Pastor Jim Jackson

Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church

Perhaps most Christians are acquainted with what we call the Great Commission found in Mathew 28:19-20.

That is where Christians gain great motivation for sharing the Gospel with the whole word. Jesus called believers to go into all the world to share the good news he brought, making disciples, teaching them, and baptizing them.

Looking back into the Old Testament, we are reminded that God called Abraham to leave the comforts of his home, and follow Him into a land he did not yet know.

When Jesus called the twelve disciples, he called them to leave their occupations and homes to become fishers of men.

The Apostle Paul gave his life to do missionary work, crossing barriers of land, race, and religion. The Damascus Road, upon which he was first encountered by Jesus, set Paul on a road all over Asia Minor with the good news, Jesus saves.

The history of Christianity reveals how thousands, if not millions, of people have left the comforts of home to tell others the Good News.

Yet that’s not the whole story, for sometimes, God’s call to you and me is “Go home.” And at least as I see it, going home can be as challenging as missionary work in foreign lands. In Mark’s Gospel, chapter five, we read of a crazy sort of man who lived in tombs, who having been healed by Jesus, wished to follow him, but Jesus said: “Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee” (Mark 5:19).

I believe that going home might be as challenging, or more challenging, as crossing land and sea. Jesus himself said: “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country.”

Home presents one with the same scenery and same people everyday. Other places allow us the benefit of not being known by those persons we meet. What they see of us may not represent the whole truth. They may look upon us with too much blind favor. But that’s not true of home, where family and friends know us as we are. At home our testimony of Jesus, challenges us to “practice what we preach.” The people at home need us just as much as those persons in exotic places of the world. They may only see the Gospel through the lens of our lives. Wherever else God may send us, let us never forget that sometimes the word is “Go home.”