A Passion for Missions!

For many Christians, "missions" is, at best, a necessary responsibility. For hundreds of years the church has always "supported the missionaries," and so tradition continues - yet often without God's heart and passion or even a compelling purpose to win boys and girls, men and women to faith in Jesus Christ.

No wonder, then, when many of us think of a missionary, strange images come to mind!

You may picture some young adventurer - clad in khaki safari clothes - trudging through the jungles with a machete. Perhaps you imagine him (or her) meeting a group of dark-skinned natives, dancing around mud huts and a raging fire, all moving to the beat of a pounding tribal drum. Or maybe your only view of a missionary is of some strange older couple, in outdated clothing, presenting never-ending blurry slides or a shaky home video for some "special" Sunday evening service. Completing this picture are uninspiring stories of terrible food and awful living conditions, ending with that dreaded drawn-out plea for money.

(Is this the truth? Or are so many in the church today missing out on the most exciting move of God the world has ever seen because of their lack of interest in worldwide missions?)

As Christians, what is God's purpose for our lives? What are His goals and vision?

Our primary calling...is to know and love the Lord. But, if that were all, God could have taken us to Heaven the moment we received Jesus Christ.

Our primary mission...is to glorify God in and through our lives and to help make God known throughout the earth.

With our primary mission clearly in view, it's obvious we need to help proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and obey God's words to "go into all the world." We need to ask ourselves if we really believe the Bible is the true and inspired Word of God. Do we honestly believe people must be saved, or "born again," as Jesus said in John 3:3, and can we comprehend the eternal reality of heaven and hell? If we do, these beliefs should radically affect our lives!

Think for a moment about how different your life would be if you were born in a land isolated from God and filled with extreme poverty, sickness and disease. What would it be like if you were born in an area where praying to an idol or giving homage to an ancestor was your only hope? What if constant fear of evil spirits consumed your life? Wouldn't you want someone to share God's life-giving message of salvation with you?

We have received God's light, but it's not just for us. We're called to shine God's light in the darkness.

For those of us who live in developed countries, (do we truly realize how much God has blessed us?)

- We are blessed! Every day we enjoy clean, hot running water - without a thought.

- We are blessed! Our typical meals often include ingredients from all around the world: fruit from California and the Polynesian islands, olive oil from Italy and the Middle East, and perhaps coffee from Columbia. We eat better than the ancient kings!

- We are blessed! (We have the freedom to travel to the next city, state or country...a freedom those in communist countries do not enjoy. We can send our children to school for free, choose any number of private schools or homeschool them...a privilege unheard of in most developing countries. We can choose freely what we want to believe and how we want to worship...not easy to do in many countries in the 10/40 Window.)

God has given us the greatest "Good News" of all time and a job description to "Get this news out!" He has given us an abundance of resources to accomplish the task and a challenge that "To whom much is given, from him much will be required" (Luke 12:48).

(Taken from The Mission Minded Child by Ann Dunagan)

I have not always been mission minded. For most of my life I haven't really given missions much thought. I had other passions God had given me...like being pro-life and adoption, and other passions are wonderful! But God has been impressing on me, more and more, that our primary mission, as Christians, must be to fulfill the Lord's Great Commission. They were His final words to us before He left the earth. They summed up His whole purpose for being here. And the fulfillment of the Great Commission will usher in the Lord's return, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:14)

My prayer is that this blog will encourage and excite you to have a passion for missions; to see the awesome move of God in this world, and to realize the incredible privilege we have to be a part of it!!!