80% of the world’s evangelical Christians live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Over the last 50 years, God’s church has grown exponentially in these areas.

These regions have tremendous mission sending potential to help bring the gospel to unreached peoples, but they currently send only 20% of the world’s cross-cultural missionaries!

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Total Number of Evangelicals

Cultural Bridges to UPGs

Regional Access to UPGs

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Custom Mobilization Potential

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This infographic provides a visual score for seven data points ranked on a 0 to 100 scale. Faded icons show scores for other countries on the mobilization index. See below for actual scores and country-specific insights.

ADDITION

FINANCIAL DEPENDENCY

INACCESSIBLE

LIMITED MISSION FORCE

DISTANT AND FOREIGN MISSION FIELD

THE WORLD IS THE MISSION FIELD

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We&rsquo;d like to introduce you to one of our newest guest authors, Bethany Leong. Bethany is a regular, everyday mom. Her favorite job is being a mom to her twins, but she also works as a freelance writer at bethcreativeco.com.&nbsp;&nbsp;
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I will never forget those early days holding my tiny babies in my arms as a new mama.&nbsp;
They awoke in me an intense and overwhelming love&mdash;and also an instinctual ferocity to protect. Oh how I longed to shield them from every pain, every disappointment, every heartache.&nbsp;
And yet, keeping our children from pain in this broken world is like trying to fix a leaky faucet with adhesive tape. I wrestled with this well into my first year of motherhood. One day, as I was pouring out the worries in my heart to a friend, she said words to me that I will never forget: &ldquo;Maybe your job as a mother is not to protect your children from pain, but to show them how to walk through it.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Flipping the script like this felt strangely freeing and empowering. I knew I would never be able to shield my children from the pain that awaited them, but showing them how to navigate it together? That felt a little more doable.&nbsp;&nbsp;
But if I was going to show my children how to walk through pain, that meant I would have to face my own pain head on. Along with all the questions that came with it. Is God really good? Does he actually care? Is he truly big enough to show up in my pain?&nbsp;
Thankfully, I was not the first person to ask these questions.&nbsp;

Learning to Lament from the Psalmists

Lament is a distinctly Christian way of grieving that gives us a path through pain. It shows us how to sit in the tension between the suffering we both witness and experience, and the promise of God&rsquo;s goodness and faithfulness. The psalmists were no strangers to suffering, and through their honesty and vulnerability, they offer us a blueprint for how to practice lament.&nbsp;
Bring your grief before God. The writers of the psalms gave voice to their pain with brutal honesty. Sometimes they were suffering intense personal or physical suffering. Sometimes they grieved the collective suffering around them. In either case, they brought their grievances directly before the Lord in prayer (see Psalm 10).
It&rsquo;s tempting to ignore or suppress suffering. Consider how you can be more honest about it as a family? Even world events like the refugee crisis or natural disasters can prompt prayerful conversations about the brokenness of the world.&nbsp;
Remind yourself of God&rsquo;s past faithfulness. While the psalmists acknowledge their pain with brutal honesty, they don&rsquo;t stay there indefinitely. They pivot their focus by calling to mind the stories of God&rsquo;s faithfulness in the past. For example, many psalms of lament recount the specific story of how God led their ancestors out of Egypt by parting the Red Sea (see Psalm 77).
For us today, the redeeming work of Jesus on the cross is our &lsquo;Red Sea&rsquo; that we can point back to as evidence of God&rsquo;s faithfulness. Think through other examples of his faithfulness that are specific to your family? Keep track of these stories and talk about them together often.&nbsp;
Reflect on God&rsquo;s character and the truth of who he is. Stories of God&rsquo;s faithfulness can serve as a springboard to reflect on the character and attributes of God that make him who he says he is. This can help anchor our hurting hearts to what is true when everything around us seems to say otherwise (see Psalm 13).
Use your family&rsquo;s stories of God&rsquo;s faithfulness as a starting point to pull out his attributes and talk about them together. He is a God of justice who does not turn a blind eye toward evil. He is a God of compassion who is moved by our suffering. He is a God of power who will one day make all things right. He is an all-knowing God who sees what we cannot. He is a faithful God who keeps his promises.&nbsp;
Ask boldly and choose to trust. The previous steps help us find firm footing for our hearts to rest, even when the pain still surrounds us. Sometimes the psalmists cycle through these steps multiple times, building up their faith to boldly ask for God&rsquo;s intervention (see Psalm 22). They choose to trust in who he is, and resist the temptation to let their circumstances redefine his character (see Psalm 13).
Ask for God&rsquo;s intervention, deliverance, comfort in your grief and suffering. Trust that he&nbsp;will answer&mdash;even if it&rsquo;s not on your timetable or in the way you expect. He is moving all things toward restoration (Romans 8:21), where his justice will be perfectly executed and all will be made new and right. Practice this and talk about it as a family. It&rsquo;s not easy, but modeling it for our kids is powerful.

I have come to believe that God is not honored when we deny the pain in and around us. Likewise, he does not desire for us to allow despair to reign freely in our hearts and cause us to turn away from him. Lament shows us how to do both&mdash;to honor our pain and point our hearts to hope in him. What better gift to give to our children than to show them that nothing they will experience or encounter in this life is too big or too much for our God?
I cannot keep my children from pain. But I can walk with them through it hand-in-hand toward the one who is faithful and makes all things new.&nbsp;

Via Families

Navigating Pain as a Family using Biblical Lament

Navigating Pain as a Family using Biblical Lament

Bethany Leong

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