Family

by Rebecca Hickman

Parents: When God Says "GO," but Family Says "NO!"

There is a dilemma that numerous young adults in history have faced when dealing with world missions: What happens when God says "go," but family says "no"? In Exodus 20:12, the Lord gives this command: "Honor your father and your mother." This same command is repeated to the church in Ephesus. Paul writes, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 'Honor your father and mother' - which is the first commandment with a promise " (Eph. 6:1-2). On the other hand, in Matthew 10:37, Jesus says, "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." Again, in Luke 14:26, Jesus says, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters - yes, even his own life - he cannot be my disciple." These words cannot be ignored. So how do you live between these two different commands? There must be a way to respect your parents and still follow God's will over theirs.

First of all, you need to evaluate your relationship to your parents. Are they believers or non-believers? Are they closely involved in your life? Do you often include them in making life decisions? Do your parents trust you to make good decisions? Have they been interested in hearing details of your plans? What are their top priorities? Do they know what your priorities are now? While growing up in their home and/or depending on them for financial help, you are under their authority. Culturally, there comes a time when you gradually move out from under your parents' authority and make decisions for yourself. For some it occurs when they graduate college and move into their own career. For others it comes with getting married. The timing is different for everyone, so you must discern for yourself where you are in relation to your parents.

The heart is deceitful, so it is important to realize that disapproval from family can be used as an excuse for not obeying the Lord. Some people will hide behind a negative answer as a way out. It's easy to blame parents for something that you don't want to do. To check these motives ask yourself: "How hard did I try to show my parents that what I've decided is from the Lord?" If you truly believe that your decision is in line with God's will, you should be highly motivated to help your parents understand that as well.

Eddie Gibbs, a foreign missionary who has dealt with this issue, gives some ways to address your family in his article "Family: What to Do When Parents Say No":

1. Ask them to pray with you for a few months about your plans.

2. Ask them why they feel as they do. (Seriously consider their reasons. Since they raised you and know your character better than anyone else, they may see some major problems with your plans that you hadn't realized.)

3. Seek counsel from an older Christian who knows your family. They may have some insight about how to approach your parents.

4. Introduce them to a staff member of the mission agency, and let them ask questions (on the phone or in person).

5. Express your gratitude for the things they have provided for you in the past.

6. Show appreciation for the sacrifices they will be making when you go.

7. Let your family know that you haven't just dismissed their objections.

If you feel that you are still under the umbrella of their authority in this decision, you may need to wait for an opportunity at a later date. However, eventually "the point may come when you must go in the face of parental opposition" (Gibbs). Either way, the one thing you have control over is maintaining an honoring attitude toward your parents. Sometimes the greatest witness your parents can see is you fully obeying the call of God on your life.

In the late 1800s, John R. Mott faced the challenge of obeying God and his parents. As a college student at Cornell University, he had many options for his future. Mott is an outstanding example of how to honor your parents as you seek God's will for your life. He kept them informed about what God was teaching him, so they knew that his decisions weren't hasty or irrational. Below are some of the letters he wrote to his parents.

About his decision to go into ministry:

"Dear Father and Mother, The past week has seen a great change in my plans for life and it has not been a sudden change … since I have been here (Cornell) I have not been contented with my plans and there has been a constantly increasing impulse in me urging me to devote my whole life and talents to the service of Jesus … last Tuesday I went up to study with my friend ... My conscience would say nothing but 'consecrate yourself to My service' … I prayed with faith … and God told me in reply that I must work the vineyard … My friend then read as follows the verse that occurred to him: 'And He said unto them: Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.' …"

About a life-changing summer conference:

"I write tonight about a very important matter. Mr. Moody the great revivalist is going to hold a College Students' Summer School during the entire month of July … Out of 150 members, they have chosen me to represent the Association (YMCA) … It was necessary that I make my decision at once... I thought and prayed over the matter a day; I was then convinced that it was my duty to go ... I then went to my pastor and asked his advice. He told me to 'Go by all means.' … Dear parents, I have made the first decision of any importance, which I have ever made without your advice; but it was no matter of self; it was of God from beginning to end - and I do not think you will object to my decision."

About the struggle he went through in determining his purpose in life:

"Dear Mother, I don't want to leave you nor will I in this new work before me more than in any other field I should have entered ... But I must not desert my Master who has even done more for me … I have a hard fight in my own spirit. My own spirit says, 'you are gifted for the legal profession' … Again the same spirit says 'go into business.' … That spirit, ma, is the spirit of flesh, of the world and of the devil! Am I wrong? On the other hand there is a still small voice saying, 'Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature - the harvest is great but the laborers are few - he who would save his life shall lose it but he who would lose his life for my sake the same shall save it' ... It calls to mind how He has spared me among my sins - how He has placed intellectual advantages of rare type in my grasp - how He has prompted me to the work …"

John R. Mott was deeply involved in the YMCA during college and throughout his life. Through God's leading, he went on to found the World's Student Christian Federation, a worldwide fellowship of students and young people, and in 1946 he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Overall, he was one of the most influential World Christians of his time, and his accomplishments still influence the world today.

Mott is one of many who have wrestled with the balance of obeying God and family. The issue of obeying parents is one that must be addressed. Parents play a unique role in the lives of their children - they teach us and guide us as we grow up. Keith Green said, "It is true that God wants us to honor our parents and love our friends, but He has also made it clear in His Word that this honor and love must not exceed our love and obedience to Him and His calling on our lives."

"Must you go to China? How much nicer it would be to stay here and serve the Lord at home!" She made it plain at last that she would not go to China.

J. Hudson Taylor's new ex-girlfriend

You can do something other than working with God in His purpose, but it will always be something lesser, and you couldn't come up with something better.

Steve Hawthorne

I have seen, at different times, the smoke of a thousand villages villages whose people are without Christ, without God, and without hope in the world.

Robert Moffat

The command has been to "go," but we have stayed in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth... but 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland.

Robert Savage

While vast continents are shrouded in darkness... the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by God to keep you out of the foreign mission field.

Ion Keith-Falconer

I wasn't God's first choice for what I've done for China... I don't know who it was... It must have been a man... a well-educated man. I don't know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn't willing... and God looked down... and saw Gladys Aylward... And God said "Well, she's willing."

Gladys Aylward

Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees.

J. Hudson Taylor

The man... looking at him with a smile that only half concealed his contempt, inquired, "Now Mr. Morrison do you really expect that you will make an impression on the idolatry of the Chinese Empire?" "No sir," said Morrison, "but I expect that God will."

Robert Morrison

Here am I. Send me.

Isaiah

And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives... and when the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.

Nate Saint

Jehovah Witnesses don't believe in hell and neither do most Christians.

Leonard Ravenhill

Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary.

C.T. Studd

Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.

said to a young William Carey

Oh, that I had a thousand lives, and a thousand bodies! All of them should be devoted to no other employment but to preach Christ to these degraded, despised, yet beloved mortals.

Robert Moffat

We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.

John Stott

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Jim Elliot

A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story.

K.P. Yohannan

I have but one passion it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.

Count Zinzindorf

God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supplies.

J. Hudson Taylor

He must increase, but I must decrease.

John the Baptist

If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.

C.T. Studd

The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner.

William Cameron Townsend

Prepare for the worst, expect the best, and take what comes.

Robert E. Speer

The saddest thing one meets is a nominal Christian. I had not seen it in Japan where missions is younger. The church here is a "field full of wheat and tares."

Amy Carmichael

I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth.

James O. Fraser

It is just as proper, maybe even more so, to say Christ's global cause has a Church as to say Christ's Church has a global cause.

David Bryant

If you are sick, fast and pray; if the language is hard to learn, fast and pray; if the people will not hear you, fast and pray, if you have nothing to eat, fast and pray.

Frederick Franson

What are we here for, to have a good time with Christians or to save sinners?

Malla Moe

I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver.

Robert Murray Mc'Cheyne

It's amazing what can be accomplished if you don't worry about who gets the credit.

Clarence W. Jones

Two distinguishing marks of the early church were: 1) Poverty 2) Power.

T.J. Bach

Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give.

David Livingstone

From my many years' experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross.

Sadhu Sundar Singh

I pray that no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been.

Lottie Moon

All my friends are but one, but He is all sufficient.

William Carey

How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves.

C.T. Studd

I have always believed that the Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he wanted to.

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

The more obstacles you have, the more opportunities there are for God to do something.

Clarence W. Jones

Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.

William Carey

God's part is to put forth power; our part is to put forth faith.

Andrew A. Bonar

All the resources of the Godhead are at our disposal!

Jonathan Goforth

I feel now, that Arabia could easily be evangelized within the next thirty years if it were not for the wicked selfishness of Christians.

Samuel Zwemer

The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West.

E. Stanley Jones

This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

Jesus

All roads lead to the judgment seat of Christ.

Keith Green

Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.

Oswald Chambers

Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them.

A.W. Tozer

I have said that there is nothing in the world or the Church, except it's disobedience, to render the evangelization of the world in this generation an impossibility.

Robert Speer

I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India might know there is one who cares.

Alexander Duff

Today Christians spend more money on dog food than missions.

Leonard Ravenhill

It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home.

J. Hudson Taylor

We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first.

Oswald J. Smith

God cannot lead you on the basis of facts that you do not know.

David Bryant

And thus I aspire to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named so that I would not build on another man's foundation.

Paul

Why do we insist on building the largest and most impressive structures in our city when people on the other side of town are hungry, jobless and worshipping in storefronts?

K.P. Yohannan

If every Christian is already considered a missionary, then all can stay put where they are, and nobody needs to get up and go anywhere to preach the gospel. But if our only concern is to witness where we are, how will people in unevangelized areas ever hear the gospel? The present uneven distribution of Christians and opportunities to hear the gospel of Christ will continue on unchanged.

C. Gordon Olson

I spent twenty years of my life trying to recruit people out of local churches and into missions structures so that they could be involved in fulfilling God's global mission. Now I have another idea. Let's take God's global mission and put it right in the middle of the local church!

George Miley

God provides the men and women needed for each generation.

Mildred Cable

Oh dear, I couldn't say that my church is alive and I wouldn't want to call it dead. I guess it's just walking in its sleep!

Church member

When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen.

said of John Geddie

I am ready to burn out for God. I am ready to endure any hardship, if by any means I might save some. The longing of my heart is to make known my glorious Redeemer to those who have never heard.

William Burns

At the moment I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer's love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself.

John G. Paton

Save others, snatching them out of the fire.

Jude

The evangelization of the world in this generation.

Student Volunteer Movement Motto

Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring.

Jesus

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.

John Piper

His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us no other choice.

John Stott

Today five out of six non-Christians in our world have no hope unless missionaries come to them and plant the church among them.

David Bryant

Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ.

Francis Xavier

Christ for the students of the world, and the students of the world for Christ.

Luther Wishard

We who have Christ's eternal life need to throw away our own lives.

George Verwer

Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell.

C.T. Studd

When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone.

J. Hudson Taylor

God has huge plans for the world today! He is not content to merely establish a handful of struggling churches among each tongue, tribe and nation. Even now He is preparing and empowering His Church to carry the seeds of revival to the uttermost ends of the earth.

David Smithers

The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity.

Mike Stachura

Answering a student's question, 'Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?' thus, 'It is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.'

C.H. Spurgeon.

There is something wonderfully misleading, full of hallucination and delusion in this business of missionary calls. With many of us it is not a missionary call at all that we are looking for; it is a shove. There are a great many of us who would never hear a call if it came.

Robert Speer

I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God; first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.

J. Hudson Taylor

I love to live on the brink of eternity.

David Brainerd

The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision.

Helen Keller

'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world.

William Booth

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you are alive, it isn't.

Richard Bach

If God has fit you to be a missionary, I would not have you shrivel down to be a king.

Charles H. Spurgeon

The world is my parish.

John Wesley

Why doesn't your God speak my language?

Guatemalan Indian to Cam Townsend, founder Wycliffe Bible Translators

I am willing to go anywhere, at anytime, to do anything for Jesus.

Luther Wishard

The 3.5 billion unreached people on earth would form a single file line that would stretch around the equator 25 times! Can you picture 25 lines of Christless people, trampling endlessly toward hell? Let that vision stay with you day and night.

Larry Stockstill

God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him, He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him... When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.

Oswald Chambers

A little prayer, little power; no prayer, no power.

A Chinese Christian motto

When God's finger points, God's hand will open the door.

Clarence Jones

I will open Africa to the gospel or die trying.

Rowland Bingham

None but women can reach Muslim Women... So we have a solemn duty in this matter that we cannot shift. The blood of souls is on our skirts, and God will demand them at our hands.

Missionary wife from the Middle East

The church that does not evangelize will fossilize.

Oswald J. Smith

As long as there are millions destitute of the word of God and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, it will be impossible for me to devote my time and energy to those who have both.

J.L. Ewen

If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.

Charles Spurgeon

We have a God who delights in impossibilities.

Andrew Murray

Why do you need a voice when you have a verse.

Jim Elliot

The history of missions is the history of answered prayer. From Pentecost to the Haystack meeting in New England and from the days when Robert Morrison landed in China to the martyrdom of John and Betty Stam, prayer has been the source of power and the secret of spiritual triumph.

Samuel Zwemer

IT Summer Project