This morning I stopped by the Desiring God blog, and I was encouraged and challenged once again. I have a deep appreciation for the writing and preaching of John Piper (see evidence here) and I love that occasionally through the Desiring God blog I get more encouragement from him. Anyway, he posted a post with the same title as this one (for original click HERE), with some excerpts from a letter from Adoniram Judson and one of them in particular struck me, I thought I would share it here;
Beware of the greater reaction which will take place after you have acquired the language, and become fatigued and worn out with preaching the gospel to a disobedient and gainsaying people. You will sometimes long for a quiet retreat, where you can find a respite from the tug of toiling at native work—the incessant, intolerable friction of the missionary grindstone. And Satan will sympathize with you in this matter; and he will present some chapel of ease, in which to officiate in your native tongue, some government situation, some professorship or editorship, some literary or scientific pursuit, some supernumerary translation, or, at least, some system of schools; anything, in a word, that will help you, without much surrender of character, to slip out of real missionary work. Such a temptation will form the crisis of your disease. If your spiritual constitution can sustain it, you recover; if not, you die…
Hmmm…. What does this mean for me? I’ve been working so hard over the last 9 months to get this language and I still have a long way to go, but this quote makes me go hmmm… Or to bring this even closer to home for you, my reader, who might not be living in a cross cultural context like myself, what does it mean for you? Let’s be honest whether you are in Oshkosh, WI or Prague, CZ there is a certain language of the culture that is spoken and we need to learn it in order to live missionally to the world around us. However, there are constantly “good things” pulling us away from the mission God has set before us. My gears are turning now…