Heart of the Missionary

 "For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him." [2 Chronicles 16:9]

When I first considered going back to Romania long term, my Romanian pastor Raul referenced this verse. He wanted to confirm that my heart was for the Lord and for Romania.

After four weeks of cross-cultural long-term missionary training, the heart remains the most important thing when it comes to being effective, no matter where we go. Training, knowledge and experience, while a good thing, are nothing without the right heart.

---

Heart for Culture

God created unique cultures around the world. Every culture often represents God in its own way and when we experience different cultures we often walk away with a bigger picture of who God is. However, because we are so familiar with our own culture, it is easy to judge other cultures and the ways they do life. Therefore it is important to have a heart for culture - to die to our own culture and value what we can learn from other cultures.

Heart for People

This may seem obvious, but it is not as simple as we may want it to be. Most of us as Americans are task-oriented. We like to see results and accomplish big things. Again, being driven toward a certain goal is not a bad thing but majority of the world cultures value relationships over the task. We must be willing to lay down our go-go-go and do-do-do mentality in order to love people and build relationships.

Heart for your Team

You may have heard the African proverb "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." We were designed for community and to work together. Without a solid team it would be hard to be effective and even to survive in another culture for long. However, to have a solid team everyone must have a humble heart and listening ear. It is important to value and love your team.

Heart of the Gospel

It is easy to think "Those people or this country need the gospel so much!" but I heard this statement during the first week of training and it stuck: "You can never preach the gospel to someone who needs it more than you do." No matter how long we have been walking with God, we need the gospel every day. Even if I am going to be a missionary, I am still a broken sinful person. I fall into pride and idolatry. I make mistakes. But the heart of the gospel is God knew all this about me and he still loved me and he chose me. Now I have to daily walk in the truth that my acceptance, my identity and my satisfaction is found in God alone. As I remember the gospel each day, it is a reminder of the goal of the missionary as well: "For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake." [2 Corinthians 4:5] I have to daily humble myself in order that God would be glorified.

---

I titled this heart of the missionary, but be reminded that we are all called to be missionaries where we are. I pray God would shape our hearts in humility to be more like Jesus each day.