A few years ago I spent a week at Yale in a seminar taught by a well-known missions anthropologist. The insights I gained from Dr. Whiteman helped shape my approach to life and missions.
One of the many things I learned concerned how we view life. Dr. Whiteman said that most of us form our view of life and reality (worldview) by the time we are five-years-old. Unless something dramatic takes place (like a personal encounter with Jesus), this understanding of life will guide us until the day we die.
For example, if a child feels loved and important, the adult will feel the same way; if a child feels abandoned and isolated, the adult will too; if a child thinks the world is against him/her, so will the adult.
A Your Mission Matters goal is to show kids in the world’s slums they matter to God. When a child discovers that they are unique and special in the eyes of God everything changes. They go from feelings of rejection to feelings of acceptance. They go from thinking the world is stacked against them to believing all things are possible in Christ.
My recent trip to Honduras and an upcoming trip to Uganda got me thinking about what Dr. Whiteman said in that seminar. Do the millions of kids who live in the world’s slums believe they matter to God? Does Atenisha in Uganda believe he matters to God? What about Yeimi in Honduras?
I read that If every American churchgoer tithed, we could literally change the world. By one estimate, just an additional $65 billion (40% of the extra money available if we all tithed) per year would be enough to lift the one billion people who live on less than a dollar a day out of their extreme poverty.
On our last day in Honduras POI had a picnic for the over 400 kids in their program. As I looked around at the kids running, shouting, laughing and hugging their sponsors, there was no doubt in my mind they knew they mattered to God and I knew I wanted to be a part of letting them know.
Life change like I witnessed in Honduras does not happen by riding around high in your SUV throwing nickels at the world’s problems. It happens when we refuse to allow the magnitude of the problem keep us from providing hope to “the least of these” one by one.
You may not be clear on just how God wants to use you. But that’s no excuse for doing nothing. Gavin, my nine-year-old, asked me last week how he could know what God wanted him to do. I told him God wants him to do what he is good at, likes to do and helps others. Discovering God’s will is not complicated – it is intuitive and flows from our new nature.
You matter to God just as much as the one billion people who live on less than a dollar a day. He just wants them to matter as much to you as they matter to Him. If they do, not only their lives but yours will never be the same.
Missions with Mike 