This update is related to the Crossway Global Ministry Fund campaign.
The Gospel at Work
Each of us has five minutes a day to spare. We can spend it folding laundry, scrolling through Instagram, sending a text message, or a thousand other things. For Christian Sapunar, that means spending five minutes each day reading a daily devotion from Nuevas Misericordias Cada Mañana (New Morning Mercies)—which changed his life.
Through a series of events, Christian found himself in financial trouble. As an entrepreneur, he knew this was a risk, but that knowledge didn’t make it less painful. One of his businesses was failing and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. He found himself at rock bottom—depressed, anxious, and fearful—before realizing that his help couldn’t come from financial success or other worldly accomplishments. He needed a Savior who was over and above these circumstances. By God’s grace, he provided an answer through Christian’s brother, Sergio, who challenged him to read Nuevas Misericordias Cada Mañana for just a few minutes each day.
As a successful businessman and CEO living in Santiago, the capital of Chile, Christian maximized each minute of the day, which made him less than enthusiastic about spending five precious minutes reading a book about a God who felt far away from his problems. But Sergio, aware of Christian’s time constraints, remained persistent, and eventually Christian conceded to giving it a try for a couple of weeks. Christian recalls Sergio encouraging him: “I want to help you. I see that your life has been really tough, and I think you need to make a change and follow the gospel. You need to know the Word of God. Life is not about everything that you see. Some things, you don’t see them. It’s the unseen things that are eternal.”
Christian took a chance. Every day, before checking his email or phone, he committed to spending five minutes listening to the audio recording of that day’s devotion and reviewing the supporting Scripture passages. After just a couple of weeks, “Something amazing started happening.” Christian reflected, “Because I continued to read the devotional each day . . . this commitment gave me confidence in my understanding of the Scriptures. It was a fantastic discipline for me to incorporate into my daily rhythms of life. I started to talk to friends about this change happening in my heart—God was changing my life.”
God persisted in winning Christian’s heart, and over time, he placed his faith in Jesus—and he’s never been the same since. This life transformation is why Crossway Global Ministry partners with like-minded publishers like Poiema Publicaciones to provide Bibles and book resources to believers around the world in places like Chile who are in great need—because we’re all in need of the gospel! As soon as God changed Christian’s heart, the Holy Spirit began to work, stirring Christian to share the good news with those around him.
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Biblical Resources: A Platform for Sharing the Gospel
Christian felt like he was bursting at the seams to share his newfound faith in Jesus with those in his circle. From his reading of the Bible and Nuevas Misericordias Cada Mañana, he knew that the Lord calls his people to share the gospel. So Christian took this to heart by engaging with the CEOs and other highly ranked business leaders with whom he regularly interacted. His strategy was to challenge these corporate leaders to the same five-minute commitment his brother challenged him to. He recalls one interaction with Gonzalo, a CEO of the restaurant franchise that Christian and his wife own in Santiago.
I sat down with Gonzalo at one of our restaurants one day for lunch, and I told the story of the challenge my brother gave me. I said [in Spanish], “Gonzalo, I have a gift for you. I read Nuevas Misericordias Cada Mañana every day. It’s a devotional, and it will take you about five minutes each day, no more than that.” And the tears started flowing. It was a shocking moment for me to have a 50-year-old guy, someone my age who leads a thousand people at the CEO level, break down like that. He told me his story about how he learned about Jesus when he was 18 years old but hadn’t been seriously committed to his faith for all of his adult life.
Gonzalo later reported to Christian that from that day forward, he read Nuevas Misericordias Cada Mañana daily and was committed and being transformed by the truth of the gospel. Christian found the gifting of this resource to others to be a true delight, so he started to regularly buy copies of Nuevas Misericordias Cada Mañana to give to those who he knew needed to read the good news for themselves. “I buy 10 to 20 books every few months,” Christian explains, “to give to people I really care about. It’s a great way to start talking to people about God and an easy sell to challenge them to just spend five or ten minutes of their day reading it. Anyone can do that.”
Some time after Christian had finished reading Nuevas Misericordias Cada Mañana, he was invited to listen to the author, Paul David Tripp, when he spoke at a conference in Chile. Christian was impacted by the power of a statement Tripp made. Christian shared,
He addressed and challenged us to consider how much of our time we provide to God, since we are intellectual, emotional, and spiritual beings. After all, this is the same God who parted the Red Sea and the same one who created the world. There are amazing stories in the Bible—think about just the stories in the Old Testament . . . amazing things happened. And that same God is with you and me at that moment when we open the Scriptures, start reading and doing our devotionals, praying, . . . and that’s the fantastic connection between Nuevas Misericordias Cada Mañana and the Bible. In his devotional, Tripp points to those amazing things that have been done in the Bible and how you and I can see them in our lives. Those are the things which I was blind to and now I see, and those things I’ve been seeing in my life are also happening with my family, friends, and businesses.
The Lord has used Nuevas Misericordias Cada Mañana as a tool for Christian and others to see the God of all creation in a new light and how he’s working in our lives still today. Most recently, Christian has seen the work of the Spirit through sharing the gospel not only with business leaders, but also with the Santiago police force, known as the Carabineros de Chile, where he officially became a civil friend (or an Alguacil).
A Global Opportunity
Christian was already part of a group that regularly engaged with and supported the police force, but after he became a believer, his outlook on opportunities to engage with the officers changed. Now he had something special and eternal to share with these men and women who daily put their lives on the line for the safety of others in Chile and beyond.
One day he had the opportunity to sit down with Eliana, a top-ranked officer at the station. Though she was initially uncertain about Christian’s intention in asking her about her faith, she opened up when Christian asked her about her job:
“It’s really stressful,” she shared with me. And so I told her, “But you know what, even in stressful situations, if you have Jesus, it’s different.” She agreed with me and said, “So you are a believer?” That gave me the open door I was looking for. I shared that, “I really believe in Jesus. And you know what? I started reading a book and it has changed my life.” Later on, I attended a police force ceremony, and it was there that I had the opportunity to give her a copy of the book. When I gave her the book, she started crying and hugged me. She said, “Christian, this is the most wonderful gift that I have ever received.” And she committed to reading the devotional every day.
The next week I attended a meeting at the station. I had the chance to see her again, so I said, “Eliana, I have something on my heart. I would like to start studying the Bible with you and your colleagues. We can start with the Bible and Nuevas Misericordias Cada Mañana.” She agreed, and we started that very day.
Since then, Christian has been leading a weekly Bible study with the police force, using Tripp’s book to guide them. Now there are hundreds of copies of Nuevas Misericordias Cada Mañana making their way into the hands and hearts of people throughout Chile. Christian persists in sharing the gospel through this resource, with the hope that the Spirit will stir in the hearts of readers and bring about life change, just as he experienced.
Through partnership with Poiema and other Christian publishers, donors to Crossway help to promote the mission of resourcing the church to the ends of the earth as we provide translated resources to brothers and sisters in Christ in the Spanish-speaking world.
The good news is for all to hear, and donors to Crossway have helped to make this happen in Spanish and many other languages. The gospel is going forth and changing lives, one resource at a time!
Pray for gospel resources to continue to make an impact in Spanish and hundreds of other languages. Pray that recipients of these resources would be transformed at a heart level.
Pray for Christian to continue to have a boldness in sharing the gospel with those in his network, so that more may come to know the truth of the gospel.