Jesus didn’t die for men and women who might be saved. He died for men and women who will be saved. Right now, as you are reading these words, there are men and women — from your neighborhood to the nations — who have been purchased by the blood of Jesus. They may be hostile to the gospel, believe in a false god, or be spiritually seeking, but in the years to come, God will send beautiful feet to herald the good news of the gospel to them. They will be transferred from “the domain of darkness . . . to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13).

God will do this, and he is inviting you and your church to participate in his plan. It’s like a cosmic take-your-kid-to-work day. Right now, at this very moment, there are persons and people groups who have no idea of the majesty of King Jesus but who, by the grace of God, will come to know and love him and spend eternity with us because of our obedience to “go into all the world” (Mark 16:15).

But how can pastors faithfully motivate our congregations to obey the call to go?

God’s Big Story

A thread runs through the Scriptures that you can’t unsee once you see it. To pull that thread in your preaching, teaching, and discipleship grows an awe for God, a love for the lost, and a zeal for the nations.

The thread starts at the beginning. God commands Adam and Eve to fill the earth and subdue it (Genesis 1:28). The whole earth would be his, and we would be his viceroys. We would bring light and order to the world. But then Satan tries to cut the thread and steal the whole world for himself (Genesis 3). As sin enters the cosmos, it fractures everything; the universe is thrown into decay and subjected to futility. But God won’t finally relinquish a square inch of his creation to the enemy, so he sets into motion his plan to fill the earth with his glory. That plan includes all nations and peoples (Genesis 12:3).

God’s plan was always multiethnic, transcultural, and multilingual. He makes that purpose clear in the Abrahamic covenant, and we see it woven through the entirety of Scripture, culminating in the beautiful picture of men and women from every tribe, tongue, and nation worshiping before the throne in a remade heaven and earth (Revelation 5:9–10; 21:24–26).

Throughout the Old Testament, we repeatedly see God’s heart for the nations. When Israel went up out of Egypt, “a mixed multitude also went up with them” (Exodus 12:38). Rahab, a Canaanite woman, became part of the people of Israel (Joshua 6:25). Ruth, a Moabitess, became Boaz’s husband, making King David the descendent of a foreign woman (Ruth 4:18–22). Examples abound of non-Israelites joining the people of God. Salvation would come through Israel, but it was never meant to terminate with Israel.

Jesus, God incarnate, reveals this plan more fully. He ministered to non-Israelites like the centurion (Matthew 8:5) and the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:26–30). He explained that he had “other sheep” not of the fold of Israel that he would save (John 10:16). And before he returned to heaven, he sent his disciples to be his “witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

The storyline of God’s salvation is woven together with the nations. The command to go into all the world is God simply continuing his mission to gather his sons and daughters from afar.

Mobilizing Witnesses

So what is it that mobilizes people to join God in his mission? I’ve been the lead pastor of our church now for 21 years. We have sent a lot of people to the nations. I’ve discovered that building a sending church starts with faithfully preaching and teaching God’s story of redemption.

Tell the story.

In our preaching and teaching, we emphasize God’s big story as often as possible. When preaching through a book of the Bible, we try to help people understand its place and role in the Story.

We do the same in our discipleship. We have three core classes at our church: Christian Belief, Christian Story, and Christian Practice. Although Christian Story is the class that emphasizes the whole story, each one has the whole Bible as its framework, which roots hearers in a story bigger than themselves. This emphasis has come up repeatedly as we’ve talked to men and women from our church who have moved toward the nations.

Train toward the nations.

When mobilizing a church toward the nations, nomenclature matters. “Neighborhoods to nations” has become the phrase that helps our church understand what our hope is. Men and women who don’t know how to evangelize (or won’t evangelize) in their own neighborhoods will never consider the costly price of heading to a different place and culture. Those who have experienced the extravagant grace of God in being the conduit through which the gospel flows tend to be those who move toward the greatest need. We have made it a repeated priority to invite men and women to experience that grace through outreach training.

In outreach training, we don’t just train; we go out and do. Men and women learn tools and tactics. Then they head out to popular hangout places to pray with people, invite them to study the Bible, share the gospel, and build relationships. One recent outreach led to 134 people engaged spiritually, 87 who received prayer, 18 who heard the gospel, and one who said yes to Jesus. Each year, the people who engage in this training grow in courage, zeal, and belief that the arm of the Lord is not too short to save. Their zeal in worship, hatred for sin, and belief in the mission of God exponentially grow.

Aim young.

If you don’t know where to begin, I want to encourage you to aim young. This practice has produced some of the most fruit for us over the years. We want to educate, inform, and inspire the next generation and young families toward the opportunities that are ripe among the underreached and unreached. Our Vacation Bible School has almost always had a world focus. Each year, kids hear from missionaries, raise money for global projects, and pray for the work among our 100 Unreached People Group (UPG) cooperative (see more below).

We highlight this emphasis throughout the year in our children and youth programs as well. It is not uncommon for our missionaries to teach, explain, tell stories, and answer questions in our elementary program. As kids move into our middle-school and high-school departments, they can participate in short-term trips that grow in intensity and distance. This past year, a large group of high schoolers went to a closed country with a key partner and put on a sports camp among the predominantly Muslim population. They laughed with, played with, prayed with, and ministered among one of the world’s most unreached peoples. The energy and excitement it created among those students continue to encourage and embolden both them and their families.

We also send whole families on short-term trips. They get to go and see together how God can use their whole family as a means of grace to those who are far from him. Over the past two decades, we have discovered that young families with kids often have far more success meeting people and connecting with other cultures. No matter where you are in the world, everyone speaks the language of kids. I’m not taking away from the stunning global work singles and older saints do. But most of the cultures in the 10/40 window are high hospitality cultures, and kids get you in the door more quickly.

Build together.

About a decade ago, we shifted our mindset from being a church with missionaries to being a sending church. We still utilize key partners, but as a sending church we want to own a clear process that moves people from the neighborhood to the nations. After some significant prayer and consideration, we wanted to focus on the underreached and unreached in the world. Together with ten other churches and organizations, we started the 100 UPG cooperative. We are hoping, praying, resourcing, and believing that over the next couple of decades, God might use us to see one hundred unreached people groups have a gospel presence established.

That goal is way too big for one local church, but by prayerfully joining with other churches, we believe we have a real shot. Each church has established local pathways (neighborhoods) that begin that training at home. From there, they move to one of three hub locations around the world and join a team already at work before moving to the desired final location.

Pray and Preach

None of this happens without prayer. As we teach God’s big story, train in evangelism, aim young, form key partnerships, and dream big, we are praying for specific places, people, and opportunities to get the right people to the right place with the right training.

It doesn’t start overnight, either. If you want to build a sending church that aims to reach the nations, start by consistently preaching on the nations and the unreached. There is no substitute for the preacher who has the nations in his bones. Fan into flame your belief that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1).

What do you do when you are genuinely uncertain about your faith?

Some people deny that doubt can ever be sincere since general revelation makes God’s existence plain (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:19). But the Bible nowhere promises that God will be equally clear to every person at every moment.

Faith often involves moments of angst. Some coming into Christianity struggle deeply before finally breaking through. Many believers experience the “dark night of the soul” — moments or even seasons of anguish when the sense of God’s presence is removed. Think of the many psalms of lament (e.g., Psalm 22; Psalm 88) or C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed. In my YouTube ministry, I’ve discovered that many younger people feel this way right now.

The world is filled with uncertainty and gnawing anxiety. Many people are open to believing in God, maybe even desiring to believe — but they still feel stuck in uncertainty. So, what do you do when your confidence about God is above 50 percent, but under 100 percent? Or how do you help a friend in this circumstance? Let me first offer some encouragement, and then some counsel.

Uncertainty Doesn’t Mean You’re Fake

In the church, we often struggle to know how to help doubters. Sometimes we give the impression that a genuine believer won’t have any doubts. But this approach doesn’t seem to be biblical. Some of the apostles themselves doubted — even while seeing the risen Jesus (Matthew 28:17)! And Jude 22 commands us to “have mercy on those who doubt.”

“God uses our uncertainty to produce humility in us, and along with it, an awareness of our need of God.”

If you struggle with doubts, remember: Thomas was not Judas. Thomas doubted, but Judas betrayed. These are not identical.

I do not say this to minimize the significance of your doubts. Some doubt is sinful, and almost all doubt is painful. In my observation, however, some believers are afflicted with an exquisite sense of shame and self-reproach about having doubts. As a result, they might keep them secret, and they might wonder if they don’t have true faith at all.

So, remember: genuine Christians in the Bible struggled with real doubt. And Thomas was not Judas. Don’t be harsher in evaluating your spiritual status than Scripture is. In fact, if we will continue to walk in the light to the best of our ability, God can actually use our uncertainty for good.

God Can Use Uncertainty for Good

There are many pieces of advice I give to those struggling with doubts. Having a friend to talk to is crucial, for example. So is keeping up spiritual disciplines (particularly prayer, Scripture reading, and corporate worship). Our spiritual life and our community powerfully shape and reinforce our beliefs. But here let me focus on one strategy that I believe is particularly neglected: we need to reflect theologically on our uncertainty. We need to develop a working framework for how to understand doubts and their role in our life.

When I was in college, I struggled with an acute sense of frustration at the uncertainty of life. I resonated with the emphasis in existential philosophy that we are hurled into existence, but simultaneously ill-equipped for existence. No one gives you an instruction manual when you are born!

One night in December 2005, I wrote this in my journal:

The only thing worse than the pain of life is its utter randomness. We are hurled into consciousness and struggle without any explanations or answers to accompany them. Life is like a test which we are forced to take, the answers to which are impossible for us to know. The blanks with which we fill in the questions of life are at best guesses, and usually merely unexamined prejudices. Life is like a battle which we are forced to fight, but the objective of which is unclear to us. We are hurled into the contest, but unsure of what is required of us. We sense that we must strive, but are unsure to what end we strive, or by what means. The great dilemma of life is not its failure or pain, but its uncertainty and chaos.

There was one thing, however, that never occurred to me: What if this very situation, and the struggle involved in it, has a purpose?

Pascal on the Hiddenness of God

A breakthrough came when I discovered that my struggle was not new. Some of the great Christian minds of the past had agonized over it. The great seventeenth-century thinker Blaise Pascal, for example, famously emphasized the hiddenness of God and the resulting anguish:

Nature has nothing to offer me that does not give rise to doubt and anxiety. If I saw no sign there of a Divinity I should decide on a negative solution: if I saw signs of a Creator everywhere I should peacefully settle down in the faith. But, seeing too much to deny and not enough to affirm, I am in a pitiful state. (Pensées 429, quoted in Christianity for Modern Pagans, 213)

But for Pascal, this very state of affairs exists for a reason. God uses our uncertainty to produce humility in us, and along with it, an awareness of our need of God: “It is not only right but useful for us that God should be partly concealed and partly revealed, since it is equally dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own wretchedness as to know his wretchedness without knowing God” (Pensées 446, 249).

According to this way of thinking, if God immediately answered our every doubt, this would not be productive for us. We might know God but relate to him in pride and complacency, which would not actually touch our area of need in relation to God — namely, our sin and resistance to him. As Pascal writes elsewhere, “God wishes to move the will rather than the mind. Perfect clarity would help the mind and harm the will” (Pensées 234, 247).

Light for Those Who Wish to See

I realize this idea can be frustrating for people to hear. But think about it: How do we know that certainty is what we really need? If we are brutally honest, we will probably realize that we often fail to act on what we do know. Perhaps the nature of God’s revelation — partially hidden, yet manifest through creation, conscience, and Christ — is actually best suited to our true condition.

After all, God is interested not only that we believe in him, but how we believe. If he overpowered our resistance with frequent overt miracles, this would probably result in a “thin theism”: we would begrudgingly admit his existence while wishing it were not so. Meanwhile, for those who seek God, God has not left himself without testimony. Pascal is helpful again:

If God had wished to overcome the obstinacy of the most hardened, he could have done so by revealing himself to them so plainly that they could not doubt the truth of his essence, as he will appear on the last day. . . . This is not the way he wished to appear when he came in mildness, because so many men had shown themselves unworthy of his clemency, that he wished to deprive them of the good they did not desire. There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition. (Pensées 149, 69)

Walk in the Light You Have

In the meantime, what should we do? Pascal counsels us to make a choice. Make the best decision we can in light of what we do know. Make a wholehearted existential commitment to the truth as best as we can see it, walking in whatever light God has granted us, trusting that the remaining darkness will not last forever — that in fact God is at work through it.

So, Christian reader, when you struggle with uncertainty, do not lose heart. Keep pressing forward. God is at work in the midst of your struggle — and he will faithfully sustain you until the day you stand before him, face to face, with all uncertainty left behind forever.

Men professing faith in Christ have been walking away from him since the church began.

“Some have made shipwreck of their faith,” the apostle Paul reports in his first letter to Timothy. In fact, the language of leaving is all over 1–2 Timothy: men were wandering away from the faith, departing from the faith, swerving from the faith, being disqualified from the faith (1 Timothy 1:19; 4:1; 5:12; 6:10, 20–21; 2 Timothy 3:8). There seemed to be something of a small exodus already happening in the first century, perhaps not unlike the wave of deconversions we’re seeing online today.

We shouldn’t be surprised; Jesus told us it would be so: “As for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature” (Luke 8:14). Those same thorns are still sharp and threatening to faith in our day. In fact, with the ways we use technology, we’re now breeding thorns in our pockets, drawing them even closer than before.

This context gives the charge in 1 Timothy 6:11–12 all the more meaning and power, both for Timothy’s day and for ours:

As for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

“Men professing faith in Christ have been walking away from him since the church began.”

Who are the men who will fight the good fight of faith? Who will stay and battle while others fall away? In the words of 1 Timothy 4:12, which young men will step up and set an example for the believers in faith?

Fight of Faith

That faith is a fight means believing will not be easy. It won’t always feel natural, organic, or effortless. We could never earn the love of Christ, but following him will often be harder than we expect or want.

“If anyone would come after me,” Jesus says in Luke 9:23, “let him deny himself and take up his cross” — and not the light and charming crosses some wear around their necks, but the pain and heartache of following a crucified King in the world that killed him. If we declare our love for Jesus, God tells us, suffering will expose and refine us (1 Peter 4:12), people will despise, slander, and disown us (John 15:18), Satan and his demons will assault us (John 10:10), and our own sin will seek to ruin us from within (1 Peter 2:11). If we refuse to fight, we won’t last. The ships of our souls will inevitably drift, and then crash, take on water, and sink.

The verses before 1 Timothy 6:12 give us examples of specific threats we will face in the fight of faith, and each still threatens men today.

Enemy of Pride

When Paul describes the men who had walked away from Jesus, specifically those who had been teaching faithfully but had now embraced false teaching, he points first to their pride. These men, he says, were “puffed up with conceit” (1 Timothy 6:4). Instead of being laid low by the grace and mercy of God, they used the gospel to feel better about themselves. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, they seized on the love of God to try to make themselves God. Many of us do not last in faith because we simply cannot submit to any god but ourselves, because we do not see pride — our instinct to put ourselves above others, even God — as an enemy of our souls.

Enemy of Distraction

Pride was not the only enemy these men faced, however. Paul says they also had “an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people” (1 Timothy 6:4–5). It’s almost hard to believe the apostle wasn’t writing about the twenty-first century. Were these distractions really problems thousands of years before Twitter, before the Internet, before even the printing press? Apparently so. And yet the temptation explains so much of our dysfunction today.

In our sin, we often nurture an unhealthy craving for controversy. Faithfulness doesn’t sell ads; friction does. As you scroll through your feeds or watch the evening news or even monitor your casual conversation, ask how much of what you’re allowing into your soul falls into 1 Timothy 6:4–5. How much of our attention has been intentionally, even relentlessly, steered into passing controversies and vain debates? How much have we been fed suspicion, envy, and slander as “news,” not realizing how poisonous this kind of diet is to our faith?

Enemy of More

Greed is a threat we know exists, and often see in others, but rarely see in ourselves — especially in a greed-driven society like ours in America. The insatiable craving for more, however, can leave us spiritually dull and penniless.

Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. (1 Timothy 6:9–10)

When you read “those who desire to be rich,” don’t think elaborate mansions in tropical places with pools beside the ocean; think “those who crave more than they need.” In other words, this isn’t a rare temptation, but a pervasive one, especially in wealthier nations. The temptation may be subtle, but the consequences are not. These cravings, the apostle warns, “plunge people into ruin and destruction.” Their life is choked out not by pain or sorrow or fear, but by the pleasures of life (Luke 8:14) — things to buy, shows to watch, meals to eat, places to visit.

“The more we see how much threatens our walk with Jesus, the less surprising it is that so many walk away.”

Do we still wonder why Paul would call faith a fight? The more we see how much threatens our walk with Jesus, the less surprising it is that so many walk away. What’s more surprising is that some men learn to fight well and then keep fighting while others bow out of the war.

How to Win the War

If we see our enemies for what they are, how do we wage war against them? In 1 Timothy 6:11–12, Paul gives us four clear charges for the battlefield: Flee. Pursue. Fight. Seize.

Flee

First, we flee. Some have been puffed up by pride, others have been distracted by controversy, and still others have fallen in love with this world — “but as for you, O man of God, flee these things” (1 Timothy 6:11). Spiritual warfare is not fight or flight; it is fight and flight. We prepare to battle temptation, but we also do our best to avoid temptation altogether. As far as it depends on us, we “make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14). If necessary, we cut off our hand or gouge out our eye (Matthew 5:29–30), meaning we go to extraordinary lengths to flee the sin we know would ruin us.

Pursue

Spiritual warfare, however, is not only fight and flight, but also pursuit. “Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness” (1 Timothy 6:11). We could linger over each of the six qualities Paul exhorts us to pursue here, but for now let’s focus briefly on faith. Are you pursuing faith in Jesus — not just keeping faith, but pursuing faith? Are you making time each day to be alone with God through his word? Are you weaving prayer into the unique rhythms of your life? Are you committed to a local church, and intentionally looking for ways to grow and serve there? Are you asking God to show you other creative ways you might deepen your spiritual strength and joy?

Fight

Third, we fight. “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). We avoid temptation as much as we can, but we cannot avoid temptation completely. Whatever wise boundaries and tools we put in place, we still carry our remaining sin, which means we bring the war with us wherever we go. And too many of us go to war unarmed. Without the armor of God — the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit — we will be helpless against the spiritual forces of evil (Ephesians 6:11–12). But having taken our enemies seriously and strapping on our weapons daily, “we wage the good warfare” (1 Timothy 1:18).

Seize

Lastly, men of God learn to seize the new life God has given them. “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called” (1 Timothy 6:12). This is the opposite of the spiritual passivity and complacency so common among young men — men who want out of hell, but have little interest in God. Those men, however, who see reality and eternity more clearly, know that the greater treasure is in heaven, so they live to have him (Matthew 13:43–44). Their driving desire is to see more of Christ, and to become more like Christ. They may look like fools now, but they will soon be kings. They wake up on another normal Wednesday, and seize the grace that God has laid before them.

Some men will lay down their weapons before the war is over, even some you know and love. But make no mistake: this is a war worth fighting to the end. As you watch others flag and fail and leave the church, let their withdrawal renew your vigilance and fuel your advance. Learn to fight the good fight of faith.