NRB Chronicals 2024 - Beyond - Unreached Stories

Well, how fun! Today we got so many wonderful folks coming in the NRB floor, and I've got Laura Humphries with me.

And Laura, show me what brought you to the NRB this year. We came this year because of some interactions last year that people kept saying, you need to let more people know about what's going on through beyond. The Lord is raising up millions of disciples among the unreached.

We only work among the unreached. So beyond His name, because we say beyond our hope, beyond imagination, beyond what we could think or imagine, beyond what's been done, and that's what the Lord's doing. And so you got this chart I see here.

So explain that. Well, just in the last month we got our numbers in from 2023, and since we started focusing on multiplying disciples, intentional disciples that obey and go, we have seen 3.8 million disciples since 2013. These are among the unreached. So what's happening is they're transforming not only those lives, families, and communities, but now they're going to go to other groups as well based on what the Great Commission tells them to do.

It's within their DNA from the beginning. And so how do you determine what's unreached? So we're in what a lot of people would describe as the traditional 1040 window. So we work in North Africa, across the Middle East, into the Indian subcontinent, across to Asia. So those people who have never had a chance to hear even once or have a very, very small Christian population, it would be very difficult for them to hear about Jesus. And so how do you measure, or how do you go about deciding, okay, this person's a disciple? Well, are they obeying what Jesus says to do?

So from the beginning, when they're looking at scripture, scripture is their guide, and we're doing our disciple-making based upon Luke 10 and Matthew 10, when Jesus told the disciples to go two by two, find the person of peace and stay with them, talk about the kingdom of God, and as that group, family, community, village, whatever is opened up, then there is transformation. They're ready to hear about stories. Now if they don't want to hear about the stories, that's okay. But we're talking about, do they want to hear about Jesus and about scripture? So they're looking at a story. What does it say about God? What does it say about man or humankind? What does it say, if this is true, what should I do?

What should I do immediately, and who should I tell? So that telling people gets ingrained early, and the obedience gets ingrained early. And then as they are obeying, they come to a point where they want to be baptized. Maybe some of them don't, but a lot of them are, and they're also seeing miracles.

That gets a lot of people interested as well. So when they are doing and reproducing themselves, then we know that they're a disciple. It's only natural. We look in the natural world. Just look at us as humans. If we're reproducing, that's a healthy thing. When we don't reproduce, there's usually something's going on there. It's natural to reproduce. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you love me, you're going to obey, but part of love is fruitfulness, right?

And it was obviously one of those first commandments. So you must have people on the ground that are, how does that work? So what we do is we will send out people. We are a sending agency, so we will send people out. We also, backing up, we also work with other organizations and training to do what we do.

This is not new or anything. This is straight from Scripture, but in any case, so we have teams that will go out, and what happens, what the Lord's doing is once He knits a team together, it's going to be people who are from the outside. We call them an outside catalyst and an inside catalyst, and the Lord is using that in such mighty ways because once they start reproducing down the line, it turns into what you see in the New Testament. Paul would go back and check on those churches, but he probably didn't know the third, fourth, fifth generations, and you know, we're seeing generational growth past twenty and thirty in some cases.

We say, and what we have seen and other organizations have seen, is if you get past the fourth generation of growth, you're usually on a trajectory not to cease. So how did Jesus facilitate Laura becoming a disciple? I've got to be honest with you. I've known the Lord since I was a child, and He put a burden on me for the unreached when I was probably in my twenties. How did that happen? I had my own business at the time, and I was having the time to volunteer at my church to do English as a second language. The person that I was doing the Bible class with was a former missionary who had a heart for the unreached, and the Lord used her, and she was my spiritual mentor. Long story short, it turns out later, the Lord was still leading me through some other business, but I ended up going to England when I was in my early thirties, married a British man, and was in England for twenty years. The whole time I was there, I was working in ministry, but in 2010, so fourteen years ago almost, when the Lord called me through this woman's son, who I had stayed friends with his family for a long time, and he's our CEO.

Oh. And so it was just a step-by-step all along the way. Right, like the Lord was drawing you along. But as far as being a disciple, I learned how to be a disciple whenever we got intentional about disciple-making, and it was a hard look at myself to say, Am I doing what we're asking these other people to do, what the people that we are recruiting to go and do, am I doing that too? So everybody in the organization is trained to do this kind of disciple-making, and it makes a total difference. It changes who you hang out with, but sometimes you're going more from the people that are Christians and the people that believe the way that you do.

Let's be more intentional and find the people who are lost, who need Jesus. So it's a hard look at yourself to change that whole, what's been ingrained since I was a child. Yeah, for me, you know, I was a car dealer for forty years, and I just actually came to Christ through the Bible. I started reading the Bible because I wanted to sell more cars and I picked up a thing by Norman Vincent Peale said, If you need a positive bend latitude, here's how you do it, read the Bible. And so I became a Christian, but I also developed the habit of reading the Bible every morning.

That's what I really did. But every morning to this day, I find something that just lights my fire. I mean, I'm just like, and so the first thing I have to do, like the first person I can think that will talk to me about it, like, man, this morning, did you know that inside the word war or battle, the root of it in Hebrew is bread, right? And think of the implications of that, because when you say giving this day our daily battle, right? Well, think of what battle does for your priorities. I mean, it's just right when you realize that there's a battle afoot, then all of a sudden things happen. So I would go tell somebody that excitedly, and then I would start a Bible study. And the next thing I know I was making disciples, but it was purely out of my own enthusiasm that God was the hero of the whole deal. It was never wrong. He did it. It comes out.

It's automatic if you really are, right? Because you can't help but want it once you taste it. And like you say, with the war kingdom, when we ask every morning for His kingdom to come, and that's what we're seeking. We're seeking first His kingdom. That's a battle, and that's what happens whenever you're seeking the lost. Right, and all these disciples, especially in the 1040 window, they are in a battle. The second they accept, their family, they can handle that battle better than we think. Sadly, we had our first martyrs in the last couple of years, and they're not turning away. The people around them, the families, those in their oikos, their local groups, they're not turning away. And that makes the other people look on and say, what do they have? The Lord's using it.

Oh, He does. Persecution is one of the best things you can have, because once you're over the target, that's when you start getting black. I've heard that. I think it's good. So, how would you have people pray for BEYOND? How would people connect to BEYOND? What are you hoping our listeners would respond to what your message is? And I'd be happy to hold that up if you have something to add.

Yeah, so this is a QR code that will take you to a page where you can download lots of stories about what the Lord has done. We are seeing some incredible stories. Husbands that no longer beat their wives. Do I have time to tell you a quick story about that?

Why not? So, in one people group, it was within a village and the disciple maker had gone back to this village. It's one of my former colleagues. And when they had gone into this village, checking on the disciples, the men were all together and they were having a discussion over the passage about how to treat wives. So, wives submit, husbands love. And there was this huge discussion going on and they were having the discussion in their heart language. He didn't understand.

And so later when he asked, what are you discussing? You're looking at the scripture. What does it say to do?

What does it say about God? They were discussing within their culture to beat their wives every day was a sign that they were a real man. So, could they follow Christ and be a real man in their culture?

And so, what do you want to do as a Westerner? Oh, we want to tell you what to do, but let the scripture, let Holy Spirit do his work. He teaches better than we do. And they came to the conclusion, no, we must not beat our wives. We can still be a real man and follow Christ. That's transforming a whole village and a whole culture. And that's the kind of thing that we see.

Right, so obviously pray that that goes forward. And again, what's your website? How can people connect? www.beyond.org. And like I said, if you visit this QR code, you can download a free booklet with lots of stories. We have fantastic videos by all accounts. So, take a look at the video.

See what the Lord has done through the stories that we share there. Right. Well, God bless you. And thank you so much. How fun. God bless. Thank you for having me. Bless you. God bless. Bye bye.