Dear Editor,
I am repatriating to Guyana, but it may cost me my family because my family doesn’t want to go with me.
“If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else—your father and mother, wife and children… even your own life,” wrote Luke 14:26.
I know these scriptures are confusing, controversial and appear to be contradictory to the rest of the Bible teachings.
And therefore, my interpretations of the passage may be incorrect. However I did my research and found theologians like John MacArthur interpreted the passages literally, while others did not.
As a new believer, I always wanted to be a missionary like William Carey and J Hudson Taylor. They were willing to give up everything to be missionaries.
Today, there are few missionaries with the mindset of these men. Carey and Taylor were not given the blessings of their churches to go to the mission field and they went anyway. They were willing to go anywhere, anytime and anyplace.
Like Carey and Taylor, l find myself in the same predicament. My family and many Christians are opposed to me going to Guyana. Christians asked me how I can go to the mission field and leave my family?
I tell them if John Bunyan can do it so I can. Bunyan went to prison for preaching the gospel and left his family in dire poverty.
There was a time, in time gone by when men and women were willing to give up everything, everyone and even their freedom and life to be missionaries. I want to be like these men and women, even though I was born in a different era.
I take Jesus literally when he says, we must be willing to put him first and above family. I find it ironic that Christians don’t see anything wrong with me being away from my family in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they have a problem with me being away serving on the mission field.
If it costs me my family, I’m willing to go to the mission field. Jesus said: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God,” Luke 9:62.
Like my predecessors, Carey, Taylor and Bunyan, I don’t want to look back 10, 20, or 30 years from now and regret not having gone to the mission field.
Since all my children are adults and my family are provided for financially, I have no obligation to remain in America while people are dying to hear the gospel in Guyana.
For me, now is the time.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address provided)
