You’ll need a Kleenex: When parents don’t want their kids to go to the mission field

My mother hated the idea that her son-in-law wanted to take her daughter to Africa.

 

She was adamant. Persistent. Heartsick.

 

Although I never admitted it to her, I understood her opposition. I didn’t like the idea, either, but at the same time I felt I shouldn’t let her interfere with the decision Dave and I needed to make ourselves.

 

It was a painful time.

 

I believe God created mothers to have a special bond with their children—after all, most of us believe our kids are among the most precious gifts God could ever give us. That’s where my mother was coming from.

 

I also believe God created mothers to try in every possible way to protect their kids from anything negative or painful or scary or uncertain. That, too, was where my mother was coming from.

 

And yet. . . . And yet. . . . There’s more than that to the parent-child relationship.

 

Parents need to prepare their children for adulthood and then. . . . they need to loosen their tight grip on the kids.

 

Parents can’t fight their adult kids’ battles. They need to free them to wrestle with life and faith in the best way they know how—and hopefully that’s with God alongside them.

 

At such times, the battle parents can and should fight is this: to pray unceasingly.

 

Many years ago, Amy Carmichael asked herself if she could let go of a loved one, allowing him to endure pain or loss even as God the Father did, noting that God’s love for His Son “caused Him to give that beloved One to suffering for the salvation of a lost world.”

 

She continues, “What do we know of such love? What do I know of it? Am I prepared to give one whom I love to pain or loss, as the Father gave, if only others may be blessed? This, nothing less, was what the love wherewith the Father loved the Son caused Him to do. It is this love and no other that our Lord prayed should be in us. [John 17:26: I have made You known to them, and will continue to make You known in order that the love You have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.]” (Edges of His Ways, 1955)

 

What sacrificial love Amy Carmichael offered up!

 

Lloyd John Ogilvie wrote that “the special calling of mothers is to prepare their children for service and then give them away to follow [God].” (God’s Best for My Life)

 

And my mother knew so well that she had to let God have her daughter. You see, when she was pregnant with me, her doctor feared she’d miscarry so for months she prayed, “Lord, if You let my baby live, I’ll dedicate her to You.” And He let me live. And later He would also ask my mother to follow up on her promise to Him about me.

 

Lloyd John Ogilvie was very instrumental in my mother’s life, and she introduced me to several of his daily devotionals. I’m certain she read a passage in Ogilvie’s Quiet Moments With God in which he penned a prayer asking God to give him “an attitude of fortitude.”

 

And I’m sure she knew from experience what he wrote: “Lord, You have all authority in heaven and on earth. I submit my life to Your authority. Fill my mind with clear convictions that You are in charge of my life and those about whom I am concerned. I surrender myself and them to You.”

 

Ogilvie continued, “Now Lord, may this commitment result in a new, positive attitude that exudes joy and hope about what You are going to do today and in the future. I leave the results completely in Your hands.” (Quiet Moments With God)

 

And so it was that a year before Dave and I left for Africa, I received a gift from my mother—a very precious gift indeed. (See photo below. Don’t miss it! But get a Kleenex first.)

 

It was a frame containing 1 Samuel 1:27, 28, beautifully lettered: “For this child I prayed, and the Lord has given me my petition which I asked of Him—So I have dedicated her to the Lord; as long as she lives, she is dedicated to the Lord. . . .”

 

Taped to the back of the frame was a photocopy of another Lloyd Ogilvie devotional along with, and—this is the most special part of all—she wrote her promise to God and to me, in her beautiful handwriting:

 

“Today I reaffirm this promise to God and to my lovely Linda! My heart and prayers will always be with you.

 

With humility, love and gratitude,

 

Mom

June 23, 1992”

 

God bless her for that! God bless her! I know it hurt terribly, but she did the right thing.

 

And from then on, she was a huge supporter of Dave and me and of the ministries in Africa we would soon begin.

 

Our entangling, conflicting loyalties

“I am Yours, God. Take me and use me.”

 

“I’ll live my life for You. I’ll do anything You ask.”

 

“I love You more than anything else.”

 

“All I am and all I have—Lord I give them all to You.”

 

You and I sing words like those, and sometimes pray them, but do we really mean them?

 

Jesus taught, in Luke 9, that when we say we’ll follow Him, we must first count the cost.

 

He resolutely set out for Jerusalem and, on the way, met three men.

 

“The three different levels of commitment represented in people He met along the way,” writes Lloyd John Ogilvie, “expose the ways many Christians relate to their discipleship today.” (God’s Best for My Life)

 

Man #1 promised he’d follow Jesus wherever He went. Ogilvie says the man “made a grand, pious commitment that went no deeper than words.”

 

In reply, Jesus challenged him, as if to ask, “Oh, really?” He no doubt recognized the man’s emotional enthusiasm and naiveté, so He pointed out that He didn’t have a home—not even a place to lay His head. It was as if Jesus asked, “Are you sure you want to live that way?”

 

Jesus said that because those who follow Him must live in sacrificial ways, they need to count the cost—realistically.

 

When Jesus invited Man #2 to follow as a disciple, the man said that first he wanted to bury his father.

 

Some Bible scholars suggest the man’s father might have still been alive; if so, he could’ve waited years before setting out to follow Jesus. Others surmise the man’s father had only recently died.

 

Either way, no doubt Jesus recognized the man’s commendable commitment to his family but cautioned him to recognize his priorities. He had what Ogilvie calls “a secondary loyalty” that “kept him tied to his past.”

 

Ogilvie writes, “In substance, Christ said, ‘Forget the past; follow Me!’ We dare not misinterpret His words to suggest a lack of concern for life’s obligations, but rather a call to be concerned about His call to live rather than worry about what is dead and past.”

 

Man #3 agreed to be a disciple but first, he wanted to say goodbye to his family. Ogilvie calls him a man with “competing loyalties.” We’re to seek and serve God first. We must count the cost of doing so.

 

Discipleship involves extreme demands. Clear priorities. Radical commitment.

 

In Luke 14:27-28, Jesus said, “You cannot be my disciple if you do not carry your own cross and follow me. But don’t begin until you count the cost” (NLT).

 

Little did I know then, before going to Africa, that I would 

meet numerous colleagues who counted the cost realistically, 

people who followed God to extremely demanding locales and tasks, 

people who held on through thick and thin.

 

And they did it without complaining!

 

That’s clear priorities. That’s radical commitment.

 

Jesus knew human nature so well—He said, “Anyone who puts a hand to the plow,” in other words, whoever gets started as a disciple, “and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62 NLT).

 

Conflicting loyalties, commitments, and obligations pull many of us in directions away from where God longs for us to go.

 

“We have one hand on the plow of discipleship,” Ogilvie writes, “and the other reaching back to the past or to lesser commitments. In what ways are you looking back?”

 

“What entangling loyalties,” he asks, “. . . make it difficult to give your whole mind and heart and will to Christ?”

 

That was the question I had to wrestle with before I was willing to relocate to Africa.

 

God was asking me to let go of my kids and place them in His hands,

and then asking me to die to the dreams and plans I had

as mother to my kids

and grandmother to their kids.

 

What He was asking of me left me stunned, broken.