40 Days With the Risen LordSample

# Day for Reflection ## To the Ends of the World Jesus embarked on God's unstoppable mission and continued it, first through the apostles, and then through his people. The task is not yet finished either locally or globally. Part of the task involves an estimated 3,500 basically unreached people-groups. ## Challenge of the Least reached People Groups Political, religious, social as well as spiritual barriers hedge in many of these people groups. Pray that God will raise up gospel workers who will think strategically as to how to plant effective and growing churches. Relatively few people groups have no known Christians. Christians in these least-reached groups constitute an average of 1.2% of the population. Pray for these believers, especially those under persecution, that God will give them protection, wisdom and boldness to evangelise their own people. About 1,500 groups have less than 10,000 people. Good national and international research teams are required to work out the needs of these minority groups so that the church may be activated to bring them the good news. Pray for skilled and passionate people to do this work. Churches worldwide need a vision for unreached people. Pray that many more congregations may catch the vision and adopt an unreached people-group for their prayerful concern. The goal is to have a body of believers in every people-group forming a church that impacts all of the people. Pray for gospel progress and the King's coming. ## Principles of a Missionary Society To reach all the nations we need Christian societies and communities founded on guiding principles like these: 1. Follow God's leading. 2. Put money in second place, not first. 3. Begin in a small way. 4. Under God, all will depend on the type of people sent out. 5. Look for success only from the Spirit of God. Pray that God will bless such churches and societies with success in advancing the gospel. ## Journal Exercise Revise the Bible readings and your prayers from last week. Reflect upon the unfinished task. Identify a local situation where a new fellowship could be started. Write a prayer asking God to form the new fellowship. Identify a people-group where new fellowships should be started. Write a prayer asking God to form the new fellowships. ## A Challenging Prayer Pray that God's people will be in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ and his command to make disciples of all nations by: * Enabling local churches to expand numerically, * Equipping and nurturing their members, and becoming the mother churches of as many fellowships and congregations as possible, and * Taking further initiatives to create fellowships beyond the reach of the local church by penetrating structures of society with the gospel.