But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, NIV).
You may have had the experience of getting a new pair of glasses and suddenly your eyes are opened to seeing things like the birds in the trees that you could not see with your old glasses. In Acts 1:8 Jesus says that when the Holy Spirit comes upon His disciples, their eyes will be opened to become His missionaries in their home town, their nation, nearby nations, and the whole world.
This verse suggests that, when it comes to mission, the Holy Spirit helps us see and respond to needs we may have missed before. My husband, who recently got another pair of glasses just for computer use, calls this multifocal mission vision. To do different tasks well, we often need glasses to help us see at every distance. Just so, to do mission, we need the power of the Holy Spirit to help us see and respond to the mission needs at home, in our nation, in nearby nations, and in the whole world.
When our mission vision becomes constricted to only home mission, foreign mission, or any one place or people in between, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to give us new glasses. Holy Spirit power in mission means we will not lose sight of our mission at home as well as our responsibility for mission to every person on earth.
Lord, please give us multifocal mission vision!
—Cheryl Doss, PhD, serves as director of the Institute of World Mission, Silver Spring, Maryland, United States.