Daily Topic for January 03, 2008
This verse was quoted by Hudson Taylor for the recruiting of workers in the early days of the China Inland Mission. Today millions of people in thousands of unreached people groups continue to be “led away” to death by the evil one. How will we respond? Will we pretend ignorance when we meet Jesus face-to-face? Or, recognizing that He knows our hearts and guards our lives from destruction, will we seek to rescue unreached peoples from a Christless eternity?
Lord Jesus, we remember that we must all appear before Your judgment seat. We commit ourselves again today to “holding back” the unreached peoples by our prayers, our funds, and the missionaries we send.
(Continued from yesterday)
Hoping to have time with his family while on furlough in London in 1856, Livingstone found he was a national hero, in demand as a speaker everywhere. All too soon he returned to Africa, joined there by Mary once the children were all in school. But their time together was short; Mary died in 1861.
Lonely, Livingstone explored even deeper into the heart of Africa, preaching to the African chieftains wherever he went. For months on end, the world watched while Mr. Stanley, a New York reporter, searched for, and eventually found, the “lost Livingstone” far in the interior. Sometime later, on May 1, 1873, his faithful workers discovered Livingstone kneeling at his bedside, head buried in his hands. He had died in the act of prayer.
His body was buried at Westminster Abbey in London, but his heart remained in Africa, where he had given 33 years to exploration so that the gospel might come to all tribes.-AL from “The Personal Life of David Livingstone,” by W. G. Blaikie, and “From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya,” by Ruth A. Tucker, Zondervan, 1983.
Learn more at joshuaproject.netPray for today’s African missionaries as they go to those most needing to hear the gospel.