When a part of our team traveled to Roatan, a stunning island off of the coast of Honduras, during Holy Week, the question of what really matters invaded my heart. There was a temptation to view it as a vacation – as a rest from ministry. After all, we’d been doing “ministry” for three months! We deserved a break, right?
What was it in my heart that desired a “break” from “ministry”? Why did I separate ministry from my daily life?
Here is what I am not saying: I am not saying that rest doesn’t matter, or that Sabbath isn’t a necessity. Rest and Sabbath are vital for spiritual health and growth, and I do crave them (and often I don’t get enough of either).
But I had fallen into a dangerous place. I had created a separation in my life between ministry days and off days. On ministry days, I worked for the Lord, and on off days, I rested from that work and at times, even from my identity in Christ.
It’s easy to do this, right? In our culture, how often do we put on our Sunday best and take care of our church responsibilities and then go about our lives in a completely different manner?
We segregate our lives into ministry time and non-ministry time.
And it’s to our detriment.
My life is not a series of work days and off days. My life is a journey with the Lord. It is a walk, during which I choose to follow Jesus daily. As I know Him more deeply, the desire of my heart is to make Him known. As I become less, He becomes more.
Practically, what’s the result of this? Missional living. Instead of separating my life, my “ministry self” and my “off day self” are integrated. My life is my ministry. It’s a natural overflow of my walk with Jesus. We experience so much more of His goodness and grace when we allow ourselves to be clay in His hands on a daily basis, rather than solely in the times we carve out for Him.
When we arrived in Roatan, thanks in large part to the boldness and kingdom-focused heart of my friend and squad leader, Kate, we prayed that the Lord would use our time in Roatan for His glory and that He would give us Sabbath rest while allowing us to build His kingdom.
Here’s a quick rundown of how God answered that prayer and made His goodness known to us:
We decided before leaving for Roatan that we would have a sunrise service on the beach for Resurrection Sunday. As a result, we were looking for people to invite. Our service ended up being just us…no one else showed up…but the invitation process beforehand enabled us to meet a number of people. I would love to share the full story of each of these beautiful souls with you, but there isn’t space here. If you want to know more, I’d be happy to share at another time.
The one person I want to tell you about is, I’m convinced, the reason the Lord took us to Roatan. He values the one – the one lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. Our God is a good Father to the one. This one’s name is Kevin.
Kate and I met Kevin while we were waiting on our transportation. It was supposed to be ready at 11:00am, and we had to wait until 1:00pm, so we began walking toward the ocean in search of a beach to keep us occupied until then. We were walking through a small neighborhood, far from where we were staying, when we met Kevin on the sidewalk. He had kind eyes and a wide smile. We began talking and invited him to our Sunday service on the beach. He said he’d love to come but that he might have to work. We asked if we could pray for him, and he said we could pray that he’d be a more godly man. We left Kevin with his phone number in hand, hoping we’d see him the next day at the beach.
The next morning, Easter, we walked down a different path than we had ever walked down before to get to the beach. As we were walking, we passed a beautiful apartment complex and waved and smiled at the guard sitting there. A few seconds later, Kate said, “Was that Kevin?” There was no way. We walked back to check, and sure enough, the guard sitting at that complex was Kevin. My mind was completely blown. On an island of 48 square miles, we walked down the exact path where Kevin was working. THE EXACT PATH AT THE EXACT TIME!
While Kevin couldn’t join us for the service, he did talk with us for a bit. When we asked if he needed anything, his one request was a Bible. We told him we’d be back before the end of the day with a Bible in tow. After we spent some time with the Lord on the beach, celebrating the resurrection, we began our hunt for a Bible. We eventually found a church that was having service (the number of churches that were closed on Easter Sunday was shocking), and a sweet woman inside found a Bible for him and provided her phone number in case he had any questions. We then sped off to give Kevin his Bible. On the way, I needed to stop to use the restroom (earlier that day, I’d lost a game of What are the Odds? and drank half a gallon of water in a very short period of time, so I was in a tough spot), and we stopped at a coffee shop. They had freshly baked cookies, and as soon as she saw them, Kate bought one for Kevin.
When we handed Kevin his Bible and his cookie, the look on his face was one of surprise, followed by sheer joy. I know that Kevin felt loved on that day – not only by us, but by His Father. Over a period of 24 hours, God orchestrated our time and steps around Kevin. From our delayed transportation on Saturday to our walk to the beach on Sunday morning to our game of What are the Odds? that led to a cookie to accompany the Bible, the Lord wanted us to be His hands and feet to Kevin.
THIS is missional living!
There is no place I would have rather been on that Sunday than speeding around Roatan looking for a Bible. The look on his face when he had that Bible in his hands surpassed any time I could have spent laying on the beach that day. When we went to the beach later, I experienced true joy and rest because I was able to reflect on how incredible our God is and just rest in His presence.
My prayer and my hope is that I walk this way not just for the remainder of the Race, but for the remainder of my life.
People like Kevin exist everywhere…in the grocery store, at your office, in your classroom, on your vacations…everywhere. There are so many who are seeking, who are craving conversation, who would love for us to pray for them, to share truth with them.
But now we return to the question with which we began. What really matters? Do these people matter to us? Does what Jesus did matter to us? Does God’s love for them matter to us?
John Piper often says, “Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate. You can’t commend what you don’t cherish. You can’t proclaim what you don’t prize. Worship is the fuel and the goal of missions.” In other words, if we just lived our lives in constant worship of our Savior, the outpouring of love and truth would be so significant that the Gospel would spread throughout the nations. Our hearts would be so committed to building His kingdom that we would naturally do so, without organized “missions” as we know it today.
I’m thankful that the Lord is showing me how to live on mission and how to experience rest by admiring the beauty of His work. I’m also just thankful for His love and for His grace, and it’s my prayer that I live my life so in awe of who He is that the Holy Spirit overflows daily onto those I meet. I want to be a mass of clay in the hands of the Potter, and I want people to know Jesus.
Makes for a better adventure, too.
With love and joy,
E
“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” – Colossians 4:2-6
