Paris Reidhead emphasizes that every believer is called to follow Christ and engage in missions, not just those who feel a specific calling to distant lands. He argues that the true call is to a person, Jesus, and that our daily lives and interactions are opportunities for mission work. Reidhead shares stories of individuals who exemplified this calling in their local contexts, demonstrating that being a missionary is not limited to geographical boundaries but is about living out one's faith wherever they are. He challenges listeners to consider their role in God's mission and to recognize that their resources and actions contribute to the spread of the Gospel. Ultimately, he calls for a commitment to be active participants in God's work, regardless of their circumstances.

I'm so grateful for the form of that introduction. Somebody yesterday said, He has been, he has been, he has been. He has been. And I concluded that I was a has-been. I'm not sure that's appropriate. Oh, let's bow our hearts in prayer. Father, we're here, and Thou art here, and we're here to meet with Thee, to hear from Thee, and make this a special time. Let everyone here sense that there's just two people here, you and he or she, here to hear from Thee, to meet Thee, to find out Thy mind and Thy will and Thy plan, and to where our place is in all that Thou art doing. And we'll give these thanks in Jesus' name. Amen. Now we begin with the fact that everyone who names the name of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, Lord and Savior, is by very definition committed to follow Him. I hear a lot of missionaries speak about a call. I've used the term many times, always regretfully when I began to understand what the Scripture teaches us about a call. I've had young people come and say, I believe God has called me to so-and-so, to such-and-such, usually to a place or to a special kind of work. The only call I find taught in the Bible is the call to a person. He said, come, follow me, and I will make you fisher's men. But I don't find any other biblical evidence for a call. They say, well, don't you have people call? Paul didn't call. Paul say he was called to be in a... Yes, he did. Didn't he say he was? Yes, he did. In the... Looking back at it, in retrospect, it's correct. But in terms of the future, I think it's questionable. Somebody comes to you and says, you know, God has called me to so-and-so. You'd do well, if you know the person well enough, to be honest and frank, to say, you know, it might be a little wiser if you were to say, based on what I now sense and feel and know, it seems that possibly the Lord may be leading me to such-and-such a place and such-and-such a ministry, but I would like to hold it before others for prayer and for leaders for counsel. So many times, we went to our mission society as applicants, and the next morning after we arrived, the first day of a month, we were to spend with them. They had a session for the candidates, and one of the chaps got up and he said, I've felt unrest in my spirit. I asked the Lord to speak to me. During the night, I had a vision of it where two rivers came together. I went to the map and looked for those rivers, and I found it was where the Blue Nile and the White Nile joined at Khartoum. God has called us to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. I didn't know where the Sudan was. I turned to Marjorie and I said, if that's what they're looking for, we can leave this afternoon because we've not had anything like that. All we had was a burden and a desire that our lives be used for. He wanted them. I always thought it was kind of unfair to have ten of the strongest men on the light end of the log and the one weaker man or woman on the heavy end of the log. It didn't seem quite fair to me that that was the way God wanted the log toted. If the log is getting the gospel out, then we've got ten men in the homeland for one woman out in the mission field or one lonely man somewhere. And I didn't think that was fair. We put our lives in the Lord's hands and he seemed to be leading us toward Africa. Well, we stayed there for a month. During the course of the time, I learned where the Sudan was because Earl Lewis was there and he'd been in the Sudan. He told us what it was. But all I found out about it, enough to make me say, well, Lord, if you've got a second choice, I'll take it. We went before the board and we were accepted and they said, would you be willing to go to the Sudan? And I looked at Marjorie and she looked at me and we said we'd love to go to the Sudan. Right then we decided that if that's where the Lord wanted us, that's where we wanted to be. The other family weren't accepted. The one that had the call to go where the rivers joined. And when it was over, he said, well, I gave it a good try. Now I can go back to the pastor and be at peace. Listen, a little bit of gentle humility is appropriate. As best I can see now, it does look as though possibly the Lord is leading me to such and such a field. But I want to explore it and pray about it and find his mind and have it confirmed because I don't want to be anyplace he doesn't want me to be. You see, just because he doesn't lead you to some distant place doesn't mean that he intends for you to be a spectator in this task of missions. There are no spectators except those that are in the church that have never been born of God. The kind that I talk about in the book. The ones that are there, they have everything but life. Now they're spectators to everything. They're even going to be seated in a bleachers in hell spectators of those that have gone to heaven. It's a terrible thing, isn't it, to come up to Matthew 7. Many will say unto me in that day, didn't we cast out devils in your name and do miracles in your name? And I will say unto them, away with you. I never knew you. I never ask anybody anymore. When did they come to know the Lord? I don't think that's important. The question I ask is, when did you come to know that the Lord knows you as His? You see, a lot of folks know Him, He doesn't seem to know. Now if you know Him and He knows you, then you're involved in missions. Because He said, come follow me. And then in that verse that we love to misquote, Mark 16 and it says, go in all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Literally what it says is, as you are going into all the world, preach the gospel, the imperative is in preach. And as you are going, you see if He said go, when He said follow, it would be a contradiction. And He doesn't contradict Himself. He said as you are following me, preach. So wherever you go, whatever you do, is just as much service for the Lord as though you were going to some distant area supported by the local congregation. Now unless you see that, the purpose of this conference has been missed as far as you're concerned. You're involved. There are no spectators. Why do you live in that house where you live? You say, well we got a good buy on it. I don't think so. I think you live there because God wanted to put you next to somebody as a sample of His grace. Why do you work where you work? Well I got a good offer. I don't think that's the whole reason. I think you work there because God wanted you there as a sample of His grace to someone whom He'd like to see brought out of death into life. You ought to pray just as much about where you live and where you work as the missionary prays about where he's going to settle and what he's going to do when he settles there. Because you're just as much involved as he is. Old washerwoman Sophie in New York at the Gospel Tabernacle. When I got there the fragrance of her memory was still very, very real. And started a missionary conference. Now Sophie had the right idea. She got involved. First she said, Lord send me to China. And he didn't do that. Then she said, Send me to Africa. And he didn't do that. And she went around a few other countries. And he finally, she said, Why is this Lord? I keep asking you to send me. Why don't you send me? He said, Sophie why should I do that? I'd be wasting money. You have a Chinese family living in the next apartment building to yours. You've never gone to them. And there's an African family living on the floor below you. You've never gone to them. And there's a Philippine family living right next door to you. And you've never talked to them about me. Sophie it'd be a waste of money for me to send you anywhere. I put the whole world right at your door and you're not talking to him. So if you're not going to be a missionary for me here it won't do me any good to send you anywhere else. And Sophie saw that she could be a missionary. First she saw that she could give. Now she didn't make a pledge. She didn't believe in pledging. She believed in giving. So she took the thousand dollars that she'd saved out of the bank and she gave that to the first missionary conference A.B. Simpson had at the Tabernacle. And that was the first missionary conference ever held anywhere in the world. And that year she went ahead and took an extra job. She was a charwoman. She swept offices and she laundered clothes and she took two or three extra jobs working about 18 hours a day. And the first day of the second annual missionary conference when the pledge time was given Sophie got up in the place that she usually sat in her quarters the end seat in the back row and danced down the aisle and brought a bag full of money and put it in Dr. Simpson's hand. A little over a thousand dollars. And the year 1882. Do you know how much money that'd be today? That'd be a whole pile. Just a big whole pile. Somewhere around $10,000. Because you could buy a tailor-made suit of imported Scotch woolens in New York City for $7.50. Then a maid worked in a home for $2.50 a month. Board and room, of course. Dr. Simpson died 1919. Same day after Dr. Simpson died, Sophie died. Tabernacle was filled. Seated a thousand people. Tabernacle was filled for Dr. Simpson. They had a beautiful display of flowers and preachers came from every place they could to be there to honor this man that had such a ministry. They left the flowers up because Sophie's funeral was the next day and they didn't want to have the church empty of flowers for the washroom. They didn't know about what Sophie had done. The front of the church was filled. They put racks along the wall on both sides. Every seat was taken. The fire marshal gave up trying to keep the place because they were crowding in and there were nearly half as many outside as there were inside, waiting and couldn't get in. You see, Sophie had gone up and down the streets of New York witnessing to drunks and to derelicts and to the poor, gone into homes where mother was sick and she scrubbed and washed and cooked and fed the children and won them to the Lord. Some had become politicians. Some had gone back to their practices. They'd been alcoholics and God had delivered them. Limousines brought some to the door of the tabernacle. She was a missionary in New York City. Now, if you're not a missionary in Omaha or wherever you live, it'd be a waste of God's money and your time to go anywhere else. If you can't be concerned about the people you know, there isn't a ghost chance, a snowball's chance, in a hot stove of your money to anything for God if He gets you 10,000 miles away. You've just got to realize that. And he said, after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, you shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth. But every believer can have a worldwide ministry for Christ, not just in their Samaria, but elsewhere. Harold B. Street was the deputation secretary for the Sudan Interior Mission. And when I was assigned to do that work, they asked me to spend a few weeks with him. And I heard Harold Street tell several times of an experience he had in a missionary conference in a little Baptist church over here in George, Iowa. He'd gone into the church for a missionary conference, and that meant Sunday through Sunday. We had Bible teaching during the mornings, and missionary ministry at night. And people didn't have television, and they came out to see pictures missionaries took. Took a lot of grace, but they came anyway. I know the worst of it. I asked me, when I got to be his deputation secretary, to review the pictures of the missionaries before they went to the churches. And they'd gotten, some of them gotten motion picture cameras. Now to them that meant keep the camera moving all the time. And I'd get seasick looking at these pictures. Cars flying up in the air. Houses swinging across, you know. Well, Harold had some good pictures. In that congregation that week was a family. They grew corn. They fed their corn to hogs. And they worked real hard. But nothing seemed to come out just right. If there were sickness, it got to their hogs first. And if there was drought, their ground got to least water. And they always were just at the edge. Everybody felt a little bit sorry for him, especially because he had a very serious handicap. He stammered so badly, it'd take him two minutes to say his name. A real handicap speaking. The last Sunday night, Harold was putting away the curios and folding up the screen and getting everything down to leave the next morning. And when he got done, he looked and there were still his family sitting in the back of the church. Came back and the man's wife said, my husband has something he wants to ask you. And he insisted he do it. So Harold just stood there and finally the man got it out. I want you to stop by my filling station tomorrow. See, he wasn't making it with just hogs and corn. He had a chance to get a filling station and he was paying it off from the sales. So Harold filled the car up to the brim and sloshing just, you know, just couldn't get another tomato can full of gas in when he left town. Because he didn't want to take any of this man's gas. Figured that's what he wanted. But he was wrong. When he got there, the man was there and his wife was there and he said, God has been speaking to my heart this week. My wife has received an insurance policy from one of her relatives who died for $1,000. And you said we could support a missionary for $1,000 a year. And we got the first $1,000 and we want to support our missionary. Well, Harold was desperate. He didn't want to take, but he knew badly they needed the money. And he said, Lord, give me wisdom, you know, under his breast. He said, well, I couldn't do that. The scripture says, without faith it's impossible to please God. And if you've got $1,000, you won't have to trust God for a whole year. I can't do that. Why? The only way we could do that, we'd have to take that $1,000 for outfit and passage and you'd have to start trusting God from the first month. And he said, stammering a little, Todd, I'll have to think about that. I'll write to you. And Harold left and drove back to Minneapolis hoping and praying that Christie would forget all about it, that he'd cut that off right soon. Three weeks later he got a letter saying, my wife and I have thought and prayed about this and you send the missionary. We'll give the $1,000 for outfit and passage. Missionary came down, they took her around, they introduced her to friends, got prayer people, people who promised to pray, and she went to the field. End of the first year, Hal got a check. Here's our $1,000 for next year. God has blessed us. Send us another missionary. So, he just didn't have time to go back, he just sent another missionary. End of the second year, he got $2,000. God has blessed us. Send us another missionary. He said, I'd better go down there and see what he's doing. Maybe he's cooking his corn out in the backyard or something. I gotta see how he's getting this money. And he went down there and God had blessed. They put on a grease rack and he was greasing. That brought in more money. They put on a little store and he was selling goods the way they're doing now, bread, milk, and so on. He was one of the first. And he said, well, all right. So, he got $2,000 for the two that were on the field and $1,000 for the missionary that was just going. Next year, he wrote back and gave a little letter. He said, Brother Street, God has blessed us. I've been able to put two bays onto the station and now we're doing repair work. Send me another missionary. Well, Hal wrote back and said, yes, but this next year, your first missionary is coming home on furlough. We don't want you to take another missionary. We want you to be with her. Hal Furlow, on furlough. So, the end of that furlough year, the church back in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, that said they couldn't afford to support their missionary, had finally got around that they were going to have a farewell service in Brooklyn for her before she went to Africa. And Hal was going out for a missionary conference. And he invited this family to go. And when they got there, they came in. They didn't get there from Sunday. They got there about Thursday. But it was Sunday afternoon and Hal was getting ready for the last service. And he was just working around. Christy was helping him. And Hal sort of matter-of-factly, out of the corner of his mouth, said, by the way, Christy, tonight I'm going to call on you for a 10-minute testimony. And Christy, he couldn't. He said, that's all right, Christy. If you can't talk, you just stand up there. Let him look at you. But you'll talk. He wasn't sure. He didn't think so. He didn't really think he could do it. And Hal said, the man I'm calling on to bring a testimony is supporting a former missionary, Christy. Christy came, stood there, raised himself to his full height, took two deep breaths, opened his mouth, and spoke for 10 minutes and didn't stammer on a syllable. Question. If you were to die tonight and meet the Lord in the morning, you've been singing, oh, how I love Jesus. Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee. Would he be able to say to you, you have done what you could? You see? Or would you be like Christy as he began, stammering, unable to complete a sentence? Because you've had such great benefits and blessings and privileges and endowment and opportunity and resources. Would he honestly say of you, you've done what you could? Well, perhaps it gets back to this. Because we've never really quite understood what Christy put into that. Sure, he put in money. But what is money? Money is, now listen carefully, it's very important. Money is fluid life. Money is crystallized intelligence. Money is solidified energy. You have a job. You work. You bring your life, your education, your talent, your time, and you put that into whatever you've contracted to do. And at the end of a week or two weeks or months, as the case may be, they give you what one period of your life is worth. Now don't call that filthy lucre. There is such a thing as filthy lucre obtained by filthy means. There are filthy clothes and filthy words. But that doesn't mean clothing in its essence is filthy. Or words, speech is filthy. No, money is life. It represents the time it took you to get it. And when someone puts into the hands of a missionary the means for their going, God in his wisdom counts that as a portion of the life of the person who earned it. Let me read it to you. You look skeptical. You don't believe what I'm saying. And I think I can prove it to you. Luke chapter 16, verse 9. And I say to you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. What's he saying? He is saying that by means of that which is known as the mammon of unrighteousness, you can make friends that will receive you into everlasting habitations. Now, let me give you a scenario. I've had missionary friends in New Guinea. I've never been to New Guinea. I've tried to give and support and pray. You've given and supported and prayed for missionaries in whatever field you're particularly burdened about. Now, you die and you go to heaven, and it isn't far, and you're going to recognize people. And someone's going to come to you and say, oh, my brother, my sister, I'm here because you cared. Today the Lord sent word to me that you were coming and that I was to be here to receive you and that he had put me down to your account. Where were you from? I don't think I ever saw you. No, you never saw me in the flesh. I was from New Guinea. I was from the interior of Brazil. I was from wherever. But you sent a missionary. You prayed for a missionary. You gave to me to help that missionary be there. And through that one, that messenger, I learned of Christ. And he has just told me that he put me down to your account. You know, I'm one of the friends you made by your life. You say, well, that's not what that verse means. Well, my dear, I'm here and you're there, and I'm just going to stand on the fact that I got the floor for the moment. And that's what it means. And if you don't think so, you just prove it to somebody else. Don't try to prove it to me. Don't bother me with the facts. My mind is made up. Make to yourself friends with the mammon of unrighteousness that when you fail, they'll receive you into everlasting habitation. So that means that you can have part with him anywhere in the world. And he counts it as, well, let's look at it arithmetically. When I went to school, I studied arithmetic. When I went to high school, he had math, but I missed it. It didn't take. Now my little grandchildren in the third grade are studying math. I tried to help my daughter, and she said, Dad, my teacher says if you help me once more, I'm going to fail. But I still remember a little bit about arithmetic, and you're in for it. So I got to go back a long way. So bear with me, huh, bear with me. Here's somebody that's got a job, and he works and he earns $1 an hour, $40 a week. Now don't tell me that that's illegal. I know that, but just accept my arithmetic. He's got $1 and $40 a week, and he hears you are being said to the Lord, and he comes to you and says, I'm going to put in $1 a week for your support. Now what is he giving? Well, he's only giving 100 pennies. What's he giving? He only earns $40 a week. What's he giving? He's giving one hour of that work week, but he can only work 40 hours. There's 168 hours in the week, so round it off. He's giving four hours of his life on your field as a witness for Christ through you. Now here's another chap. Man, he's got a great job. This fellow is making $10 an hour. Unheard of. I quit hourly wage when I got up to $0.27 an hour in the early 40s, and I've never worked for a wage since. And I thought $0.27 an hour was going to put me on easy street for life. At any rate, he's got $10 an hour, and he sees a missionary, and he says, I'm going to give $1 a week for your support. Now how much time, witness time, does he get through that? Does the dollar help? The dollar does as much for you as the other dollar did, but it didn't do anything for him, did it? Very much. Because $10 an hour means that he's getting one-tenth of an hour, which I understand is about six minutes, times four is 24 minutes. Now do you see why the Scripture says, to whom much is given, from them much is required? In order to get the same balance, you have to give more. Well now, what if he gave $10? He'd only get an hour, but the missionary would get help. More tracks, more travel, more witness, and so on. It would go into the Word. Now suppose this person were to come to the place that they made, and this is unheard of, of course, nobody does that, they made $400 an hour. You think they don't do it? You just wait till you get your bill from your surgeon and see what he tells you, or from your lawyer. Those boys know how to charge. They had a graduate course in how to charge. That's all right, I don't mind. If they can get it, that's good. I'm going to come along right behind them and say, now here's the collection plate, here's your opportunity to have a witness and wherever. I don't mind how much they make, I'm only concerned about how much they keep, you see. See God, right now, if everyone here that earns money were to say, now Heavenly Father, I know how much I need to live, and I'm living comfortably now, and I'm going to go into partnership with you. I'll never take more money for my life than I presently take. I'll only increase it by cost of living. Nobody does that. Oh, yes they do. Kwame Ndarko did in Ghana. Kwame loved the Lord. He believed the Lord didn't want him to be a pastor or missionary. He wanted him to be a chicken farmer. I met him just after he started on his own. He had $978. He got five acres of land leased to him with water and light on it. He went out in the bush and cut posts, went to dump and get some old wire, built the houses out of mud blocks, and started a chicken business. And I came to him then, he said, I need you as a counselor. I said, I'll do it as long as I find you're doing what I tell you. Well, he said, what's the first thing? I said, the first thing for you to do, Kwame, is the first dollar you make, you give God 10 cents of it. And from that time on, every dollar you cut comes in on your gross, not your net. You give God 10 cents of it. And then you sit down and you put 10 cents into another savings account for the government. Taxes, legal fees, anything, but it's just you pay 10% to the Lord. And I said, Kwame, what I want you to do is do that at the beginning of the week, not at the end of the week. What you anticipate God is going to do that week, you draw a check for God on Monday morning. First check you draw, you make it for God for the 10% of what you expect that week. And then you take 10% of what you expect and you put it in the other savings account for your taxes and government expenses. See, that's what Joseph did. That's the law, rule of Joseph. He took 20%. And when I last saw Kwame, I said, how's it going? Well, he said, according to you, the appraisal I got, I didn't ask for it, but they brought it. They say that my hatcheries, feed out pens, processing plant, feed mill, and my vertically integrated marketing and producing has an American price of over $5 million. I said, what are you doing about stewardship? He said, I hate to say this, but last year I fully supported 95 national evangelists in this country and the two neighboring countries. I have provided all the material for 27 churches and the people did the erecting. I have provided all the material for four youth camps. And I'm spending 10% of my time going around preaching. He said, thousands of believers have gone into the chicken business and are feeding themselves and their families. I met a man in Washington. I was asked to sit in on a conference. He wanted to start a nice business in Kumasi, Ghana. I said, I'm not interested in being involved with you unless you get Kwame Ndarko on your board. He lives in a house he's lived in for the last 25 years. He put a porch on it and he put in a couple of rooms on it and he drives an old pickup truck. Remember the bargain he made with God. He wouldn't take any more for himself than he had at that time. And he kept the bargain. God's looking for people he can trust and he can honor and he can use. There will be partners with him in getting this message of the redeeming love manifest in the death of his son out to those for whom his son died. Make to yourself friends by the famine of unrighteousness. And when you fail, they'll receive you into everlasting abdication. You're involved in missions. You're not going to have to give an account to me. Isn't that marvelous? And I don't have to give an account to you and that's marvelous. But I must stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account to him of the deeds that are done in the body whether they're bad or good. You have a missionary conference. You're never going to be the same. You're either going to go on the vision God's given you through the ones that have spoken and shared their hearts or something's going to come in. But you'll never be the same. You can't be the same. By the way, did you know you can never unring a bell? Think about it. And you can never unsee what you've seen. You may not obey it, but you can't unsee it. Heavenly Father, you know the potential of this people as they sit before thee. You know the possibilities there are in their lives. You know the Christi Vos of the Covenant Archon that's here, the very treasure, the one that's saying, I want my life to count for the very most for the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we're asking it in a very special, real way. The Holy Spirit will speak to the hearts of those who are here. And may it be that because thou art here and they're here, that there will be a nucleus in this church who are 100% for Christ and are going to live their lives in total obedience to him. We give thee thanks for answered prayer in Jesus' name. Amen.