June 29, 2009 - Global Expansion

As the NBA draft unfolded Thursday night there was a continuance of the trend to select foreign players. As basketball caught on throughout the world young players began working to improve their games and now around 16% of the NBA consists of foreign-born players. (Yet not only has the NBA reached beyond its borders, the college game and even the high school game is full of exchange students. It is very exciting to see the “spread” of basketball in the world market.)

It makes me think of my friend Roy Mason. He was traveling a path through a jungle in Africa to share the Gospel with a tribe that had never heard the Good News. The African pastor he was traveling with asked him if he wanted a cold Coca-Cola. Roy asked where that would come from and the pastor pointed at a small hut on the side of the path. To Roy’s astonishment he realized that Coke and Pepsi have gone beyond the Gospel in their endeavors.

I see the NBA with its global expansion programs. I saw the Dream Team turn the world upside down in the 1992 Olympics concerning love of basketball. Those 12 men went onto the world stage and shared their love. (Sound like any other small group of 12 men in history?)

Acts 17: 6 …“These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.”

It is time for us to have more of a focus on “global expansion.” As I prepare to leave on my next mission trip I pray that I will be one that helps turn the world upside down. I pray that others will see something in me and desire to have it. I pray that you will have a heart to turn the world upside down – beginning right there in your Jerusalem and spreading to the ends of the earth.

Mark 16: 15 And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

Acts 1: 8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”