God's Great Commission mandate is clear: every believer is called to participate in reaching all nations with the gospel. What can we do to fulfill our part of this call? Share his heart for the lost peoples of the world, beginning where we live and work. Know that Jesus is the only way to the Father, that he is the truth of God in a pluralistic culture, and that he is the God of life in a world dying without his love. Now the next step is ours.

The tsunami tragedy in Southeast Asia reminds me of a story. When Allied armies advanced on the North African port of Eritrea during World War II, the fleeing Axis forces did an ingenious thing. They loaded barges with concrete and sank them across the mouth of the harbor, making it impossible for the approaching troops to enter. But the Allies hit on an even more inventive solution. They emptied several gigantic oil tanks, the kind which hold one hundred thousand barrels of oil and more, and sealed them watertight. They attached chains to each of them.

Then, at low tide, their divers attached the other ends of the chains to the barges sitting on the bottom of the harbor. And when the tides rose, their power was so great that they lifted the sealed oil tanks and the cement-filled barges with them. It was then an easy task to dispose of the barges and reopen the harbor.

This power of the tides inspired Shakespeare to pen these immortal words:

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyages of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures (Julius Caesar, Act IV, scene II).

Where will the current of God's global mandate take you this week?

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