One of the most commonly asked questions we receive is how we could subject our children to the dangers of the mission field such as malaria, lack of access to good medical care, and so on. Here are some of our responses to these questions:
Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).
A great example of a father who loved God more than he loved his son was Abraham. The Lord went so far as to command Abraham to offer his son Isaac to him as a sacrifice and Abraham obeyed (until an angel stopped him right before he was about to kill his son). Interestingly, we do not see the Bible condemning this father for “blindly” following the Lord at the expense of his family, but instead he is heralded for his great faith in God (Heb 11:17-19).
And so, if Abraham proved his love for God through being willing to kill his son, how much more free are we to simply ask our children to grow up in a “foreign” country? We want our kids to know, loud and clear, that their parents love the Lord first and are committed to calling others to love him to, even if these others happen to be living in poorer regions of the world.
Jesus commands us to love him first and he said how we can prove this is through our obedience to him (John 14:15). Before he went back up into Heaven, he gave his disciples the duty to carry news of him all over the world. We believe that duty falls into the lap of the church in every place, at every time. Thus, as we have grappled with this great call, we believe that our love for Jesus needs to move us to action towards the least reached in the world. This obedience is how we express to Jesus that we love him and that he is first in our lives, even before our own children.
