Why We Go Out

    By the time you read this our mission team has already returned home but as I write it, we are still making preparations to leave.  We do not know exactly what we will find.  We do not know exactly what we will do.  We do not know if we will be successful.

But we know that we must go.

    But what is it that calls the people of God to go?  What is it that makes us leave the comforts of home to sleep in bunk beds or cots and work harder than many of us do at our regular jobs?  Why would retired people push themselves to go out when they have earned their rest?  Why do people from our church spend hours and hours raising money and organizing donations so that we can feed the hungry, pass out book bags, and give away bicycles?

And the answer is really the same as we often get in church.

Because we have been called to do it.

    In countless passages Jesus said things like ““Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” (Mark 16:15)  Jesus calls us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and to visit those in prison.  From these commands, and many others, we know that the followers of Jesus Christ have a calling to help others but probably one of the most demanding of all is found in Luke 12:48 where Jesus says:

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

    As we live in nice houses with air conditioning, drive nice cars, have an abundance of food, and have more clothes than we will ever really need, we cannot deny that we are people who have been given much.  The only way that we can answer God is to do the things that he has asked, to do what he has called us to do and to go where he has called us to go.

    For some of us that means collecting food, clothing, backpacks and bicycles for those in our neighborhood who struggle to get by, and for others it means travelling to places so rural that cell phones don’t work well and electricity is not something that everyone has.  Some may choose to work hard and give generously while others may travel to other states or distant nations.

Each of us must answer the call of God, but how we answer it may be very different.

But God calls every one of us to do his work and each of us must listen to his call.

And when God calls us to go, we must go.

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(Click here to read Part 2)

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