With both our middle school and high school mission trips underway, my mind cannot help but wander to the topic of missions as I sit here in my favorite Woodbury coffee shop. When I think about a mission field, my immediate mental picture is one including snakes, large bugs, people in loin cloths and face paint, mud huts with grass roofs and a market that looks more like a zoo than a place where you buy your dinner. Now having been on mission trips of my own, I know that this mental picture isn't a reality in every mission field. Sure, there are missionaries in places like this, but sometimes a mission field looks like Bowling Green, Kentucky (where our middle school students are) or western Pennsylvania (where our high school students are). Sometimes even, a mission field looks a lot like your street, or your workplace, or your friend's house, or your favorite coffee shop, or your school (do you get where I'm going with this?).
In the book of Matthew, a lawyer asks Jesus which is the greatest commandment in the entire Jewish Law. Jesus, knowing the Law, quotes Deuteronomy 6 and says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment" (Matthew 22:37-38). He goes on to say, "And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:39).
How can we love both God, with our entire being, and our neighbors? While there are many ways to do this, I would argue that the best way is to share Christ with them. I once heard a speaker say, "If you sincerely believe that you hold the keys to eternal live, how can you not tell anyone about it?" Do you sincerely believe that you hold the keys to eternal life? If so, then what does your mission field look like? You don't have to board a place, fly halfway around the world and never talk to your families again to be a missionary, just walk out your front door.
May God's face shine brightly on you all this week, and that mission fields would be pointed out to us all,
Grace and peace to you,
Ryan R Nyquist
Posted on
Wed, June 22, 2011
by Ryan Nyquist