We attend a missionary minded church, one that not only sends individuals across the ocean with passports and visas to reach the lost, but also church members who reach our own inner city families with the gospel message. Not only giving financially, many individuals and groups personally go themselves for a few days abroad, to spread God’s Word and love. Each of our children’s programs even get involved doing things like praying, collecting money for special bikes for the handicapped children in India, and packing Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes during Sunday School. Then of course, there are the traditional missionaries who live abroad full time to spread the gospel.

We often get e-mail newsletters from various missionaries and this morning we read one from some staff members for Campus Crusade for Christ. He had made a recent trip to Thessalonika, where Paul had preached and left his mark. This modern missionary’s purpose for the trip was to meet with other staff members in charge of strategic planning to reach the world for Christ…through the internet! This has been an ongoing request for prayer, as this missionary has been working on various aspects of this ministry with the growing technology. Over the years, he has sent links that CCC has developed to minister to on-line seekers during times of national need.

I found the parallels between Thessalonika and an on-line ministry intriguing. Paul wrote 2 letters to this young church. In fact, the young believers were so charged with a passion to spread the gospel message, that as Paul traveled, he got news that they had already heard the message from the Thessalonians. I Thess. 1:6-9 As the CCC staff member noted in his e-mail, while working with team members from the area, the church in Thessalonika today is alive and well! Praise the Lord!

Over the last year, the Lord seemed to impress me to start blogging, for many reasons. Honestly, I did not know if I had anything valuable to contribute, so I thought I’d merely pursue my creative writing outlet while sharing my various interests and homeschool adventures. Nevertheless, underneath it all, would be the source from which all my ideas came, the desire to honor the Lord and somehow to magnify Him. What if someone who needed a word of encouragement from Him stumbled upon a little thing I wrote? God could use that for His own means, for His bigger work. Since I was studying Beth Moore’s book on Daniel, I was immersed in end time prophecies. What if the tribulation came? What would I leave behind? Would any words for unbelievers guide them through dark days ahead, just because they did a mindless search on the internet, and happened to stumble upon my blog?

A few weeks ago, I received this e-mail from Citizen Link, a ministry from Focus on the Family. 

www.citizenlink.org/CLtopstories/A000005912.cfm

It’s a timely article about the call to Christians to be purposeful in their blogging, to be effective communicators of Christ to a lost world. Now I know that most readers of my blog are saved homeschoolers. Therefore, most of my blogs are lighthearted, reflecting a shared journey with my on-line friends in homeschool life. However, could that not be used by the Lord? What if someone stumbles over here and happens to see a little Sonshine in a blog entry, which plants a seed for a ripe harvest later? Does that mean we have to give the Four Spiritual Laws in each entry? I don’t think so. Hmmmm, perhaps I could put that into my sidebar, once I figure that out! ;) This is the beauty of lifestyle evangelism. By the little things we say, or don’t say, what are we communicating? As they see us encouraging each other, they could be drawn in to seek Him who helps us.