An Experience To Build On

We are taking some teens on a domestic mission trip today.  We are going to drive 11 hours away to help a new, one year old church in Utah.  Our plan is to pass out flyers and tracts in the city for two mornings and then participate in worship with the new church on Sunday and then, of course, drive home.  When we get back, I am sure their families and friends will ask how it went and I hope to hear good things.

But more than the hopes that I have for what I want to see, I know that God will use this experience in each of their lives in a practical way.  In all of my visits with people, I listen to stories of the past and can’t help but see how life is a sum of all our experiences.  I know that God will use this experience of a mission trip in each of their lives.  This experience will not only advance God’s kingdom on earth, but also help form the foundation on which the rest of these young people’s lives are being built. 

“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock:  and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house;  and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.  But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand:  and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell.  And great was its fall.”  Matthew 7:24-27