What Faces Do You See?

It was not an original question, but it penetrated deeply into my mind. The question was not even addressed to me. It was asked of members of an international missions team reporting on their work in Moldova, a former Soviet republic.

I sat in the congregation watching my grandchildren. My wife, Pat, and my daughter, Jean, had been part of this missions project.

During a question and answer time, someone asked, “What faces do you see when you wake up in the middle of the night?”

I already knew Pat’s answer. She told of a mentally challenged boy with big brown eyes she met at an orphanage.

Then she talked about how her eyes and the eyes of a teenage girl locked for just a moment in a McDonald’s Restaurant in Chisinau, the capital city of Moldova.

The girl was being propositioned by a man trying to solicit her into the sex trade. Moldova exports a lot of young women into the world’s sex trade.

Pat had been sitting at the end of the table almost next to the girl who stared out the window as the man made his pitch. Through a translator, team members learned what was happening right next to them.

Team members bowed their heads, held hands and prayed for the girl and for others. They prayed for almost five minutes. Their language was different from the girl’s but what they were doing was obvious to all.

When team members stood to leave, the young girl was staring at them and for just a moment Pat looked into her eyes. Not a word was spoken but there was a message communicated between the two.

That night Pat woke up seeing the teenager’s face and has seen it several nights since.

But that is Pat’s story. I almost did not hear all she said because the question caused me to ask myself what faces I saw when I woke up in the middle of the night.

Earlier in my ministry, I directed a three-year partnership with Chinese Baptists in Taiwan. That led to other opportunities in China. For a long time I saw faces of devout Christians I prayed with, worshiped with and worked with both in Taiwan and in mainland China.

Some years later I was privileged to lead a medical missions effort in Belarus, another former Soviet republic. For a time those faces stayed with me day and night. Even mentioning the work causes them to come flooding back.

I remember faces from Venezuela, from South Africa, from Israel, from Belgium and other places. And I remember faces from churches I served as pastor.

I remember faces of family members who need to know the Lord and of others who have special needs in their lives.

As all of this ran through my mind, I realized the temptation was to become so comfortable in my faith that I did not see any faces at all. How easy it would be to become concerned only about “me and mine” and lose sight of a lost world that needs to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

According to the International Mission Board, about 25 percent of the world’s population has little or no access to the gospel. That is about 1.6 billion different faces. Any one of them might keep you awake at night.

Most unreached people live in South Asia. Other major concentrations can be found along the Pacific Rim, in North Africa and the Middle East. But no area of the world is exempt.

Only a handful of nations or islands have no unreached people groups according to IMB statistics. Even these have untold people who need to know the forgiveness of sin through faith in Jesus.

The faces you see might come from China or India or Egypt. They might be the result of a personal experience or a haunting photograph. The faces might be of someone in another state or another town. The faces might be of neighbors or someone you see at work. The faces might be those of family members.

Hopefully all of us see faces when we wake up at night. Hopefully none of us is so comfortable in our faith that we have turned inward and no longer care about those who do not know the Lord.

Hopefully all of us express concern for the faces we see through prayer that they might come to faith in Jesus, through pocketbook support of missions efforts to lead them to the Lord and through personal participation in missions efforts when the Lord presents such a possibility.