to the local mosque and they're going to take him out. But he learned from the Apostle Paul to defer to Rome so that he could witness on that ship, on that journey, take other people with him. But here he is, facing the end of his journey and he is saying I can't do this by myself.
Clint:Our response to that? To hearing that story of that that's happening right now, our response cannot be pity. Our response has to be absolute celebration and praise to God that that is happening in the kingdom for his church. Praise God, that's incredible. Nick, I can't thank you enough for taking time to do this and to share your story with us and just to be able to communicate the incredible things that you've seen God at work, doing just around the world in the persecuted church. Would you mind just praying, pray for the church, even to help us understand how we can pray for the church, and there's not a persecuted church or a blessed church, the church of Jesus Christ around the world, to see his kingdom come and his will being done. Would you mind praying for us, christ around?
Nik:the world to see his kingdom come and his will being done. Would you mind praying for us? Lord Jesus, you know my negative reaction when somebody went after my bride and how you taught me and somewhat crushed me when you reminded me that I'd been going after your bride for a long time. And, father, I, neither of us, want to be heard to be critical of your bride. We just want her to claim her bridegroom, we just want her to stand up and learn to crawl, learn to walk and learn to run and learn to crawl, learn to walk and learn to run, and we just want to free her from the financial blessings that she has and the walls that seemingly contain her.
Nik:Father, the things that are consuming the church these days in America often do not consume you.
Nik:Lord, let us put our fingers on the pulse of the Holy Spirit and just determine that we will open the doors to our home and have our neighbors in for meals and that we'll get ourselves invited to our international family of God, our international laws, people. That is just so easy to do and that, lord, we will dedicate not just to ourselves, but when we hold that newest of infant, even while still in the mother's womb. We will give, not loan, that child to you. Lord Jesus, forgive us for thinking that we own anything, but allow us to hear again the billions of people that are crying out in their lostness because they don't want their eternity to be like their life and present active tense. Lord Jesus, thank you for my brother, thank you for Clint for his ministry, and we pray that we who oftentimes feel like we're telling truth, that we will walk humbly ourselves in the sight of God, and we can only do that through Jesus. We love you, lord. You're worth everything that we have and everything that we are. In Jesus' name, amen.
Dustin:Amen. Thank you for listening to Unreached. Our sincere desire is that what you've heard today will cause you to see the mission of God differently and your role in it more clearly. If this adds value for you and we hope it does would you please rate and review the podcast wherever you listen. Also, share with your family, your friends, your church, your life group, small group, d group, wherever you do life, and if you want to connect with us, find us on Instagram at unreachedpodcast, or email us at unreachedpodcast at gmailcom.
