@Cheeky200386 Ghoti said what i was going to.
There are seasons in life.
YOU ARE DOING FINE just doing what you are doing.
Missions work gets defined funny in our culture. REALLY odd!
I'd have loved to share Christ with all my patients, but only one that I recall actually leading to the Lord and that was after I was begging God to let me lead someone to Him at work. I remember asking if I could pray with a few- and I did but the door to share further with them was closed. In this instance God blew the doors wide open with her. I'd been praying for a while to lead someone, but it was like He was giving me one gift when I wanted to have a lot more. It was about a year before I would leave nursing permanently to home school my then teenagers thru high school. I did lead someone else to the Lord- after a good year of praying for her but I met her in the supermarket, she was being sucked into the JW's and my heart went out to her so I prayed.
Later, in retrospect I didn't see the areas that God WAS using me. (my friend Donna had a gift for evangelism- she'd go in to make a bed and a die hard atheist facing death would get saved- the one that the rest of us Christian nurses prayed for because that was all he would let us do. She was also the one who cast the demon out of that lady I told you about a while ago)
GIFTS VARY
Prayer for example. Something that I don't even think of much, because it's like breathing.
I talk to the Lord about lots of things and people come up routinely. Prayer is perhaps one of the things I'm supposed to be doing, but I don't even notice that I'm doing it because it feels so ordinary and natural. I tend to think-- "oh I just pray, I never DO anything important"- much of my life not realizing how important prayer is.
For the people in my life, and for strangers I pass by, the ambulances going up the street, people here on CCF, back on RF still. Prayer like breathing. But not for everyone all the time- God puts people on certain of my prayer lists- nightly and occasionally. Both important. His schedule.
That call you feel? Might be a call to pray.
Raising and homeschooling the kids. Leading them both to the Lord- one at 4 the other at 5. Reading the Bible to them, praying with them, teaching them to pray and read the Bible. Teaching why Genesis is reliable scientifically, teaching them to expect the Rapture. Years later leading father in law to the Lord. Talking to the grandchildren about God, the Bible, what He's taught me over the years.
If all you ever did was raise your kids to love and serve God, you've moved mountains, you've built a generation to follow God in your family and it is HUGE.
Add prayer and you don't know what a difference it makes till later but it does. Prayer for your husband, your kids, your extended family, your kids friends, their future spouses (I prayed for my son and daughter in law before either was born, and continued after I met them, after they married my kids etc) I think I've seen how God DID answer those prayers for some little children I wouldn't meet till they were adults.
I think we tend to be a little blind to the areas God gifts us and uses us because it's so natural to us we don't even think twice. Doesn't everyone pray like that? Turns out no. Doesn't everyone love their children and sacrifice so that their childhoods are spent training them in Godliness? Nope. And I almost missed that last one but God put homeschooling on my heart just in time.
It's now some 30 plus years later that I realize how important it was leading our kids to the Lord, training them up to serve Him, homeschooling them so that they would have a stable solid grounding for them to serve God as they grew up.
Children in our society come last. They are set aside in day care, schools, kindergarten, Sunday school- all with good intentions while their busy Christian parents are juggling too many balls in the air and trying to get it all done in the day. Good intentions to train the kids in the Word- but hoping that the Sunday school teacher or the teacher at the Christian school will fill in the gaps. TV has an influence whether the parent allows it in the home or not, the friends watch it. Same with video games. The best guard is to train the kids well in the Word before all these outside influences have their say.
These kids grow up so fast. There are no "do overs". You see a lot of the ones that came from homes that failed them, abused them, neglected them even while looking "normal" on the outside.
The biggest mission field is the home.
When we first moved to Kamloops I remember one woman got up in church to fund raise to go to a "missions" trip that would leave her husband at home raising their kids with the help of daycare, while she "ministered" for a few MONTHS abroad at a Romanian orphanage. And nobody said a THING!!!! Her kids were LITTLE!!!! Some even donated money so she could go "minister".
I saw other young mothers pressured by that awful church I was part of till the late 90's - wives of "elders" who were supposed to attend several weekly events- elders meetings at church, Sunday for 3 services, then Wednesday evenings for Home Fellowships. Their kids didn't all turn out ok. They didn't all go nuts but not all of them serve God!
No wonder "preacher's kids" have such a hard time and many struggle with the faith that tore their parents away from them when they were little and depended on them most.
It's one of Satan's better deceptions actually, destroying the home foundations one way or another. A good pastor I heard once said this- "God invented marriage and family before He invented the church." He meant it in a joking way but the point was good. A good marriage, a good home are the solid foundations upon which the church can function and the society at large stays healthy.
Lose the kids you've lost it all in one generation.
and I actually did get to harvest a few souls which was absolutely thrilling. But I had to keep it on the down low so I wouldn’t get fired. Strict “no discussion of religion or politics” there. My coworkers knew I am a Christian but I never shared the gospel with any of them because I never heard them say something that was an “opening” and also didn’t want to get in trouble. Ugh!!!
