The Lord Jesus told us to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). But how are we do that in our nation, which seems so closed to the message of the Bible?
It is a question which every pastor and gospel-centred Christian is rightly asking. And many answers have been given. ‘Only God can do it — we need a movement of God’s Spirit.’ ‘We must keep preaching God’s Word in season and out of season.’ ‘Believers will be added in ones and twos.’ I would wholeheartedly agree with each of these suggestions. And people are coming to faith — witness the fruit from the A Passion for Life initiative recently. And yet, I can’t help feeling that many of us (myself included) are entering the spiritual battle short of confidence and expecting to lose.
This should not be, for two reasons. First, we have a God who ‘sits enthroned above the circle of the earth’ (Isaiah 40.22). We have a God who ‘gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were’ (Romans 4.17). A God who is ‘able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine’ (Ephesians 3.20). With such a God we should be entering every spiritual battle expecting to win (whether victory comes through death, mass conversions, or something in between — see Hebrews 11.33-38). We should expect a ‘victory of God’s Word over all the world.’1
