Zambia Hunt

Our Lord Jesus Christ left us many instructions. Two of the most significant are the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

The Great Commandment calls us to “love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength and mind” (Luke 10:27). The Great Commission commands us to “go into all the world and preach the gospel” to all people (Mark 16:15).

Three Lessons from the Mission Field

Thomas Ragland, a missionary to India many years ago, distilled his experience into three essential lessons about missions:

1. Of all the qualifications for mission work—and every other work—love is the greatest (1 Corinthians 13).

2. Of all methods of attaining usefulness and honor, the only safe one is purging our hearts from worldliness and selfishness (2 Timothy 2:21).

3. Of all plans for ensuring success, the most certain is Christ’s plan: becoming like a grain of wheat that falls into the ground and dies (John 12:24).

Christ’s Example

This is precisely what Jesus Christ did two thousand years ago. He surrendered His life and His fame. He traveled throughout the world speaking with men and women, taking children in His arms, and disregarding what the world considered important. He lived His life for others and to accomplish the will of His Father. In the end, He gave His life.

Though He lost His life, He found it again in the millions throughout history who have received His message and become His followers.

Our Commission

Christ was motivated by love. He lived a life of selfless devotion to the Father and to others. He died, and in dying, He offered life to every person. Jesus then commissioned us—you and me—to take His love and the message of His life to all people everywhere.

We are invited to participate in God’s mission by praying, giving, and going with the gospel. May God use His church as a launching point from which the good news about Jesus reaches people who have yet to hear about Him.