When I was a teenager in Argentina, a missionary from California taught me how to pray. His name was Keith Benson. Keith asked if I would like to pray with him once a week. I was thrilled! The first afternoon we got together, Keith put a map on the wall. On the map was the city of Cordoba, which is the second largest city in Argentina.

We began praying for each and every church in Cordoba. It took many months, but we did it! Then Keith began putting up maps of other cities throughout Argentina, and we prayed for those by name, week after week.

Eventually, it was on to South America. We prayed for each and every country. Finally, Keith brought out a globe of the world! And I fell in love with the nations! I learned so much through those prayer sessions. Keith taught me that regular prayer not only enhances your relationship with God, but it increases your vision for what God can do through your prayers. I determined that I was ready to go wherever the Lord called me!

In John 16, Jesus says: “My Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” Whatever we ask in Jesus’ name, He promises to do it. So dream big - but pray even bigger - that God will use you to reach your world for Jesus Christ!

The great missionary and evangelist Stanley Jones wrote that most Christians will need to re-surrender their lives to God to protect them, as he said, “from the inroads of the world.”

My recommitment occurred in my early twenties when I was a seminary student. I had given my life to Christ when I was twelve, but over the next ten years had fallen into behaviors that were far from Christ-like. I felt like a hypocrite. Then one day, Major Ian Thomas spoke at our chapel service.

Major Thomas told the story of Moses and the burning bush. Even though the bush was just a bunch of dried up sticks, Moses knew that God was in it. It hit me that I was like that bush.

I was like a useless bunch of dried up sticks, unless God filled me. Thomas closed by reading Galatians 2:20 where Paul says “I have been crucified in Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” I realized then that I was trying to live in my own power instead of God’s indwelling, resurrection power.

When you understand that Christ lives in you, it’s not what you can do for God, but what God will do in and through you. You’re not on your own, especially when you share your faith. So, ask the Lord for opportunities, and then boldly share the faith you possess.

I truly believe that God talks through mothers. In my youth, I was waiting for my personal call from God, that moment when the Lord would tell me that evangelism would be my life’s work. Finally, my exasperated mother reminded me that “the call” was made 2000 years ago, and that the Lord was just waiting for my answer. She was right as usual.

Dr. Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade, once said that “an effective witness is someone who takes the initiative to present the claims of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit- and leaves the results to God.”

As Christians, we’re all in the missions field. Some of us will travel to distant, often dangerous lands, but most of us will find people hungering for the Good News much closer to home. Either way, we stand in the gap, living out and proclaiming our faith and leaving the rest up to God.

The Apostle Paul was history’s greatest missionary, taking the Gospel to much of the known world before planes, trains and automobiles. As he told the Corinthians, “we are speaking for Christ, as though God Himself were making his appeal through us.” That is our task as missionaries, as Ambassadors for Christ, wherever we are.

As believers we know that God expects us to share the Good News of His love and eternal salvation with others. Some people step out on faith and take God’s word to the world as missionaries. Most Christians never take that step, either in the belief that God is sovereign and doesn’t need our help, or - more likely - because we feel we lack the gifts of evangelism.

The truth is that God doesn’t care about how gifted or talented or good looking we might be - He only cares that we are obedient. In the early 1900’s a young, uneducated parlor maid named Gladys Aylward felt called to preach the Gospel in China. Too poor for the ship fare, she traveled overland by train, then bus, then mule, ending up in the city of Yangchen where no one had ever seen a European.

Over the next two decades and through World War II she shared the love of Christ through tireless service to the Chinese people. Her remarkable story is remembered through books and the movie “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.”

Whatever our gifts or status in life, God wants us in the missions field, bringing Good News, just as we are. If you have a story about reaching your world as a missionary we would love to hear it. Please drop me a note at radio@palau.org.