Love Motivating Evangelism

NOT long ago while I was speaking on missions in one of the conferences of the the North American Division, there came a request for a pe­riod in which questions on our mission program might be asked and answered. One question was, "With so many counties in this conference without even one Seventh-day Adventist, should not a considerable portion of our giving be toward eliminat­ing these dark counties?"

Seventh-day Adventists do not make any appreciable difference in their emphasis on overseas and home missions. "World­wide" certainly takes in the dark county of your conference as well as the dark terri­tory in Africa or some other foreign mis­sions area. Both must be worked before the Lord can come. It is the duty of those upon whom God has placed the responsibilities of administration to ascertain just how available funds can best be allocated to ac­complish the full worldwide task.

For a long time we tried to formulate a brief but comprehensive definition of Christianity. We have, for the moment at least, settled upon this one: "Christianity is the religion of the love of God as it is mani­fested in Jesus Christ and in His true fol­lowers." The longer we continue in mis­sion work, the more firmly we become con­vinced that it is the love of God, with its manifestation, that is the fundamental upon which all else is based. The Scrip­tures tell us that "God is love." It seems to us that no harm is done either grammati­cally or theologically to reverse the order and say that love is God. Without God there is no real love. Without love God can not be shown to anyone.

A person can be a missionary or an evangelist either "overseas" or at "home" only when he has caught the real spirit of this fact. When the love of God really con­strains an individual, he will have a truly deep Christian experience. That deep and constraining experience becomes the moti­vating power of his life and being.

In Barotseland Mission we had a nurse, a native of Norway, who cared for our Liumba Hill dispensary and leper colony. Having been a worker in the cause all her life, she was not overly endowed with this world's goods. Neither was she young any more. One might have thought that she would be using some of what she earned to make her environment more comfortable in that remote place, or laying something aside in preparation for her retirement. Such was not the case. Her dwelling was livable but certainly not luxurious. There were no evidences of an inflated bank ac­count. The area was one of a heavy con­centration of lepers, and the needs of the colony were always considerably beyond what the mission budget could meet. There was a never-ending shortage of housing for leper patients, and there were often pe­riods of severe shortage of food. Yet the lepers were usually fed, and now arid then a thatched hut would appear for which the mission had been unable to supply funds. Investigation usually indicated that the source of the necessary funds was the per­sonal resources of this nurse for whom the love of God had become the motivating power of her life.

Her housemate was a teacher from the Union of South Africa. Conditions for her were very much as we have described for the nurse. She did not live in luxury. She was not laying aside for retirement. She did her work quietly and well. However, every now and again we would hear of a girl or boy who had enrolled in one of our schools because "some European" was making it financially possible. Every at­tempt was made to keep the source of the contribution unknown, but there were those who knew that the needed assistance came from this teacher who was so con­strained by the love of God that it was in­evitable that she should do a sacrificial mis­sionary work for Him.

It is not only the overseas missionary who is motivated by this love. When a na­tive worker really learns to know God, the same thing happens in his life. In Southern Rhodesia Mission there is a pastor who has been crippled from birth. From his knees down his legs are useless. He gets about by crawling on his hands and knees, with rub­ber-tire pads to protect his knees. Formerly he used a platform to make it possible for him to work on the blackboard, and was a successful teacher. He has been an equally successful evangelistic worker.

In our office one day I heard him telling my wife about his experience in Ingather­ing. A missionary had provided him with a wheel chair, so that he could get around a bit better. In his wheel chair he started out one morning to do Ingathering in a rural area. The road was rocky and rough. He had trouble with dogs on nearly every farm. In one place he took a tongue lashing from a European woman who resented a "native" coming to her place to "beg." To­ward the end of the day, shaky from con­fronting the vicious dogs, tired from the day's work, and a long way from home, he was picked up by a man in an automobile. The wheel chair was put on top. The man took him to the two or three places still re­maining unworked. What would have been your reaction to a hard day of Ingathering such as this? I heard him say to my wife, "Praise God for His goodness!" Do you think his life was motivated by a deep ex­perience in the love of God?

We have tried to make it clear that in using the term missionary we are including all of those who support the missions pro­gram of the denomination. A person who seeks to evangelize or save men and women for Christ is a missionary whether he serves overseas or in the homeland. One may be a "foreign" missionary and the other a "home" missionary, but both are mission­aries, if they are exemplifying in their lives and work the love of God that alone will win souls to Him. Even though one may be limited to working over his back-yard fence, or, as may be true in exceptional cases, limited to giving to support the ac­tive work of others, if he is working to the best of his opportunities in the spirit of the love of God, he can rightly be termed a missionary. Fear is with the faithless and faith is with the fearless.