Mission Trip 2015, Day 5

One of the best things about mission trips is getting to know other believers. Our faith is strengthened as we serve together and encourage one another. It’s simply amazing to see the faith that others have, especially that of young people, how they take their faith so seriously and are really growing and asking the tough and deep questions about their faith.

God doesn’t call us simply to attend church services and live out our quiet Christian lives. He calls us to push back the darkness. He calls us to be salt and light. He calls us have hope, even when life seems hopeless, so that all might see that He is the One who gives hope.

One of the first days of the mission trip, I wrote about how we were so excited about leading a backyard Bible club, but then no kids showed up. Well, tonight that backyard Bible club had 17 kids at it. And most of those kids have little to no church background, so we got to tell some of them about Jesus for the very first time.

That didn’t just randomly happen. It happened because faithful believers went out of their comfort zones and continued to go door to door, even though they were discouraged at first, in order to invite people to bring their children to the park so that they could hear about the love of Jesus. And they did that because they had first experienced the persistent love of God.

We love, because He first loved us.

We’re heading home tomorrow, but we pray that we’ve planted a few seeds that others will water, and we trust that God will bring the growth. That’s really all we can do.

But that’s enough.

Because we know that God is all-wise, and sovereign, and that just as His love pursued us all the way to the cross, God will continue to pursue each of these that we’ve ministered to this week. And knowing that, we have the great expectation, and maybe even the sure hope, of seeing them again, and when God brings us to our eternal home, where we will rejoice with all believers from all times and places, because of the relentless love of Jesus.