But when the Holy Spirit comes upon
you, you will be filled with power, and you will be
witnesses for me in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and
Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Acts 1:8
A most wonderful thing is happening all around the
world and in cities across our nation and in places
like central Florida. The Creator of the Universe is
not only sending His people to the ends of the earth
He is bringing the peoples from the ends of the earth
to us.
I am Marc Wyatt. Together with my wife Kim and our
teammates in North America and Europe we seek to welcome
the Internationals who have come to live in our gateway
cities. We live and work in Toronto, Ontario Canada’s
largest and most multi-cultural city – a city
of nations.
Toronto has been named the 'Most Multicultural City
in the World' by the United Nations. A city of about
4.6 million, Toronto hosts peoples from every religion
and language on the earth. 50% of the residents of Toronto
were not born in Canada. Every year nearly 30K Refugee
Claimants make their way to the Great White North. And
another 200K Immigrants call Canada their new home each
year.
Through our partnership with Canadian Baptist we have
eaten meals with Tibetan Monks, Azeri Doctors and Afghani
University Professors. We have held the newborn babes
of Congolese mothers, played basketball with Angolan
teenagers, laughed our heads off at Albanian jokes that
don’t translate well, practiced English reading
the Bible for the first time with Chinese Rocket Scientists
and prayed simple prayers of salvation with Muslim men
from the horn of Africa.
Historically in missions there have been Senders and
Goers. That is people who travel to far away places
and share the love of God with hard to reach people
and those who make that possible. All of us must be
Senders. Some of us will go.
We think of internationals as persons who live, work
or study in a different land than that from which they
were born. International people may be represented as
a wealthy Business Owner from Syria, Ph.D Student from
China, an Immigrant family from India or an unaccompanied
female minor refugee claimant from Iraq or a hundred
other human garbage dumps from a hundred other forgotten
places that don’t make it on CNN or MSNBC.
Let’s think for a moment about Students from abroad.
80% of International Students are never invited into
American homes.
Have 80% of the folks stand up. To the 20% say, you
represent the international students who aren’t
left alone in their dorm rooms during Christmas. You
represent the son or daughter of a parent from the other
side of the earth who desperately misses their child
and wonders if they are safe, if they are eating and
sleeping right, making good grades and making good friends.
You represent those who are invited into the homes of
those who care, those who love Jesus. You represent
those who finish their studies, return home to their
countries to run the infrastructure of their societies
and have come to understand what it means to know Christ
or at least his people.
To the rest of you – the majority of you - you
represent those who do not, are not and probably will
not most probably because Christians who lived, studied
and worked all around you didn’t see you –
you were invisible to them, God’s busy, self-focused,
satisfied people.
Today I challenge you to become a Welcomer.
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