A Heart for the Nations

 To have a heart for the nations, is to have a heart for your nation. 

To have a heart for children and families, is to have a heart for your children and families.

Why is it that when a youth group plans a mission trip, they tend to leave either their country, their state, or their community? Is it because their school is full of believers? Is it because their county already praises God?

Why do we sneak out of the castle to fight enemies in far away lands when we have a whole army of enemy combatants battering at our gates? Is the war being waged in distant lands more pressing than the one being waged in our own? Perhaps it is less embarrassing or less of a risk if you lose? After all didn't Jesus say in Luke, "Only in his home town and in his own house is a prophet without honor."

But when we were told to go to every nation, we were told Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest parts of the earth. Evangelism starts at home. It starts with where we are right now. 

It may be easier to evangelize someone in a far off place who doesn't know about your history, doesn't know how you spend your Tuesday nights and where your children spend their Tuesday nights. When we go to far off places our lives are under far less scrutiny, and therefore we are held to some extent less accountable for the fruit we bear each and every day. When I witness to my coworker, that time I cussed out my boss for keeping me late on a Friday will come to his mind, and if I was not repentant about that situation, or if that is a regular occurrence, my message will be in contradiction to my life. 

So evangelizing where you are requires your life. Not a few hours of your time. Living our faith is in general one of the great ways to evangelize. Our actions speak much louder than our words. No one wants to hear about serving a God that the message bearer himself doesn't obey 6 days out of the week. 

It starts in the home, it starts with our own children. Then our communities and workplaces, and the overflow both generationally and geographically has no limits. We should not neglect the garden God has placed us in to go and tend to another. No matter how trimmed a garden is, when left alone, will become weeds. Raise up cultivators, raise up gardeners. Raise up son's like Jeremiah who held in their left hand a trowel and in their right a sword. Son's who can both build up and fight away. 

To have a heart for the nations is to have a heart for your own.