Helping kids (and yourself) to love missions

I just read this article and was so stirred and excited by it and would love to hear your thoughts as well.

10 Ways to Help Kids Love Missions assumes that you yourself love missions, but I think these practical suggestions would do much to stir your own heart as well as your family. I get the sense (and I could be wrong) that a lot of people I've talked to about what God's doing in the nations have the perspective that it makes sense to get involved and excited IF you're called to that...meaning IF that desire is already in your heart and IF you're called to go to the nations and even IF you're just naturally inclined to enjoy and be interested in that type of thing.

There seems to sometimes be a disconnect between God being glorified here in our own lives, churches, neighborhoods and Him being glorified in the slums of a Muslim township or a small West African village we can't pronouce. I'm convicted that we are to be about God's glory...period. Wherever it is. That's how we stay connected to the bigger picture, how we see God through different eyes and behold His beauty in a fresh, captivating way.

"Oh sing to the Lord a new song;

sing to the Lord, all the earth!

Sing to the Lord, bless his name;

tell of his salvation from day to day.

Declare his glory among the nations,

his marvelous works among all the peoples!

For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;

he is to be feared above all gods."

Ps 93:1-4

It has been an incredible gift of grace in my life to be able to just catch a glimpse of what worship might look like in a different culture, to sit at the feet of missionaries and hear their first-hand accounts of God working in ways that give you goose bumps, to watch in person a group of poor, dirty people lift their hands up to God with tears streaming down their faces as they worship in another language with their whole hearts. I get teary thinking of it. I don't have words that can describe the beauty.

There is MUCH to be tasted and seen of God when it comes to the nations, and we miss out on so, so much when we live our lives never positioning ourselves to ever taste or see it.

Suggestions 6-9 are my favorite, though the other 7 suggestions are really good too. I can honestly say that if my parent's had not lived out #7, my love and enjoyment of God wouldn't be close to the same. That gift was priceless to me and it still is.

Thank you, Mom and Dad.