HAPPY TO DIE A FOOL

WHEN LIFE IS CHRIST AND DEATH IS GAIN

“Our willingness to sacrifice for an enterprise is always in proportion to our faith in that enterprise.” Samuel Zwemer’s words from over a century ago gently challenge us to an honest evaluation of our priorities and pursuits. Jesus has a claim on all nations, and an inheritance represented by every ethnolinguistic people group. If we have faith in this “enterprise,” what many call the “Great Commission,” we will give ourselves to it accordingly, even if it makes us what the apostle Paul called “fools for Christ.”

And if we don’t, we won’t.

Happy to Die a Fool evaluates the worth of Jesus, His inheritance in the nations, and the dignity of duty for the most privileged people in the world: those who have already called upon the only name under Heaven by which we can be saved from this present evil age. May we never dare to white-knuckle the name of Jesus or His Gospel of the Kingdom for ourselves, even if it means the world will call us fools.

RUINS OF THE RENAISSANCE

CRISIS, CLARITY, AND APOSTOLIC ARTISTRY

The Reformation would not have been possible if it were not for the Renaissance. Out of the ashes of the Black Death and “bloodiest century in human history” that closed the Dark Ages, human history hinged around the corner of “the rebirth”—the Renaissance. Citing Scriptural, empirical, and historical evidence of mankind’s reliance on beauty, Ruins of the Renaissance, Stephanie Quick’s third title, illuminates the strengths and shortcomings of this historical epoch, and provokes the Body of Jesus to leverage beautiful means to declare the beautiful Truth: Christ crucified, resurrected, and returning in glory. Maranatha.

A CALL TO COMPEL

THE SIMPLICITY, URGENCY, AND JOY OF MAKING DISCIPLES

When it comes to making disciples, our role is straightforward: we simply obey the commands of our Master. Jesus likened the Kingdom of heaven to a King who put on a wedding banquet for his son—and sent his servants to tell those who were invited that the feast was ready. It's a parable, but it describes in a real way what the Lord is doing to draw people to Himself: Jesus sends those who already belong to Him to bear witness to those who do not yet know Him and invite them to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in the age to come. Our task is simple. Our work is urgent. And our obedience to Jesus is the path to our own joy.

A Call to Compel by Jordan Scott explores the simplicity, urgency, and joy of making disciples.

TO TRACE A RISING SUN

GOD, THE GOSPEL, & YOUR LIFE IN THIS AGE

To Trace a Rising Sun (Stephanie Quick) is a meditation on the point and purpose of creation in this age; if men and women bear the Image of the Holy, then the Gospel of the Kingdom matters for our minutes and decisions. But we must understand the whole story, beginning to end. Consider what you’re made for, called to, and how the story of your life fits into the wild and beautiful story of eternity. As Charles Spurgeon once said so well, “If Christ be anything, He must be everything”—and if that’s true, He means and changes everything.

WONDER, WITNESS, AND WAR

EXALTING CHRIST IN CONFLICT ZONES

In this compilation of essays by FAI RELIEF personnel, Wonder, Witness, and War explores the responsibility upon believers, our opportunities to engage the escalating crises and humanitarian needs on scales unseen since the Second World War, and the unique fellowship found with Jesus on the blood-stained soil of the frontier. 

The harvest is plentiful. The laborers are few. And the doors are open. There are no closed countries.

CONFRONTING UNBELIEF

YOUR SOUL & THE CITY OF THE GREAT KING

A.W. Tozer declared this in his classic work The Knowledge of the Holy: “what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” If we do not love Him with our minds—our beliefs, our imaginations, and our thoughts—we are not loving Him as we ought.

In His kindness, the LORD has given us a living object lesson to calibrate our emotions and beliefs to the eternal truths of Scripture. The “City of the Great King” serves us with her testimony. The nations have a controversy with Jerusalem. The Church has a controversy with Jerusalem. Satan has a controversy with Jerusalem. God Himself has a controversy with Jerusalem. Yet she is the chosen throne for David’s Son, and the last time Jesus saw her, He wept.

She has always been complicated.

Incidentally, so have we.

A RETROSPECT

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HUDSON TAYLOR

Hudson Taylor spent the first decade and a half of his life in what he would later term as blasphemy and unbelief until (crediting the prayers of his mother and the grace of his Maker) he met Jesus at the age of sixteen. The Man from Galilee quickly became Taylor’s preeminent obsession and preoccupation. Taylor founded the China Inland Mission in 1865, which immediately employed ground-breaking targeted and strategic mobilization models which effectively drove the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus into a nation, provinces, and neighborhoods where the name of Jesus had, nearly two millennia after the Ascension, still not yet been heard or confessed. Taylor’s Retrospect over a life so well lived is a glimpse into the heart and mind of a man of single vision and should be studied by every Gospel pioneer.

UNION & COMMUNION

THOUGHTS ON SONG OF SOLOMON

Born in 1832, James Hudson Taylor spent the first decade and a half of his life in what he would later term as blasphemy and unbelief until (crediting the prayers of his mother and the grace of his Maker) he met Jesus at the age of sixteen. The Man from Galilee quickly became Taylor’s preeminent obsession and preoccupation. By the age of seventeen, driven by a dream for Jesus to be magnified by every man, woman, and child He made, Hudson Taylor committed himself to a life amongst the largest unreached nation of his day: China. He followed through on this commitment and was buried in China in 1905. Taylor’s ability to work hard and effectively under duress and difficulty was fueled by his love for Scripture, for the Spirit who breathes upon the Word, and the Son who reminds us to “abide,” because one truth will carry a laborer across the threshold between this age and the next, and it is one Hudson Taylor confidently knew: who we are is and will always be more important than what we do.

RESCUED FROM THE REICH

HOW A RABBI, A PRIEST, AND A KING EVADED HITLER’S GRASP

A generation after the devastation known as “the Holocaust,” stories and first-hand accounts are yet being told. Perhaps one of the least-known miracles of the Holocaust is the story of the small, fledgling Balkan nation that came out of the years engulfed in Hitler’s fury with more living Jewish citizens than when the Second World War started in 1939—despite being an ally of the Third Reich. In the center of this incredible drama are King Boris III, a Greek Orthodox priest, and a largely unknown rabbi named Daniel Zion.

For more on the life of Daniel Zion and the remarkable rescue of Bulgarian Jews from the Third Reich, watch Covenant and Controversy Part III: The Great Trouble (2018) by FAI STUDIOS, free on YouTube and in the FAI App.