End of the Spear

This week I watched the End of the Spear, a movie dramatizing the life of Nate Saint (as if his life needed dramatization). As a father, there were several poignant moments for me as I repeatedly wept during the film. One came when Steve Saint (Nate's dad) is leaving his family to try to establish contact with a murderous tribe in the Amazon in order to bring them the good news of Christ. Young Nate asks, "Will you shoot them if they attack you?" to which his father responds to this effect:

"I can't shoot them. We're ready to die and go to heaven, but they're not ready yet."

It came clear to me in a new way the radical way these five young men trusted Christ, and how His good news had permeated their hearts. They trusted Him to save them, not from death, but through death, and to save those who would kill them. Not only that, but they trusted Him more than themselves to care for their wives and children.

As we think about urban and international work, it is a reminder to me of the way that we are to live here. We are sent with the same good news for lost and hostile people just as much here as in the jungles of the Amazon. Christ is just as worthy of our trust now as He was to those five young men. And He didn't spare their lives; He took their lives for His glory. Our trust is not that He will spare us, but that He will bring us through death to Himself, and use us to draw others to Him.