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 end of the earth.
Acts 1:8
Just finishing up the book of Colossians last week, and next week intent upon beginning the book of I Thessalonians we take a break from our consistent thru-the-Bible-study format and will glean from our dear brother Micah. We are blessed for the next season to have Micah, Marla and their dear girls “home” from the missionary work the Lord has called them to in Brazil. What a great chance we have to fellowship with them. We invite you to pray for them and be of support to them in any way that is possible for you. A great blessing it is for our church family to be linked to them! Concerning missions work a couple of thoughts from Oswald Chambers on that topic which he championed and lived out in the early 20th century—
In Acts 1:8 our Lord said this striking thing—“You shall be witnesses unto Me.” When Christ is formed in us, we are a satisfaction to our Lord and Master wherever He places us. The point of importance is to know that we are just exactly where He has engineered our circumstances. There is no “foreign field” to our Lord.
—
According to Our Lord, there is not a home church and a foreign church; it is all one great work, beginning at home and then going elsewhere, “beginning from Jerusalem.” Jerusalem was not the home of the disciples; Jerusalem was the place where Our Lord was rejected. “Begin there,” said Jesus.
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With Luke 24:47 in mind—“repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name…”
It is easy to forget that the first duty of the missionary is not to uplift the heathen, not to heal the sick, not to benefit a culture, because all that sounds so rational and so human, and it is very easy to arouse interest and get funds for it. The primary duty of the missionary is to preach “repentance and remission (forgiveness) of sins… in His name.” The key to the missionary message, whether the missionary is a doctor, a teacher, an industrial worker, homemaker or nurse— the key is the remissionary purpose of Our Lord Jesus Christ’s death.
Maranatha!