You’re getting ready to go on a mission trip—but are you preparing spiritually? How do you plan to focus on God during your trip? What will shape your heart before and after your trip?
At Words of Hope, we know the privilege of time spent with believers from other places and other cultures and using the skills and resources God has given you to encourage them. It’s a privilege that will challenge and grow your faith in surprising ways.
Something Greater
As believers we are sent out to a world that needs the good news of Jesus. The Greek word apostoloi means someone sent as a messenger. We translate it as apostles and use that word for the first followers of Jesus, the ones first commissioned to share the good news. And it’s their example we follow as we are sent into the world.
As you participate in a mission trip, you are participating in something much greater than repairing houses, teaching classes, caring for children, providing healthcare, or even sharing the gospel. You are sent out to participate in God’s mission to redeem his broken world and reclaim his people, alongside other believers. In the apostles’ work, even as they healed people in Jesus’s name, freed captives, and preached the gospel, their focus stayed on God and his mission.
Spend Time with God
As you plan your mission trip, take time to consider the example of Jesus’s first followers, and prepare your heart for what you will experience. There are two crucial steps to engage spiritually at every stage of your trip. These steps aren’t dramatic, and they aren’t difficult either. As you prepare, while you are gone, and when you return home, take time intentionally with God in the Bible and in prayer every day.
This time will ground you in the Bible, pointing you up to God, and out to the people God is calling you to serve.
- Start with 15 minutes.
- Read the Bible.
- Take time to pray.
Intentionally give the work you are planning to do, and the work you are doing to God. Commit yourself to God’s service, and reflect on what you are hearing from his Word.
Go Deeper
To go deeper, Apostoloi: A Devotional Guide for Mission Trips is designed to help you grow spiritually at every step of your journey. The heart of the book is a 10-day devotional reading plan that you can use before you go and while you are gone. The series dives deeply into Luke 9:51-10:20. These passages describe the first mission trip; one in which Jesus sent his disciples out to preach and bless people. As you go out on your mission trip, there is no better model than Jesus’s own instructions to his disciples.
Blog post adapted from Apostoloi: A Devotional Guide for Mission Trips.
