Opening the door to the gospel

It must have been on the minds of a lot of folks this Sunday morning. It was certainly on my mind. There are so many reasons to be thankful to God for the life and work of Ronald Reagan. Here's one that came to mind Saturday night, and filling in as worship leader this morning, I wanted to share it with the congregation, but in a way that didn't detract from the purpose of our gathering together, which is to glorify and worship God, not to glorify man.

During announcements at the beginning of the service, I called attention to the list on the back of the bulletin of the missionaries our church supports. Notice how many times you see Ukraine in the list. Twenty years ago, the idea of Christian missionaries openly preaching the gospel and planting churches in any part of the USSR would have been unthinkable. But, in His providence, God raised up a leader who called evil by its real name and worked to defeat it. And because of that, hundreds of millions of people are free to hear and respond to the good news of Jesus Christ. God willing that will happen again, and the door will open for a billion more souls. We ought to give thanks to God for bringing this to pass.

I didn't mention his name; for those who were old enough to remember, I didn't need to.