The Great Commission Or Great Suggestion

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Good. So, is it the Great Commission, or is it the Great Suggestion? Because statistics might bear out that less than 10% of born-again Christians are actively sharing their faith. So, we might think as believers that if it's so good, if the gospel of grace and the good news of Christ, and salvation and forgiveness of sins, and by his stripes we are healed, and eternal life in heaven is so wonderful, why aren't we giving it away? I'm Stu Everson, welcome to Truth Talk Live, and we're going to get real about this today.

The Great Commission or the Great Suggestion. And I want you to tell me about your missions trip, and about how going on a missions trip has changed your life. And then I want you to challenge the proposition that I'm going to now set forth, and that is, life is a missions trip. Am I right?

Am I wrong? Across the table from me is a man committed to the Great Commission. He is the commissioner of International Commission, a ministry that's dedicated to spreading the gospel.

Brother Mark Goode, Dallas, Texas, a Texan in whom there is no guile. It's good to have you on Truth Talk Live, sir, right here in the hot seat. Your heart beats to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Tell us more about this. That's great, Stu. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to be on today with you, and to share about how we go about sharing the Great Commission. And it is, it's a commission, it's not the suggestion, yet people do feel like it's up to pastors and mission pastors or somebody else to go share. But God said for all of us to go into the world and to share the gospel and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And then this is the best part, And lo, I am with you, even to the end of the age. And where are we now?

Well, who knows? But it's a great thing to be able to go and to share Jesus. And that's what we do. International Commission is about sharing the gospel. A lot of places go and they do great things. There's all kinds of missions in the world.

You asked me a question off the air a while ago that is a great question. What makes International Commission different than other mission organizations? And my answer is, is that we strictly go to share the gospel. We are an evangelistic outreach, and we go to share the gospel. Other places go and they do great things. They do humanitarian things. They may build a water well or they may share different things.

They may paint the same bench that they painted last year. That's all great and good. But how many people are really sharing the gospel? And then the other thing is we go into the world, the whole world, not just our Jerusalem, Samaria or Judea, but we go into all the world.

We do those other things, too. We go into our local areas and we have strategists and missionaries all over the world. There's about 645 people that work with International Commission.

I'm going to call it IC for short. And they work all over the world in all the different continents of the world. We have been blessed over the years, Stu. We've been in ministry now for 50 years. Ministry was started by a simple cotton farmer out of West Texas. And God got a hold of his life, said, You know what?

I think you need to go and you need to share the gospel. So he did. And he started out by going from West Texas around Lubbock, Texas. And he went down towards the river ministry really in Mexico and started there. And then from there he laughs and he says, And I guess God just kept us going south because we moved into Latin America and other places.

And at some point they jumped across the oceans. And now we have gone into 192 different countries across the world. There's about 217 or so, 16, 17 different countries and territories in the world. And we've been in 192 of those. 192 countries.

Wow. We're trying to get to the rest of them. And our entire goal for really perpetuity here is to keep going to those countries and to have someone sharing the gospel in those countries, every country in the world, but not just this year, but every year.

That's our ultimate goal. Okay, that's the voice of Mark Goode with International Commission. And I don't know, we've got to deal with some stuff here, Nick.

I don't know how he got past our screeners. You guys said that we were having someone that just does humanitarian stuff around the world. You go and share the gospel like that?

Intentionally, aggressively, ambitiously? Absolutely. Okay, we've got to work this out, friends. Maybe someone could call in and stop this guy from doing it. That's dangerous. Souls can be saved. What are you thinking?

We've got Jeff and Jumper in the room here, two of your team members. One does stateside aggressive evangelism. He goes to the border and leads people to Christ coming right across. Another one goes to the most dangerous countries in the world. The gentleman on the left there sitting in the studio audience, you can't see him, and that's probably good. I'm not saying you have a face for radio, Jeff. I'm saying some things we don't want to tell people too much about, but you've told me before that you have a 50-50 chance some of these countries you go to of not coming back. And I want to ask this question. Mom and Dad, would you send your kid on a missions trip with a group like International Commission knowing they're going to a dangerous country, a country that's less than 1% born again, and a country where they've been known to kill and persecute, torture, imprison Christians?

That's right. Would you send your child on a missions trip to a country like that? 866-34-TRUTH. Question number two, which really was number one, is it a great commission or the great suggestion? Why aren't we more gung-ho about the gospel like these folks at International Commission? You're going to help us with that all hour long. You're going to be with us to talk about, to challenge us.

To be more, here's a big word for you, missiological. And how is that true every day I live and everywhere I go? And how is life actually a missions trip? So let's talk about, you go to some pretty dangerous countries, some of which we can't name on here.

That's correct. Why would you do that, Mark? I mean, someone could get killed. What are you thinking? It's a commandment. But think about the apostles. What did Jesus tell them? He said, go into all the world. Every one of those apostles went into countries and places that were dangerous. And honestly, all of them were martyred or died a martyr's death, crucified, burned, whatever, except John the Revelator. He's the only one that, but he got exiled to an island of Patmos.

But he was doing what was commanded. We've got to take a break. When we come back, finish that thought, and I'm going to warn you. You're going to get invited, everyone listen out there, to go on a missions trip with the International Commission.

The only thing standing in the way is this loud, loquacious talk show host to try to talk you out of it. Call and tell me why missions trips are a good or a bad idea. Tell us your missions trip testimony at 866-34-TRUTH. 866-348-7884 on Truth Talk Live, coming right back after this. This is the Truth Network. This is Truth Talk Live, a show committed to busting you out of your comfort zone. Every time I get behind the mic, I'm Stu Everson.

It does that for me because these guests are amazing. The callers are remarkable. The Marine that called in yesterday says, look, you know, talking about would you suffer for buying a copy of God's word? He's like, you know, I signed up to give my life for my country when I deployed with the Marine Corps. He says, I'm glad to buy all kinds of Bibles.

I don't care what it costs. I mean, those kind of calls riveted me yesterday on this show. Get the podcast, learn more about all this at TruthNetwork.com. Right now we're talking to some gentlemen who are with a ministry that aggressively shares the gospel all over the world. And a lot of questions pop into your mind when you talk to folks like this. First of all, we open the show by saying, is the Great Commission, is it really just a great suggestion? Because if you look at how few believers are sharing their faith, you think, well, maybe we just think this is one of those options.

This is not necessarily a required course to graduate, but it is the Great Commission. And then this idea of missions trips. And we asked the question, parents, would you let your kid go to a missions trip even to a dangerous place?

Maybe we should layer that deeper and say, kids, would you let your parents go? Because like Jeff's in the studio, his kids let him go. He tells me 50 percent chance he doesn't come home. And he tells me the country he should go to. We've supported him financially.

And it's crazy. And he's been on the show before, and that right there. But we had lunch, Mark, with International Commission, the president out of Dallas, Texas. Thank you for being here and for sharing the mission of the ministry earlier. We had lunch with Jumper here, Jeff and I did, and we had a little bit of an intervention. We talked about that at coffee, didn't we?

So Jumper, get that mic on your chin and come up here and tell everyone what happened. Your life wasn't going so well. You're a born-again believer. You're doing the right stuff.

But you don't need to get into the stuff you're into. But you have some challenges that life has hit you hard with family and other things. And suddenly you met a guy named Chetwood at Mayberry. We had lunch. And some things took a different turn.

Quickly, tell us what happened. Yeah, so Stu, I was in a cloud. You saw me. I was in a dark place. And Jeff invites me to go to the Philippines on a mission trip to Southeast Asia with International Commission to share the gospel. And so we went through a process and several weeks of deciding. And in the end, I just felt called to go and it absolutely turned my life upside down.

It absolutely changed everything. When you see 15,000 people make first-time professions of faith, when you walk up to somebody and ask them if they ever heard of Jesus and they say, No, I don't know who that is. And you ask them, what's a Bible? They don't have a clue as to what a Bible is. And they are downtrodden. They are beaten. And when you share the greatest information, the greatest story ever told with them, and their whole complexion changes.

I mean, you can just see weight lifted off of their body, off of their face, in their facial expression. And it is an awesome joy to do that, and a privilege, a privilege to go share Jesus. Wow. And it got you out of your funk, and now you're full-time going out there all over the country and the world, but you're focused stateside sharing the gospel. Yeah, so International Commission has been looking at North America the past three or four years. We're working on projects across America.

We've been in four or five states already so far. And I tell you what, the church in America, they need a facelift, I tell you. People come to church, it's the social gospel.

They've got programs in place, and they've lost the Great Commission. They think it's a great suggestion, or only a certain group of people in the church are out evangelizing and sharing the gospel. We delegate that to the super spiritual folks, but if you want to spark a revival in your own life, go share the gospel with someone who's got a bigger set of problems. Because you had some problems that day at the restaurant at Mayberry in Winston-Salem on Miller Street. You had some problems, but when Chet Wood starts telling you about the souls, the less than 1% of born-again folks in the country that he wanted to take you to, and he took you there, and you gave the gospel to people who went from darkness to light, and you saw their lives changed. Suddenly, your problems were tiny here in America, right? And so, that's a revival jumper.

It was incredible, because when you see how most of the world lives, compared to how we live in the United States or in North America and our lifestyle, there's nothing, no comparison there. Okay, we've got to get Skip on the line at Winston-Salem, North Carolina, call her. The lines are filling up. The number is 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-348-7884. It's an all-missions hour. What about these missions trips?

Is it the Great Commission, or is it the Great Suggestion? Maybe we should, you know, back off of evangelism. We're not doing much of it now as a church, but what would happen if we woke up?

Why aren't more people going on missions trips? Let's go to Skip. Skip, you're on Truth Talk Live right now, buddy. Jump on in here, okay?

Talk to him. Hey, Sue, how are you? Hey, man, fantastic. Good to hear your voice.

What do you think? Well, when I heard this, I just want to make a brief comment. My dad, I was raised, my dad worked for the federal government in Northern Virginia. Mom and dad loved the Lord.

They were so much a part of my life, spiritual life. Anyway, my dad retired from the federal government and moved to Roanoke, Virginia, and God got hold of his heart in his retirement years, and basically he was in full-time Christian service traveling overseas, and there was a church in the country of Romania now that he helped plant. He was not a Bible college graduate, he was not a pastor, he was not ordained, did not go to Bible college or anything, but dad spent his retirement years traveling all over the world, wherever the church wanted him to go, that he was involved with, doing exactly what you're talking about. And he would come back just so full of life. That's something. But he was retired, he's supposed to chase a little white ball, he's supposed to get the camper and pull his casket and his motorcycle behind that, and go do some things he had to be able to do, and here he's going planting churches in Romania.

Skip, come on, man, we might need to do an intervention on you. I know, well, you brought that up, and he wasn't a good golfer, but he liked the game, but he went out, he worked for a golf course for a while, and then he told me, he said, son, this isn't for me. So yeah, he still played golf. And what kind of impact did that have on your life, Skip, a godly legacy like that? I mean, here I was, I was already in the ministry, I was a pastor, and it had a profound impact on my life, just watching my dad, in the latter part of his life, give his life like that. And Mom got dementia, or else he would have continued taking mission trips up until his late 80s. And he was still very much involved, died at 95.

So the point being is, it's not too late. For him, he was okay financially, he had a good pension and things like that, instead of, like you said, just spending his twilight years twiddling his thumbs, he was very effective and actually had a second career in full-time Christian service. Wow, now let me ask Mark Goode, Skip calls in, what a great testament. Skip, stay with us, we've got some other callers calling in, and we may have to wait until the break, because we're coming up with a break, but why is what Skip just shared, in America that's the exception, not the norm, but shouldn't that be the norm, isn't that what biblical Christianity is?

You would think so, you would think that's what we need to do. Well God bless you, Skip, thanks for sharing, you bless us, we'll go to some more calls, we've got Clay, Vanessa, and some other folks that want to get in at 866-34-TRUTH. Missions right here on this Truth Talk Live edition. Stay tuned, we'll be right back after this. Truth Talk Live!

This is the Truth Network. Powerful words of Jesus before he left to go and prepare a place for us. He said, go and preach the gospel, go and make disciples. You shall receive power. Another version of the Great Commission, Acts 1-8, after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. And out of that commission, here we are. Here I am calling on Jesus, because someone heard Jesus, followed Jesus, and went fishing. And that person went fishing, that person went fishing, and here, generations down the road, I'm in a studio with Jumper, Chetwood, Mark, and Stu, and we're following him, and we're teaching others how to fish, or we're inviting you to follow Christ. Maybe you don't know how, maybe this is the first you've heard about God, maybe you've got questions, maybe you're mad at God.

Call us at 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Specifically today, we're talking about why don't more believers go on these missions trips, and honestly, are they such a good idea? Mark Goode with International Commission, I mean, there's so many lost souls here in America, right across the street, and here you are raising all this money to go to these countries, unreached people groups. Why don't you concentrate here, what are you thinking?

Isn't that an improper use of resources? No, man, we're supposed to go into all the world, and we do go into the Jerusalem, the Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world. So we're focusing on North America, that's one of the things that we've been doing.

We've heard our Vice President for North America, Stephen Jumper, talk about that. We've got those local things. Those are great opportunities for churches and for church members to travel not a whole distance, but to go and to learn how to use the Operation Andrew method and share the gospel and go with the intent, an express intent of sharing the gospel. But yeah, you can do it locally, you can do it internationally.

We like to say we can take you close or far. Okay, the number is 866-34-TRUTH. Anyone have a missions trip story testimony, how a missions trip has changed your life? Anyone skeptical of these missions trips, maybe you want to be a devil's advocate? Maybe you would never allow your young person to go on a missions trip to a country where it would be a little bit dangerous.

Maybe, young person, you'd never let your mom and dad go. I mean, what in the world? Chet, what are you thinking? I mean, you were flying the jets, you were a CPA of a major company, put up on that mic and tell us what is it that got you going in all this thing? And now you're full-time going to these dangerous places sharing the gospel, you with your sweet wife, Jody, and all that. Talk to us real quick.

What is it? Well, there came a time in my life at the age of 37 when I prayed to receive Jesus as my Savior and Lord, and everything changed. I realized that I was called to do something that was of the Lord, and so I went on a mission trip with International Commission in 2002.

We went to India, and my wife and I went out into the villages, and we preached among the untouchables. We had a young lady, she was in a beautiful blue dress. She was sitting halfway back in the church, and I was sharing the gospel, and as we got to the picture of Jesus hanging on the cross, she began to weep. And I thought, well, she will pray to receive Jesus at the end, but she didn't. But the next day, we went out into the village, and in the first home we went into, there was the lady in blue.

There she was. And we went in, and we shared the gospel with her, and she prayed to receive Jesus, and my wife began to cry. And this was the first person I had ever led to the Lord. Since then, hundreds of thousands, but in this case, that was the day, and she brought in her whole family, and all but one prayed to receive Jesus that day. And from then on, on that mission trip, we had 7,710 pray to receive Jesus, and in two weeks, that number had grown to 17,000. This is the Holy Spirit moving. This is the darkness in their eyes turning to the light, and from hearts on fire for Jesus, the joy of the Lord, and their faces become radiant, not depressed.

It's an incredible sight to see. Wow, and these are countries a lot of folks have absolutely nothing. It's in the dire straits, a lot of poverty, and yet when they find Jesus, they have everything, and far more wealthier than any of us are here in Western America, where we have so much materially, but our souls are empty, and we're battling all kinds of things. But if Christians would wake up, if every believer would share the gospel mark, what would happen?

Oh, well, it changes the community. We see that right at home. The churches that are on fire and doing that in their neighborhoods and in their communities, you see change, and you see communities change, and the same thing happens overseas when that happens there. Why aren't we sharing our faith more? Why are more of us excited about missions? Why aren't we celebrating it more? Why are our eyes glossing over when the missionary takes the stand in the church and starts preaching?

Well, should we be more excited about that? And the revival that breaks out when you go on a missions trip, 866-34-TRUTH, toll-free 866-348-7884, if you want to comment or maybe share something with our guest, or maybe share a testimony, how God touched your heart, as our guest caller earlier did, about a testimony related to a missions trip, 866-348-7884. Let's go to Clay, who is calling from the Triangle area of North Carolina, Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill. Clay, you're on Truth Talk Live. Jump on in here, sir. Brother Stu, it is a great pleasure to be able to talk to you again, and you know it's interesting that you have the gospel of Mark in the studio with you talking about these things. How about that? Mark 16.

Yeah, get that one. But here's something to share. Years ago, when I was doing outreach, and it is a mission, just think about this. You talk about, you know, you're doing commission, or commission. Think about this. There are other words that go along with that. You know, you've got admission, you've got commission, you've got permission, you've got omission.

Think about that. The shorter words for that are admit, permit, commit, and omit. But I heard a pastor, and it was just before I found Truth Radio, talking about what are you in admission of? Is the Lord going to admit, you know, to you to be where you need to be? So what my story is, is that, you know, I've been able to do mission trips here in this area and other places.

I mean, I have not gotten to go overseas like I did when I was in the military, or, you know, to go to other places. But years ago when I was doing this outreach thing in downtown Durham, I got to be part of this wonderful group, and I got to meet this wonderful man and his wife, Brother Don. Thank the Lord. He's an evangelist.

I think somewhere down in Texas or Mississippi or something like that. And on the back of his truck was, what is the Gospel? And underneath each letter, G-O-S-P-E-L, says, God offers sinful people eternal life.

And I have not forgotten that, and I have said that with people. I'm like, are you saved? Do you know Jesus? Do you know the Gospel?

And I had a guy two years ago at the State Fair make me an upper shirt, and on it is the cross with blood and the crown and the spray painted on the thing. I believe in the Gospel. And I believe that when we can be in a mission and admit that we need to be out doing his work and sharing the Gospel, it makes all the difference to me. It's not, Brother Stu, I heard you. I'm thinking I'm amazing you a little bit more. But see, that's not me. That's how God the Father works. That's how Jesus works.

Because we need to be able to share things with people like that. I'm truly thankful. I feel I've been blessed, and I know that's going to happen a little bit more. And I give thanks to Truth Radio because this is so important that people need to be right there where God the Father needs them to be because he's going to call us.

And I have been able to do that, and I've got some more coming. Well, Clay, God bless you, Clay. Thanks for calling in. What do you say to Clay, Mark, with the International Commission? And someone like Clay may want to go with you on a trip.

That's right. Yeah, we've got opportunities coming up soon. In fact, this year we're going to different places. I'll just kind of rattle off a few of the places. Cameroon, Bulgaria, Cuba, Lebanon, Malaysia, Zimbabwe, Argentina, England, Solomon Islands, Brazil, to the Middle East, South Asia, Rwanda, Serbia, Spain, Romania, Cambodia, Bolivia, Chile, another trip to the Middle East, and then all kinds of places here in North America also.

All kinds of opportunities, that's for sure. Chet Wood, what's the percentage of believers in these countries? Is it like 50, 70, 80 percent Christian in these countries, or what? Where I am in Asia, I have 19 countries, and I have six of them that have 2 percent or less Christian. I have 15 who have 10 percent or less Christian.

What does that mean? 98 out of 100 have never heard the name of Jesus. 90 out of 100 have never heard the name of Jesus. Half of them are in the top 50 most persecuted countries in the world. When we started back in 2005, my wife and I, number one was North Korea. It has been number one since until last year, and Afghanistan took number one. Number three was Vietnam. Number four was Laos. Number 10 had been, was China, had been forever number one. And here we go to these countries, and what a privilege it is to go share the only message that will change an eternity, the gospel. And the voice of the martyrs, they rate these countries, I guess, don't they?

That's right. So it's pretty safe, these countries, right? What do you say? Well, as I told Stu and I said, the places we go, my chances at Christmas to be back at Christmas are 50-50.

Wow. Why would he do this? What would compel him to go to places where it's dangerous? Would you send your youngster, would you go on a missions trip where you could get killed for the gospel?

Or would you have to do an intervention and get someone to stop you from doing it? My niece and nephew just came back from one to the Middle East, and we'll talk about that and more on Truth Talk Live. More missions coming up in your calls after this. Okay, these guys are blowing my mind and making me uncomfortable at the same time. I mean, how do we, Nick, how do we get guests like this? They come in here and they kind of make things awkward and uncomfortable because they're challenging me and all of our listeners to think more missiologically, to think more about people that need Jesus. I mean, what else is there that we should be more passionate about?

Knowing Christ, of course, and making him known. If you don't know the Lord, we'd love to introduce you to him, and you're listening to a great place wherever you're listening to this program. Keep listening. Listen to the Word. Go to a Bible-teaching church. Go to the person that's been sharing the Lord with you. Go talk to them and say, hey, I want to receive Christ. I want to follow Christ. I want you to disciple me. Go get baptized.

Publicly express that to everybody. What he's done on the inside, baptism simply tells everybody on the outside, coming out of that water, visibly demonstrating and showing people how Christ raised you from the dead. You know, buried within baptism, raised a new life. And then you're naturally to go make disciples. And one thing, Mark, good that Chet Wood here and Jumper have re-emphasized to me over and over again every time we meet is that these, some of these believers like in China and other Asian countries, when they come to Christ, it's instantaneous. Like they are instantly fishing for men. Like they don't, they are, what do we call it, they are fertile believers. That's right.

Yeah. And it is great because the excitement and the change in their life immediately is evident. You see it in their faces. Jeff said it a while ago. You see the glow.

You see their physical countenance change, and you also realize that here in America, but definitely you see that. And the best time to go share the gospel is right after you've received Christ as your Savior. Right there and right then. And, you know, what did Jesus do? He went where the people were, and that's what they need to do.

They need to go talk to their friends immediately and tell them what's different about their life. That's so cool. And, you know, what's neat about what you're doing with International Commission, you just had your 50-year anniversary.

Read some of these accolades. It's just kind of neat how God's worked, and some of these have even changed since you've done it. A ministry that is committed to sharing the gospel all over the world and coming alongside the church and really planting churches, because that's God's human organization, right?

That's the way he does it. That's the human organism that he works through, church planting. And the discipleship machine of the kingdom is the church, the local church. And you're seeing these things spread out of this. Tell us, hit some numbers. Well, and the main thing for us, the main thing, we want to keep the main thing, and that's the evangelism and spreading the gospel and telling people about the Lord. Just as an example, our 50 years in review, we've had, when we printed our program for our 50th anniversary, it was 27,278, you know, I mean, 27 million, I'm sorry, 27,278,438.

That's what we printed. It's already grown, because this was back in October. By the end of the year, the number has almost reached 30 million. People that have received Christ under your ministry. But to do that, you have to tell people about it. And there's over 20 million that have heard the gospel just since 2018.

We didn't keep that kind of record for the first few years. But since 18, we've spread the gospel to 20,000-plus people. And, you know, we love that, we love the fact that they get baptized, we love the fact that they're discipled. And the churches that we're working with in these foreign countries, they go about that. We have discipleship materials available, and they use those, but they also have their own discipleship.

And immediately that starts. But sometimes, there was a story in Peru that I went up in Juan Caio, Peru, 11,000 feet up in the air, and talked to people, and we witnessed to a family, that family all accepted Christ, and they're up in the hills of Peru. They started a home church. And just an example, over this 50 years, really since 2018, there's been over 23,000 new churches that have started. So, again, it's discipleship, it's evangelism first, then discipleship, spreading the gospel. Nine million people have been baptized.

I mean, some of these statistics are just incredible. The one that I love, and the one that we're loving, is one person received Christ. That really is great. That's a party in heaven right there. Think about that party in heaven. Now think about the multitude of parties, and the parties that are going on day after day. There's not a day that we don't have a project or a partnership going on, where Jesus is being shared, and the gospel's being shared.

192 different countries all over the world. That's so cool. I'm Stu Everson. This is Truth Talk Live.

It's Mark Goode, who's the president of International Commission out of Dallas, Texas. They take people all over the world and all over the United States, and they actively share the gospel. They're inviting you to go on a missions trip with them. It will jolt you. I mean, when my niece and two nephews came back from the Middle East just a few weeks ago, a couple weeks ago, they were on fire.

It changes your life. Yeah, they were sharing the gospel with folks. They were involved in all kinds of supernatural stuff, and they were seeing the Lord work.

They were encouraging local church. And it's just something, Chet Wood, it happened to you in Mongolia. You've got to tell everyone about this. What a story.

Oh, yeah. We told you earlier that we work with 670 people around the world, but we actually mobilize over 2 million to go on these trips in the national, the national, and the internationals. And one of these individuals is in Mongolia. Twenty-two years ago, he was in a maximum security prison, and two individuals from a church went to that maximum security prison and shared the gospel with him. And on that day, his eternity changed from the fires of hell to heaven. On that day, he became a child of God, born again to the Spirit.

On that day, he said, I need to do something different. And the bottom line is, when he finally got out, he started a church. And he said, I need to go back to the prisons, and I need to share this gospel. And he went back, and there were 272 in that prison, and all 272 prayed to receive Jesus. He realized he had the spiritual gift of evangelism, and now he is sharing the gospel all over Mongolia.

He is going, doing national to national projects in the most remote parts of Mongolia, in the midst of the religion of shamanism and evil spirits. And he goes, and many times they are attacked, but they keep on sharing. It's an amazing thing. And stories like this, I probably have a thousand. Wow, and that story, let me tell you, let's get the back office to that. Somebody, you just heard that, and I'm getting chills, and everyone in our studio audience is going nuts here, they're so excited about that. What a celebration. But that could have started with a little letter that someone got, that Jumper or Chetwood or you sent, saying, hey, will you send me a few bucks, because I've got to buy a plane ticket to go to Mongolia.

Yeah, that's true. And that started when he said in Sunday school class, hey, will five or six of you raise your hand and pray for me next week? I'll be overseas. Just pray for me. It started when you got that annoying report from a guy in church to say, hey, I'm going on a mission strip, who will help me? And so Mark Goode, we've got to all get involved in this thing, right? This is the mission of the church. Everyone listening, you're in.

That's right. You're in it to win it. You're in it to win them, to win as many as possible. And what's your challenge as we get out of here, Mark Goode? Well, the challenge, I think the challenge is to get people involved, just like you say. And, of course, one of the things that I believe is the future is bright for our ministry, I see, and I believe it's bright for everybody. And as we partner with more countries each year, as I said earlier, we're trying to get into all the countries of the world, and we only have, well, I'm going to just say less than 30.

It's really 26 different countries that we need to get into. We anticipate that God's going to be moving in mighty and miraculous ways. And so your listeners out there, your interests, your prayers, first of all, and your contributions to ministry work, they mean so much. You don't realize what a dollar can do. We have stories of people being saved, and that dollar really, if you look at it, it equals one salvation.

And in some countries, it equals even more than that. So the result of that partnership effort is that millions, they hear the gospel around the world, they hear the hope of Jesus Christ, and they come to faith in Him at a time here in America and around the world that needs hope more times than ever. So I'd ask that you pray for International Commission. I ask that you pray for yourself that God would get a hold of you and show you how you can share. And that's another part of our ministry is just equipping and enabling. People don't share because they're afraid, or they don't know how. We've got tools that you can use, the equipping and enabling.

You go to our website, internationalcommission.org, and you find those E&E tools, very simple. How you can share the gospel, how to have a gospel conversation, how to share Christ with someone right here or right across the world. I love it. Steve Jumper, what's your challenge out here, man? A guy in the business world, you left all that full-time to go share the gospel all over the world in America.

Yeah, so what I was going to say, Mark's hitting on it. We really need to emphasize prayer. We didn't get into our Operation Andrew process much, but it starts with prayer. And like Mark said, pray for yourself, pray for your church, pray for people in your church. And we, through our Operation Andrew process, we identify the lost and non-believers, and we start praying for them. And your listeners might react to say, I don't know anybody that's lost. I don't know an unchurched person. Well, pray that the Lord would put somebody on your heart, that they would bring somebody in your life that you would be able to have a gospel conversation with. I would just challenge your listeners, Stu, that they are members of their church here locally in America and that they need to take a look at their own church, talk to their pastor, talk to their missions director, and say, hey, what are we doing to evangelize our own community, our neighbors around our church first, and then in our local city, and then in our local state?

And then how could we use International Commission to come and talk to us about getting a church project together right here in America? I love it. Every believer is a witness. Witness is not a verb.

It's a noun. That's who you are. And he just comes out and looking for those opportunities. And when you start sharing your faith, revival breaks out, doesn't it, Brother Mark? Amen.

That's what we pray for. So whether it's across the street or around the world, be a part of it. What's the website for International Commission? Where listeners, churches, pastors, they want to find out more about what you're doing and get involved. It's internationalcommission.org.

Internationalcommission.org. Thanks for having us, Stu. God bless you guys. What a word of encouragement. Hey, go share the gospel with one person tonight before your head hits a pillow. Amen.