The Value of Mission Stories
In the following podcasts, I want to highlight a small theme from the booklet "Vreugdevolle roeping" (Joyful Calling) each time. This booklet is published by De Banier.
This time it is about reading mission books. It might sound a bit dry, maybe you are not much of a reader, and reading something about this topic might not appeal to you at all.
A question: how can something become interesting if you never give it a chance? Precisely by reading something about this topic, your interest can be sparked. And the theme can suddenly come very close, yes, perhaps even as close as it did in our own lives. Missions became truly important — was God trying to tell us something through the accounts of the lives of missionaries?
Books written by or about missionaries — I myself have devoured quite a few of them. Their courage to go to still-unreached peoples, far away from everything familiar, inspired me. There is a big difference between how it used to be and how it is now. In the past, they often traveled for weeks by sea, on horseback, or even on foot. What drove them? Why were they willing to give up so much? Some even their lives! Why did they go so far to bring people into contact with the Gospel?
Some of them even came to look like the people among whom they lived. They dressed just like them. They lived in poverty, suffered hunger, or were in great danger. They experienced what Paul experienced. There were even missionaries who lost a child, or sometimes had to bury several children, because of strange illnesses and a lack of medical care. Why did they do that? It made me more and more curious. Why were such ordinary people willing to give up so much in their lives for the proclamation of the Gospel?
I discovered more and more that it was the need that drove them. The need that their fellow human beings would perish if they did not hear the Gospel.
They were moved by their fate. Even though these fellow human beings lived kilometers and kilometers away from them. By reading biographies of missionaries, I became more and more aware of the necessity of missions. I came to know, as it were, another world, another reality. The world of missions. And that fostered the longing and anticipation to be allowed to work in His service. For the extension of His Kingdom and for the greater honor and glory of His Name.
This podcast is a brief summary of the chapter "Het nut van zendingsverhalen" (The Value of Mission Stories) from the booklet "Vreugdevolle roeping" (Joyful Calling), written by Marije Fris. Published by publisher De Banier. Order the booklet now: https://www.debanier.nl/vreugdevolle-roeping.
