“Please, please, PLEASE don’t go! You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” Paul said as I sat with him in our sunroom one evening. Paul was one of our neighbors who had spent time in Vietnam and Cambodia during the Vietnam War, and he was trying to convince me that Cambodia isn’t a place to take a family. “What can I pay you so that you’ll stay?”

Granted, Paul is known for being “under the influence” much of the time and can make some pretty outlandish statements, but there was a ring of genuine concern in his words.

I could probably have given Paul several reasons to go. The adventure, the excitement, a different culture, unique food, and, of course, more pious reasons such as our love for people. But what happens when the adventure gets old, the excitement fades, the culture becomes irritating, the food stinks, and (to be brutally honest) the people irritate you? Then is there any reason left to go, or should we just stay here? As Molly and I have wrestled with this, we have come to the conclusion that there is only one lasting reason and motivation for us to go: our love for God. Sound simplistic? That’s because it is.

Steve Green, the Christian singer/songwriter, expressed this with these words: “To love the Lord our God is the heartbeat of our mission, the streams from which our service overflows. Across the street or around the world, the mission’s still the same: to love and live the truth in Jesus’ name.”

So, where does this love for God come from? Molly and I are finding it comes from seeing how much He loves us! “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16).

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