The First Missions: Blessed to be a Blessing

Do you know where & when the first “missions” happened in the Bible? Most of us think of the New Testament when we think of missions – the Great Commission, Peter, John, Paul’s journeys, Philip and the Ethiopian…

But none of those are the correct answer. A couple of weeks ago, Scott Harris, our missions minister did a sermon about this and I was on the edge of my seat.

Are you ready for the answer?

It is actually all the way back in Genesis 12:1-4. Way back at the beginning. This is the story when God sent out Abram:
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.”

God commanded Abram, at the age of 75, to leave everything that was comfortable to him and to follow wherever God was leading. It really is an amazing story to follow… all of the things that he went through, the trials, the hardships, the tests. Yet God worked amazing things through Abram. He used him to bless all of ‘the families of the earth.’ What a high calling.

One of the biggest things that I took away from this was that we don’t just want to live a mediocre Christian life. We must be willing to leave what is comfortable and to follow wherever God leads.

Scott focused in on a unique top line/bottom line perspective. The top line is to ask ourselves “how has God blessed me?” The bottom line is to ask “how does God want to use me to bless others?” We are blessed so that we can be a blessing to others. It really is that simple. We just need to use the things that we have in order to help others. If we have extra money, time, the gift of hospitality, if we’re a great cook, or make amazing crafts, if we have extra space in our house to host people and activities… God blessed us with all of these things and these abilities, so we are to use them to help bless others. Simple, right?

So I ask myself, and encourage you to ask yourselves also, – “how has God blessed me and therefore, how does God want to use me to bless others?“

Trip to Haiti Update

Since my post on March 9th about our upcoming trip to Haiti a few things have changed. We are still going, that is the most important part. And it is still the same week in July. But the long story short is that we are no longer going with Adventures in Missions. We are now going on a trip through our church in partnership with the International Mission Board and Baptist Global Response. We are no longer going to be part of a group of 20; instead it will just be the 4 of us couples that are in Bible study class/small groups together, plus my dad, for a cozy group of 9.

We had a meeting last night about the trip and have a few more details than we did before. Here are the tentative plans as we currently know them… We will probably be doing clean-up work, hauling chunks of concrete and such. Possibly some construction also. We will probably be sleeping in tents in a secured compound. We might have access to a solar shower (rain water collected in buckets and you pull the string). We will have one hot meal a day provided. It will probably be around 95 degrees during the day, dropping down to the 70′s at night. We will need hepatitis A & B, typhoid vaccines, tetanus shots, and malaria pills.

Further in the tentative category…