Hello, friend. Measuring what we can see is easy.  How much we accomplished. How many people showed up. How quickly something grew. Whether the work we poured ourselves into produced the results we hoped for.

Those measurements aren’t necessarily bad. Sometimes they help us understand whether something is working. But they make poor answers to a much deeper question: What makes a life faithful?

The kingdom of God has never been particularly impressed by our spreadsheets.

Faithfulness is not always easy to measure, but it is always worth pursuing.

In today’s edition:

🇰🇷 When achievement carries too much weight

🍇 What our work can’t tell us

🇵🇬 Seventeen years for 230 people

A Church Between Generations 🇰🇷

South Korea has one of the most remarkable Christian stories in modern history.

Today, more than 80,000 Protestant churches are spread across the country, and Korean Christians have become a significant missionary-sending force around the world.

But that Christian legacy is less evident among younger generations. In 2021, 78% of South Koreans in their twenties reported having no religion, even as the country remained home to some of the largest churches in the world.

They are also growing up in a culture where the pressure to succeed can begin remarkably early. Education is intensely competitive, with families investing heavily in private tutoring and students competing for places at prestigious universities and, eventually, coveted careers.

Hard work and ambition are not the problem. But in a culture where achievement can carry enormous weight, the church has an opportunity to show another way of understanding who we are.

The challenge for South Korean churches is not simply preserving an extraordinary Christian legacy. It is discipling another generation to know and follow Jesus for themselves.

How to Pray

🙏 Pray for young South Koreans to encounter Jesus and find their identity in him.

🙏 Pray for churches to faithfully disciple younger generations rather than relying on the Christian legacy of previous ones.

🙏 Pray for Korean believers to pursue excellence in school and work without allowing achievement to determine their worth.

Don’t Ask the Fruit Who You Are 🍇 

Think about the last time you met someone new. After exchanging names, the question that usually comes next is, “What do you do?”

It’s a perfectly normal question. Our work tells people something about us. It gives them a glimpse into how we spend our days, what we care about, and what we’re good at. But somewhere along the way, it can become easy to answer a different question with the same information.

Who are you?

I’m a writer. A teacher. A parent. A pastor. A student. I lead this. I built that. I accomplished this.

There’s nothing wrong with working hard or wanting to do something meaningful with our lives. We should be mindful, however, not to ask our work to carry the weight of telling us what we’re worth.

Christians are not immune to this. We’re just very good at giving productivity a Christian vocabulary.

How much am I serving? How many people am I reaching? Am I sharing the gospel enough? Is my ministry growing? Am I doing enough for God?

These are not unimportant questions. Jesus calls us to obedience. He commands us to make disciples. He expects his people to bear fruit.

But in John 15, Jesus gives us an important order.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

A branch doesn’t produce fruit so that it can become connected to the vine. It produces fruit because it is connected to the vine.

Belonging comes before producing.

Jesus tells his disciples to remain, or abide, in him. The picture isn’t one of inactivity. Branches connected to healthy vines do something. They grow. They bear fruit. 

In fact, Jesus says that his Father is glorified when we “bear much fruit.”

But the branch never becomes the source of its own life.

That distinction matters.

Our belonging to Christ does not rise and fall with our output. We don’t make disciples, serve our churches, give generously, pursue holiness, or share the gospel so that God will finally consider us useful enough to belong to him.

We do these things because, in Christ, we already do.

That changes the way we work.

When the results are impressive, we don’t need them to prove that we matter. And when the results are small, slow, or almost impossible to see, we don’t have to assume our faithfulness was wasted.

Sometimes we’ll see the fruit of our work. Other times, we may never know what God did with our faithfulness. The outcome was never ours to control in the first place.

Our job is to remain close to Jesus and faithfully do what he has given us to do.

So perhaps the question isn’t, “Am I doing enough to matter?”

Maybe it’s simpler.

Am I abiding in Christ?

Then do the work he has put in front of you. 

Serve. Give. Go. Make disciples. Bear fruit.

Just don’t ask the fruit to tell you who you are.

Jesus already has.

—Camille Suazo

Seventeen Years for 230 People 🇵🇬

Would you spend 17 years translating the New Testament for 230 people?

That’s how long it took to complete the New Testament in Label, one of the smallest language groups SIL has worked with in Papua New Guinea. Along the way, one of the leading translators died, while another leader and language expert lost her sight. Still, the work continued.

In 2024, the Label New Testament was finally dedicated. Around 100 copies were purchased that day.

This year, SIL is celebrating 70 years of work in Papua New Guinea, one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. Since 1956, local communities and translation workers have helped complete New Testament translations in more than 230 of the country’s 800 languages.

Seventeen years of work for a language spoken by 230 people may not look efficient by ordinary measures. But the Label community reminds us that the value of making Scripture accessible cannot always be measured by scale. Every community should have the opportunity to hear and read God’s Word in a language they understand deeply.

How to Pray

🙏 Pray for translators and resources to reach communities still waiting to access Scripture in their heart language.

🙏 Pray that translated Scripture would be read, taught, and used to deepen discipleship and strengthen churches throughout Papua New Guinea.

🙏 Pray for local believers, translators, and gospel workers to remain faithful in the work God has given them, even when its fruit is slow or unseen.

📍 Attention Worthy

🌍 Good intentions don’t always lead to good missions. Rethinking how we show up can help us pursue partnership instead of control and make room for what God is already doing through others.

💼 Your job doesn’t have to be your dream job to be meaningful. Ordinary work can still be a place to faithfully serve God and the people around us.

🌱 We can’t manufacture the fruit of missions. Our responsibility is to faithfully sow the gospel while trusting God to bring growth.