Missions Week Devotion by Barbara Baker
Good morning! Today our Lord is blessing us in Acts 1:8:
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Acts 1:8
It is easy to read this and assume that Jesus is talking about actual places. But what if Jesus is referring to spheres of influence? Jerusalem could be your family, neighborhood, community, church and city. Judea and Samaria could be your state and country. “The ends of the earth” is the commission we most commonly think of as missionary work—those countries outside the borders of our United States of America. It seems that we can better comprehend Jesus’ call to spread the Gospel when we see it as a multi-faceted approach that involves a call to all children of God with varying talents and scopes of influence.
As a little girl, elementary school age, I really wanted to go to Africa as a missionary. My desire was never spoken, because it seemed so utterly impossible for a poor child from the hills of the Ozarks to be anything other than a common laborer (a waitress at a nice restaurant at best) or to go anywhere outside the bounds of the few counties our family inhabited. In Sunday School, we collected change for foreign missionaries and never imagined ourselves traveling to distant continents. Yet, in our small way, we were contributing to sharing the Gospel.
As I became an adult, God helped me find a way to break the generational chains and venture beyond familiarity, where I heard teaching about missions on our own soil. Jerusalem became my mission field, my calling.
Praise God that He has a plan for each of us. These plans may vary, but they are all pieces of Papa God’s giant puzzle, and they all lead to the common goal of sharing the Good News that Jesus Christ died on the Cross at Calvary for the propitiation of our sins and we can receive His abundant gifts of grace, mercy and unconditional love. If our Jerusalem is a call to speak the truth of the Bible to our neighbors, the homeless in our cities, those incarcerated, business owners or truck drivers, then we go out in joy and praise our Lord for the calling.
If our Judea and Samaria involve traversing boundaries, regions and states to declare our Savior King, then we lace up our walking shoes and hit the road. We pray for the dear ones who just know in their heart of hearts that they must share Jesus with those who have never held a Bible or had the privilege of hearing God’s Word, and we support them and do whatever we can to keep them prospering in the foreign mission fields, the ends of the earth.
Thank you, Father God, that you call each of us to be a part of spreading the joy of Jesus!
Jesus loves you! Me, too!
Thoughts to ponder and pray about…
Lord, help me know where my mission field is. Take good care of our ministry partners where they serve, both near by and far away.