Every nation has given something to the world.

Germany gave us engineering. Italy gave us art. Japan gave us precision. France gave us wine and a certain way of looking down their nose at the rest of us (I say that with love, having eaten some very good French bread).

But if you asked me what America's greatest export has been, my answer would not be found in a factory, a laboratory, or a shipping container.

I believe America's greatest export has been her sons and daughters who carried the gospel of Jesus Christ across oceans, into jungles, over mountains, and into villages where His name had never once been spoken.

I am one of them. And I would like to tell you why that matters more than anything else I could say about this country I love.

A Nation That Learned to Send

For over two hundred years, thousands of American churches have done something remarkable. They gave. They prayed. They sent.

Ordinary believers sold what they owned to fund what they believed. Young families packed a lifetime into steamer trunks and later into suitcases, learned languages that twisted their tongues into knots, and buried loved ones in foreign soil because they were convinced that Jesus was worth it. Small congregations in small towns you have never heard of adopted missionaries they would only meet in heaven and supported them faithfully for forty years.

Nobody put that on the evening news. But heaven kept a record.

Paul told the Roman believers,

"How shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?" (Romans 10:14-15).

America, for all her flaws, became one of the great sending nations in the history of the church. That is not a boast about our country. It is a testimony about our God, who took ordinary people in ordinary pews and used them to change the map of the kingdom.

This Is Where My Story Begins

I did not choose to be born in America any more than I chose to be born to my particular parents. It was simply where God placed me. But here is what I know now that I did not know then: the place He puts you first is not always the place He means to keep you.

Here, in a small Tennessee town, faithful believers taught me the Scriptures before I was old enough to understand most of them. Here, at seven years old, I understood enough. Here, churches poured into a boy who had no idea what he was being prepared for. They taught me to study. They taught me to pray. Eventually, they taught me to preach, badly at first, the way every preacher starts out.

And then those same churches did something that still humbles me. They sent me. Not just with a handshake and a "good luck," but with prayer, with dollars sacrificially given, with letters that arrived faithfully in Arequipa, Peru, long after the novelty of "supporting a missionary" should have worn off.

Betty and I stepped off that plane into a country we did not understand, speaking a language we had barely begun to learn, carrying nothing but a call we could not shake. I remember standing in the thin air of the Andes, looking out over a city of strangers, and thinking, how in the world did a boy from Tennessee end up here?

The answer, of course, was that it was never really about me.

Peru Gave Me Far More Than I Gave Peru

If I am not careful, a story like this can start to sound like America rescued Peru. Let me stop that thought before it goes any further, because nothing could be further from the truth.

Peru did not need me to save her. Peru needed the gospel, just as Tennessee did, just as every place on this earth does. And once that gospel took root, I watched Peruvian believers grow into some of the most devoted followers of Christ I have ever known. They became family before I understood what family in Christ really meant. They taught me things about faith, endurance, and joy that no American classroom ever could.

I watched churches we planted raise up their own pastors. I watched Peruvian believers become missionaries themselves, carrying the gospel to places even I had never been. Decades later, I have had the joy of seeing second and third generations of those same families still serving Christ, still leading churches, still sending their own sons and daughters out.

Every culture reflects something beautiful about God's creativity. Peru did not need a version of American Christianity exported and stamped onto her soil. She needed Jesus, and once He arrived, the Peruvian church became uniquely and beautifully her own.

I did not bless Peru nearly as much as Peru blessed me.

God Was Never Watching Only America

It is easy, especially in an election year or after a big national holiday, to talk as though God has a special fondness for one country over another. He does not.

God's promise to Abraham was never a promise about one nation's prosperity. It was a promise about every nation's future:

"In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 12:3).

Jesus did not tell His disciples to make disciples of America. He told them to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20). And John was given a glimpse of heaven that included

"a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues" standing before the throne (Revelation 7:9).

America is not the destination in that story. She has simply been one of the launch points.

That distinction matters. It keeps gratitude for your country from ever curdling into pride about your country. You can love the soil that raised you without believing God loves it more than the soil He sends you to.

What I Am Actually Grateful For

I love America because this is where I first heard about Jesus.

I love America because this is where faithful believers, most of whose names I have long forgotten, invested years of their lives into a boy who could not yet do anything for them in return.

I love America because for generations she has been one of the great sending nations in the history of the church, and I got to be sent by her.

But here is what I want you to hear underneath all of that. My prayer is not that America would become stronger, wealthier, or more powerful. My prayer is that she would never lose her passion for sending the gospel to the nations. That fire is worth more than any export our factories have ever produced. If it ever dies out, we will have lost far more than influence. We will have forgotten one of the greatest privileges God has ever entrusted to a people.

An Invitation for You

Maybe you were never called to get on a plane. Most people are not, and that is exactly as it should be. God needs the senders every bit as much as He needs the sent.

But every one of us was given the same gospel that changed a boy from Tennessee, and every one of us has a mission field within arm's reach. You do not have to cross an ocean to carry the greatest export this country has ever produced. You only have to open your mouth in the place where God has already put you.

Come on, say amen with me. The same God who sent me to the Andes is sending you somewhere too, even if it is only next door.

If this story stirred something in you, I would love to have you along as I keep writing about grace, calling, and what it means to live before an Audience of One. Subscribe below, and let's keep walking this road together.

Audience of One