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How to be a Missionary Without Leaving Home
Posted on Aug 27, 2019 Topic : Inspirational/Devotional, Women's Christian Living
Posted by : Ruth Chou Simons
Given a choice, I would rather go to a far-away country than clean out my pantry. I’d rather dig wells for other people, seeing progress and visible fruit, than work through math problems again with my child…or so it seems by the way I esteem the value of ministry to others over the oft-unseen ministry within my own home.
“Send me, Lord!—as long as it’s not to the hard soil of difficult extended family relationships, or to the unseen work of sowing truth within the walls of our own homes."
Recognizing that my home is a mission field—equal to a remote land or culture— changes the way I think about the people before me and about why God has placed me there.
When I became a mom, I marveled that babies didn’t come with owner’s manuals. As parents, we look for formulas that will ensure success—a method, paradigm, or routine that will make it easier. We wonder why we must repeat things over and over, why it feels so unrewarding at times, and whether or not we’re even making a difference.
God went to great lengths to instruct His children about instructing their children. He helped the Israelites make a connection we need too:
"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (ESV)
What we choose to repeat at home, practice as a family, and speak about daily directly affects our knowledge of the presence of God and our ability to recall God’s faithful works. God’s greatness and the story of redemption don’t automatically appear in our families. They’re made known in and through us by deliberate praise and practice.
God instructed His people to persevere in their work at home while keeping their eyes on their future home. (See Deuteronomy 6:10-12.) They were to recount and rehearse the faithfulness of God in every way possible with those in their care so that they and their children would remember to give God the glory when He brought their journey to completion.
When we point to Jesus with our praise and practice, we make it known that it is God (and not us) who saves and rescues us from our heaviest burdens.
Mother Teresa famously said, “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.”
One of the most loving things we can do as parents is to love our children with the full truth of the gospel—not a watered-down story, a feel-good pep talk, or a behavior-manipulating gospel of self-help. That’s not the good news.
Jesus loved and saved us while we were His enemies, paid the price to pluck us out of slavery, and made us welcome in His presence— this is the gospel.
When we speak of this amazing grace in the ordinary routines of our days, we take the good news of the gospel with us to car lines, dinner prep, laundry, and even errands during rush hour—which may as well be the ends of the earth.
We are missionaries to our people, right where we are…from the first moments of the day at our kitchen table to the moment we turn down the lights at night.
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This beautiful guided companion to Ruth Chou Simons' Beholding and Becoming: The Art of Everyday Worship is a thoughtfully designed way to engage in deliberate soul-work—to linger longer in God's Word and reflect on developing a deeper relationship with the Savior. Whether used on its own or alongside Becoming and Beholding, this companion creates space for God's Word to transform your life as you direct your heart toward worship in the everyday moments of life.
Read more in Beholding and Becoming by Ruth Chou Simons