Page 77 - Home Guide Winter 2018/19

The Mission Field at Home
“We’ve got a lot of unbelievers in this house.” My husband’s words surprised me at first. We were sitting in the living room of friends from church. We gather weekly for community group with four other couples, and we are all believers. Then I heard them—the running footsteps and the laughing from our collective 10 children playing upstairs.
We were talking that evening about Acts 1:8. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” What is our Jerusalem? we wondered. Our neighbors? Our coworkers? The strangers we pass on the street?
My husband’s comment challenged us to look even closer to home, to look inside our homes. It’s not that our neighbors or coworkers or fellow Nashvillians are excluded from our Jerusalem, but we have before us a mission field in our own homes: our children.
As I thought about the children upstairs—my own son included—the idea that these young people are our primary mission started to make a lot of sense.
1. Kids are willing to learn.
Kids are like sponges! They love learning new things. Younger kids especially need to hear things over and over. Our one year old asks almost every night for his “Bible” at bedtime, and I tell the same story over and over: “The Bible is about Jesus. Jesus is God’s Son. God sent Jesus to earth and gave Him a family ... ”
Encourage kids to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to tell them if you don’t know the answer. Read the Bible with them.
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