As a seven-year-old boy, my dad—Bob Hoskins—received a vision from the Lord, and preached his first sermon just days later. This year marks Dad’s 70 amazing years doing God’s work.
It’s a phenomenal story, really. His evangelistic outreaches as a boy brought thousands to Christ. His missionary journeys as a teenager launched new churches. Mom and Dad raised us in Lebanon, serving as missionaries in the Middle East. After being evacuated because of war three times, we moved and served in Europe planting seeds and touching literally hundreds of thousands of lives with the Good News.
OneHope was birthed out of yet another vision God gave Dad; of Satan attacking the children of the world and how desperately they needed to be rescued. The rescue mechanism–as shown to Dad in his vision–would come in the form of giving God’s Word to every child…and it would be done through leaders. Instead of shying away from the giant task ahead, my dad said, “yes”.
This vision of Dad’s came while I was in seminary. I remember talking to him on the phone and crying right along with him at the weight of it all. Little did I know that through an amazing set of miraculous circumstances, God would lead Kim and I to dedicate our lives to serving the vision of OneHope.
Today, I can say that looking back, the greatest joy of my life has been working with Dad for the past 25 years. I am so excited to keep building on the foundation my parents laid—they have been faithful to spread God’s Word to their generation, and we need to be just as faithful to continue the work in ours.
Dad’s legacy is God’s Word Every Child. And under the banner “God’s Word. Every Child,” we’ve reached more than a billion children and youth with the Good News, all around the world. But there’s still so much work to be done—we have got to carry the work on.
I have an incredible legacy in my dad. Probably the most profound thing about his ministry is that he said, “yes” to every call from His Master; as a boy to preach, as a youth to missionary evangelism, as an adult to live and reach the Islamic world and ironically as he grew older to reach children. He and Mom have suffered a lot; wars, material loss, blindness, cancer and the list goes on. But as they celebrate this week, they stand as examples of God’s miraculous power, having experienced the joy and best of ministry; lives saved, prodigals come home, healings and the thousands of individuals who have found their way to the cross because of their faithfulness.
70 years later there is no bitterness, no resentment and no regrets. Dad has given it his all and he’s not done yet. Henry Cloud says that transcendence is the height of integrity–leaving something lasting beyond yourself. On every continent, in nearly every nation, within hundreds of people groups are children, families and leaders that have received something lasting and eternal from a man who dared to say “yes”.
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