Deceit Turned Incentive

Most any frontier missionary will agree that significant barriers often impede our attempt to enter the foreign mission field, or even embrace a passion for missionary work and lifestyle.  One such barrier is the misconception that the missionary must be an evangelist, or preacher, or know how to save people.  Another is that there is just too much to leave behind in the way of family, friends, and community.  
The only real way to overcome this type of deception is to embrace biblical truths.  I appreciate John Piper's ministry as one of the most influential forces in my inclination towards frontier missions.  In this excerpt from his book, Desiring God, Piper addresses these two misconceptions and shows how they should actually provide incentive.  He writes: 

These, then, are two great incentives from Jesus to become a World Christian and to dedicate yourself to the cause of Frontier Missions as the twentieth century comes to a close. 

1. Every impossibility with men is possible with God (Mark 10:27). The conversion of hardened sinners will be the work of God and will accord with his sovereign plan. We need not fear or fret over our weakness. The battle is the Lord's and he will give the victory. 

2. Christ promises to work for us and to be for us so much that when our missionary life is over, we will not be able to say we've sacrificed anything (Mark 10:29-30). When we follow his missionary prescription, we discover that even the painful side-effects work to improve our condition. Our spiritual health, our joy, improves a hundredfold. And when we die, we do not die. We gain eternal life.

Taken from the Desiring God Blog.