Divine Assignment

"To be a disciple is to be a learner," the speaker said on the cd we were listening to in the car. "And after a period of time, the disciple begins to do and talk and  act like his teacher."  Howard had gone into the store, and when he came back, I made an announcement.

"We have raised six disciples!" I said.  "We lived with them day after day, and they saw the real us, for better or for worse," I explained.  It was true.  Little by little, and mostly unconsciously, they absorbed our values, our world view, and largely our life style!

The years of taking our children to church became such a habit that that is the way they raise their own children!  Now they are making (or have made) disciples!  And some of those disciples are making little disciples, as the great-grandchildren come along!

"I'll be glad when they reach the exponential curve," my husband said, half joking.  Well, they will.  Counting spouses and the two new adoptions, our family now has 40 members.  That's one way to disciple and build the kingdom of God!

Not that they're clones or don't have their own personalities.  Each one is different, has different interests, likes and abilities.  But they are grounded in their faith and are salt and light in their communities.  Jesus's disciples couldn't have been more different.   He said to them in Acts 14:12  that believers would do the works He did and even greater ones (don't you love it when your kids out do you?) because He was going to the Father . I think that meant that He would send the Holy Spirit to empower them.

Many Christians desire to go to the mission field, wherever that is, but our own children are our first mission field.  The seeds planted in their childhood are like the mustard seed mentioned in Matthew 13:31-32.  Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: (32) Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among the herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof."

Psalm127:3 tells us  that children are an heritage of the Lord.  Verse 4 compares them to arrows, and in verse 5, the scripture says, "Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them."  Like arrows, our children will go into places we will never go and into a future we may never see.  How wonderful if they carry the gospel with them!