In Your Bible Read This Out Loud: Romans 10:14-15. 

Memorise This Verse: 3 John 6 ‘You will do well  to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God’. 

Afterwards Talk About This:  How someone can accomplish more on the mission field through sending their money to it rather than going themselves. 

Something To Do Before Next Time:  Politely enquire of your church elders what role your church is playing towards the Great Commission. 

Written Diploma Work:  With reference to Romans 10:14-16, discuss how the process of getting someone saved starts with someone first being sent. 

Meditate Word By Word On This Verse:  Philippians 4:16

Having looked previously at the centrality of the Great Commission, this section will consider giving and the Great Commission and specifically the role of serving as a sender and giving so that someone else with the gifting of missionary/apostle can go and evangelise the unreached people groups. The primary reference to this is the famous missionary scripture of Romans 10:13

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they hear preach unless they are sent?’  

Listed below are the main words from Romans 10:13 passage which show the process of someone getting saved, the whole process is started by someone sending a preacher/missionary. A sender needs the missionary to go the field and the missionary needs the sender to send and support him when this partnership is put into action then the gospel can be spread world wide, but at the start of it all there must be those who will send the missionaries. 

Saved >  Call >  Believe >  Hear >  Preach >  Send >

Perhaps the best biblical example of serving as a sender is Gaius of whom the 3rd Epistle of John is written to. The back ground to this letter is that itinerant preachers sent out by John were rejected and excommunicated by Diotrephes (verse 9) but Gaius had shown them hospitality and John exhorts him to do this even more in verse 6 when he says, 

‘You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. It was for the sake of the Name that they went out, receiving no help from the pagans’. 

Certainly this would have included hospitality, love encouragement and prayer but probably the biggest way that Gaius could send them on their way on their missionary expeditions would have been through a financial gift. A further example is Titus whom Paul exhorts in Titus 3:13 to provide for fellow believers, ‘Do everything you can to help Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way and see that they have everything they need’ 

As well as individuals serving as senders, biblically we can see churches that did so as well - it is great when individuals help to support missionaries and the great commission of Matthew 28:18-20, but surely God’s best is when entire churches contribute financially to support world wide missionary work. 

For example, when Paul and Barnabas left the church at Antioch on their first missionary journey the church contributed to send them on their way for example, Acts 13:3 says, ‘So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off’. As we read on in the book of Acts we find a further example of Paul and Barnabas being helped by the church Acts 15:3 says, ‘The church sent them on their way’. Moreover, in his letter to the Philippians, Paul commends the Philippian church for their financial support of his ministry  

Philippians 4:16 ‘Even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid again and again when I was in need’.  

In fact there are three further biblical examples where Paul refers to this partnership of sender / giver and missionary in particular the case of churches supporting and sending missionaries. Paul looks at it from the view point of the one being sent on a missionary journey and writes of his desire and expectation to see churches financially support him. 

For those of us who intend to spend a lifetime of giving then this area of sending and supporting missionaries is a major area to be supported through our giving. Sadly, many missionaries never get to the mission field and may eventually leave due to lack of finances may we who have the gift of giving reverse this trend. 

Romans 15:24  ‘I hope to visit you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there’ 

1 Corinthians 16:6  ‘Perhaps I will stay with you awhile, or even spend the winter, so that you can help me on my journey, wherever I go’  

2 Corinthians 1:16  ‘I planned to visit you on my way back to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia, and then have you send me on my way to Judea’  

It was said of one Christian who gave regularly to mission that he achieved much more through his financial contributions to the seeing the Great Commission completed than if he had gone and been a missionary himself. Not everybody is called to go and be a missionary and there are some whose primary calling in life is to give money to missionaries and support them such that they might be released to go to the mission field. 

If you are called to serve as a sender, and you give to someone with a missionary/apostolic anointing to go and work on the mission field, you can touch any continent and any country in the world even though you never go there yourself. At the current time of writing the author has given to the work of God in over 20 countries and has a dream to eventually give financially to the work of God every country in the world!

A House of Prayer for the Poorer Nations 
Pray for Latvia

2,356,508 people, 40% Non-religious
Despite religious freedom, 
church still apathetic towards it’s calling

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