Across the world God has used unsung, untrained, unknown heroes from many countries, just like the Chadian and Sudanese students, to take the gospel to other nations. Of course he also uses people who have been well trained in seminary and Bible school, but it is a fallacy to argue that it is essential for people to go through that system before God can make use of them. The growth of student work in central Africa, Russia, Ukraine and neighbouring satellite countries like Kazhakstan shows this. These pioneering graduates may have served on the committees of their own campus groups or led small Bible studies in their universities, but that was all the experience they had to offer.
It is this most basic human loneliness that threatens us and is so hard to face. Too often we will do everything possible to avoid the confrontation with the experience of being alone, and sometimes we are able to create the most ingenious devices to prevent ourselves from being reminded of this condition. Our culture has become most sophisticated in the avoidance of pain, not only our physical pain but our emotional and mental pain as well. We not only bury our dead as if they were still alive, but we also bury our pains as if they were not really there. We have become so used to this state of anesthesia, that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us. When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch or no record to play, and when we are left all alone by ourselves we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do ...
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