Jungle Pilot - Nate Saint

I'm currently reading this book - Jungle Pilot by Russell T Hitt. I've read this book a few years ago, and decided to read it again. This is probably my #1 favorite missionary biography. I'm half way through the book and came to a brief talk Nate Saint gave. The subject was "Expendability", and I thought I'd share it here.

"...This very afternoon thousands of soldiers are known by their serial numbers as men who are expendable. During the last war we saw big bombers on the assembly line, row after row, powerful, costly implements of war! Yet we all knew-we actually knew that many of those bombers would not accomplish even five missions over enemy territory. We also knew that young fellows, many of them volunteers, would ride in those airborne machine-gun turrents, and their life expectancy behind those guns was, with the trigger down, only four minutes. Tremendous expendability!

We know that there is only one answer when our country demands that we share in the price of freedom, yet when the Lord Jesus asks us to pay the price for world evangelization, we often answer without a word. We cannot go. We say it costs too much.

God Himself laid down the law when He built the universe. He knew when He made it what the price was going to be. And the lamb of God was slain in the counsels of God from before the foundation of the world. If God didn't hold back His only Son, but gave Him up to pay the price for our failure and sin, then how can we Christians hold back our lives, the lives He really owns?

...Missionaries constantly face expendability. And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives. They forget that when their lives are spent and the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.

Some might say, isn't it too great a price to pay? When missionaries consider themselves - their lives before God - they consider themselves expendable. And in our personal lives as Christians isn't the same thing true? Isn't the price small in the light of God's infinite love? Those who know the joy of leading a stranger to Christ and those who have gone to tribes who have never heard the gospel, gladly count themselves expendable. And they count it all joy.

'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone,' the apostle Paul said. 'I die daily. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.'

'And Jesus said, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time...and in the world to come eternal life.' " ~Nate Saint

I have never once thought that we are making a sacrifice by moving overseas to tell other the Good News of Jesus Christ. I have been told by many that they can't imagine the sacrifices we are making for the cause of Christ. They say, "I can't do what you're doing." I often think, "well, why not?"

I am not being proud, but honestly, I feel it's the least I can do. I believe every Christian should be willing to go. God does not want every believer to go (the US is in need of missionaries, too), but I think every Christian should be willing.

My husband preaches a sermon that talks about what the world would be like, if every believer God sent had actually said "yes". What about you? Has God called you?

We may be going 13,000 miles away to show the unsaved how to be saved, but you may have an unsaved person 13 feet away. May I encourage you to tell someone today how they can have eternal life with Christ.

If you do not know Christ as your personal Savior, if you're not sure where you will spend eternity when you die. Please feel free to email me. I'd be glad to show you.