A 7-Day Family Missions Devotional

The kitchen table still had toast crumbs on it. The butter dish was out, the lid half off, and the orange juice carton was sweating a small ring onto the placemat. It was 7:15 on a Saturday morning in a house in suburban Denver, and the Okafor family, mom, dad, thirteen-year-old Elijah, nine-year-old Grace, and five-year-old Tobias, were about to start something new. Dad had a Bible open to Genesis. Mom had printed out a map of the world and taped it to the wall behind the table. Grace had her stuffed elephant in her lap. Tobias was eating the last corner of his toast.

“We’re going to spend the next seven days learning about God’s heart for the nations,” Dad said.

“What nations?” Tobias asked.

“All of them,” Elijah said.

He was right.

This seven-day family devotional is designed to walk your family through the biblical story of God’s love for every people, tribe, and language on earth. If you are looking for a broader framework for teaching your kids about world missions, this devotional is a practical place to begin, seven short sessions, one per day, each with a scene to imagine, a Scripture to read, questions to discuss, and a prayer activity to do together.

No preparation needed beyond a Bible and a willingness to show up.

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Day 1: God’s Heart for the Nations

Scene

Imagine standing on a mountain so high you can see the curve of the earth. Below you, in every direction, are cities and villages and farms and fishing boats and tent camps and apartment buildings. You can hear a thousand languages carried on the wind, some melodic, some percussive, some whispered. Every one of those voices belongs to a person God made on purpose.

Scripture

Read Genesis 12:1-3 together.

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’” (ESV)

This is where it begins. God’s heart for the nations is not a New Testament afterthought. It is woven into the very first covenant he made with Abraham. “All the families of the earth.” Not some. All.

Discussion Questions

1. God told Abraham that through him “all peoples on earth” would be blessed. What do you think that means?
2. Why do you think God chose one family (Abraham’s) to bless the whole world?
3. Can you think of a time when something good that happened to your family also helped someone outside your family?

Prayer Activity

Each family member names one country out loud. After each name, the whole family says together: “God, you love the people of [country]. Bless them through us.” Go around the table twice.

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Day 2: The Great Commission

Scene

The hillside is brown and rocky. The sun is warm on the backs of the eleven men standing in a loose cluster, squinting upward. They smell like wool and woodsmoke and the dried fish they ate for breakfast. The man standing above them has scars on his hands. He is about to leave, and they know it. What he says next will be the last instruction they hear from his mouth before he ascends. Every word matters.

Scripture

Read Matthew 28:18-20 together.

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” (ESV)

“All nations” in Greek is panta ta ethne, all the ethnic groups, all the peoples. Jesus did not say “go to the countries you feel comfortable in.” He said all. Every people group. And he backed it up with a promise: I am with you always.

Discussion Questions

1. Jesus said “all authority” has been given to him. Why does that matter before he gives the command to go?
2. What is the difference between going to “all nations” (countries) and going to “all peoples” (ethnic groups)?
3. Jesus promised to be with his disciples always. How does that promise help when the work is hard or scary?

Prayer Activity

Get a globe or a map. Close your eyes and point to a spot. Open your eyes and see where your finger landed. Pray for that place, even if it landed on an ocean (pray for the sailors and fishermen who work on that water). Do this three times, once for each member of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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Day 3: Unreached Peoples. The Ones Still Waiting

Scene

A girl named Amara sits cross-legged on a reed mat in a village in Chad. She is twelve. The air smells like woodsmoke and boiled millet. A goat is tied to a stake outside her family’s mud-brick house, chewing on a scrap of cardboard. Amara speaks Maba, a language with no written Bible, no gospel recording, no church within walking distance. She has heard the word “Jesus” once, from a trader passing through. She did not know what it meant. Nobody explained.

Scripture

Read Romans 10:13-15 together.

“For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?” (ESV)

Paul’s logic is a chain. Each link depends on the one before it. And the first link, the one that sets everything in motion, is sending. Someone has to go. Someone has to send. Without both, the chain breaks.

There are still more than 7,000 people groups in the world where fewer than 2 percent of the population follows Jesus. They are not opposed to the gospel. They simply have not encountered it. For a deeper explanation of what “unreached” means and why it matters, read our article on what unreached people groups are.

Discussion Questions

1. Imagine you had never heard about Jesus, not because you rejected him, but because nobody ever told you. How would that feel?
2. Paul asks four questions in a row. What is the point he is making?
3. What does it mean to be “sent”? Can kids be part of the sending?

Prayer Activity

Look up the “Unreached People of the Day” on joshuaproject.net. Read the profile together. Then pray for that people group by name: for God to send workers, for hearts to be open, for the Bible to be translated into their language.

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Day 4: Missionaries Past and Present

Scene

The year is 1812. A twenty-three-year-old woman named Ann Judson stands on the deck of a sailing ship called the Caravan, gripping the wooden rail as the vessel pitches in the Atlantic swell. She is leaving Salem, Massachusetts, for Burma, a country she has never seen, whose language she does not speak, whose food she has never tasted. The salt spray stings her face. Her husband Adoniram is below deck, seasick. She writes in her journal: “I desire no higher honor than to be permitted to labor for the good of the Burmese.”

Ann and Adoniram Judson would spend decades in Burma. They would be imprisoned. They would lose children to tropical diseases. They would translate the Bible into Burmese, a work that took years of sitting at low wooden desks, dipping pens in ink, learning a script that curved like smoke. Today, millions of Burmese Christians trace their faith back to the Judsons’ work. Decades later, Amy Carmichael would do the same in India, staying fifty-five years without a single furlough, rescuing children and raising generations in a place she loved more than home. And in China, Hudson Taylor dressed like the people he served, shaving his head, wearing Chinese clothing, and eating Chinese food, because the gospel arrives best in the cultural clothing of the people, not the sender.

Scripture

Read Hebrews 11:13-16 together.

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland… But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.” (ESV)

The heroes of faith did not always see results. Many of them died before the harvest came. But they kept planting.

Discussion Questions

1. Ann Judson left everything familiar to go to a place she had never been. What do you think gave her the courage to do that?
2. Hebrews says these people “did not receive the things promised” during their lifetimes. Why is it worth doing something you might never see the results of?
3. Can you name a missionary, past or present, whose story you admire? What stands out about them?

Prayer Activity

As a family, write a short encouragement letter to a missionary your church supports. If you don’t know one personally, ask your pastor for a name and address. Keep it simple: “We prayed for you tonight. Here is what we prayed.” Mail it this week.

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Day 5: The Power of Prayer

Scene

A woman in a small apartment in Seoul, South Korea, kneels on a heated floor at four in the morning. The ondol flooring radiates warmth through the thin cushion beneath her knees. Outside, the city is dark and silent except for the distant hum of a bus on a far-off avenue. She has been praying for North Korea every morning for thirty-one years. She has never been to North Korea. She will never go. But she has not missed a single morning. Her prayers have worn grooves in the wood of her mind, specific names, specific cities, specific requests. She prays with the tenacity of someone who believes God hears.

Scripture

Read Colossians 4:2-4 together.

“Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison — that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.” (ESV)

Paul did not ask for comfort. He asked for clarity. He asked for open doors. He asked for the word to get through. That is how missionaries pray, and that is how we can pray for them.

Discussion Questions

1. What does it mean to “devote yourselves to prayer”? How is that different from just praying when you remember?
2. Paul asked people to pray for open doors. What kinds of “doors” might need to open for missionaries today?
3. The woman in Seoul has prayed for North Korea for thirty-one years. What keeps a person praying that long?

Prayer Activity

Set a timer for five minutes. Sit in silence together. Each family member prays silently for missionaries and unreached people groups. When the timer goes off, each person shares one thing they prayed for. Five minutes of silence with children is harder than it sounds. It is also more powerful.

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Day 6: Giving and Sending

Scene

The coins clinked against the glass. Ten-year-old Marcus stood at the kitchen counter in his house in Waco, Texas, pouring his savings jar onto the tile. Nickels, dimes, quarters, a few dollar bills rolled tight as pencils. The pile smelled like copper. His mother watched from the doorway. “You sure?” she asked. He nodded. He had decided three weeks ago that his lawn-mowing money for the month was going to a Bible translation project in Papua New Guinea, a place he had learned about in Sunday school, where people spoke a language that had no written form and no Scripture. He counted the money twice. $47.50.

He didn’t know it, but that $47.50 would be pooled with gifts from four other churches and used to print the first fifty copies of the Gospel of Mark in the Zia language. Somewhere in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, a man would hold that book, the first book ever printed in his language, and read the words of Jesus for the first time.

Scripture

Read 2 Corinthians 8:1-5 together.

“We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints — and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.” (ESV)

The Macedonian churches were poor. They gave anyway. They didn’t see giving as obligation. They begged for the favor of taking part. That posture changes everything.

Discussion Questions

1. The Macedonian churches begged “earnestly for the favor of taking part,” even though they were poor. Why would someone beg for the chance to give money away?
2. Marcus gave $47.50. Is that a lot or a little? Does it matter?
3. What is something you could give, money, time, or something you own, to support someone on mission?

Prayer Activity

As a family, choose one missions organization or missionary to give to this month. Let the kids participate in deciding who to support and how much to give. If your children have their own money, let them contribute from their own funds. Pray over the gift before you send it. For practical ideas on how kids can support missionaries in everyday ways, see our guide on how kids can be senders.

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Day 7: Going, Sending, and the End of the Story

Scene

Imagine a room so full of people you cannot see the walls. The ceiling is gone, or rather, there is no ceiling, just open sky, brighter than any sky you have ever seen. The room is not really a room. It is more like a field, or a city, or a kingdom that stretches in every direction without ending. And the people, millions of them, billions even, are singing. But they are not singing the same song in the same language. They are singing in Mandarin and Swahili and Arabic and Quechua and Navajo and Farsi and Tamil and a thousand other languages you have never heard, and somehow, impossibly, it all sounds like one song. The sound is so full it vibrates in your chest like a second heartbeat.

Scripture

Read Revelation 7:9-10 together.

“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (ESV)

This is how the story ends. Every nation. Every tribe. Every people. Every language. Not one left out. This is what the whole mission, the sending, the going, the praying, the giving, the letters, the coins in the jar, the names on the refrigerator, is all moving toward.

Discussion Questions

1. John saw people from every nation, tribe, people, and language. Why do you think God wants every group represented, not just “most of them”?
2. What part of missions has felt most real to you this week, praying, giving, learning about unreached peoples, or something else?
3. If God asked your family to do one thing differently because of what you learned this week, what would it be?

Prayer Activity

Go back to the map you used on Day 1. Each family member places their hand on a different part of the world. Pray together, out loud, all at once, each person praying for the place under their hand. Let it be messy. Let voices overlap. That is what Revelation 7:9 sounds like. Then close with one voice, praying together: “God, your great rescue plan includes every nation and every people. Use our family. Amen.”

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After the Seven Days

This devotional is a beginning, not an end.

Keep the map up. Keep the names on the refrigerator. Keep praying for the people group you discovered on Day 3. Keep giving. Keep learning.

God’s heart for the nations is not a topic you study once and set aside. It is a current that runs beneath the whole Bible, from Genesis 12 to Revelation 7, and it invites every family, including yours, right now, at your kitchen table with the toast crumbs and the orange juice ring, into the story.

The table is set. The invitation is open. And God is not finished yet.