I don’t like ATL because it’s hard. You can’t hide behind ministry anymore. You don’t have the usual distractions of doing your assigned “good work”. Ministry months are easy because you are given your task for the month and you can focus on operating within that. Usually the fruits are more tangible, or immediately apparent: You feel good holding an abandoned child. You ride a high of having shared the love of Jesus with a homeless man who wanted to be fed food and was also fed with the Spirit. You see the strength and color stream back into the face of a reassured patient that is dying in the hospital.
But Ask the Lord month (or for me- months, as this is the second in a row) is different. You don’t have a set daily routine of working 8-5am: doing construction for a Christian organization’s desperately needed building, or whispering the love of Jesus into the ears of the children you are caring for at the orphan home, or even a night ministry schedule of talking to girls who are selling themselves because they don’t know their true worth as a precious daughter in God and loved bride in Christ. None of those things are your official ministry, and there is no guilt if you do not do them.
Instead there is guilt of a different kind. There is the guilt that you did not tell that incredibly friendly taxi driver that the Buddha statue on his dashboard should really be a cross. You feel guilty that all the hostels you are constantly moving in and out of have Spirit Houses to give room for more than just the guests who want to stay there. You feel guilty that the precious baby who is laughing and giggling and smiling at you is wearing a golden idol necklace because her parents don’t know Christ. You feel guilty that when people ask why you are in Thailand you give the cop-out answer and tell them you are a volunteer instead of confessing that you are a missionary wanting to share the love of Jesus with them. You feel guilty for all the words left unsaid, all the actions left undone, all the opportunities missed. Mostly, you feel guilty for all the people left unsaved.
For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’. How then will they call on Him whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless sent? As it is written ‘how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’ ~ Romans 10:13-15
And I can’t help but think, these months are the tests.
But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the Gospel, so we speak, not to please man, to please God who tests our hearts ~ 1Thessalonians 2:4
Every opportunity I have to share the Gospel (which is every single person I encounter) is a test to see how overflowing with Christ I am. If He truly is my passion, my zeal, then my heart and my mouth won’t be able to do anything else than to speak about Him. I won’t be able to contain Him within me. These months are the tests to see if I can do anything else but speak His praises and glorify His name. These months of not having assigned ministry are to help me realize that I should CONSTANTLY be in ministry.
When I go home I won’t have assigned missionary projects, assigned ministries, specific people to love on and specific tasks to accomplish in the name of Jesus. I will have to bring the love of Christ, incorporate a salvation mindset, into my everyday life. I will have to be willing and confident enough to proclaim Him in passing to the strangers I meet every day, and even harder, to the people I already know and love. I won’t have an excuse to ignore them anymore, because the people around me will be the people who need to hear it. But I am realizing this does not change or come into effect when I go home- this is how I should be operating now. Jesus should be so integrated in my life, my language, and my passions, that I cannot help but talk about Him. He should flow out of my conversation like an exhale- released naturally without burden. He should emanate from me like Light, seeping out of every crack dispelling the darkness.
I don’t like ATL because it is reminiscent of “normal” life. In the provided environment of freedom I have found myself sinking back into my fears and insecurities. I find myself of sinking back into my comfortable bubble of wrapping my faith up inside myself, not wanting to burden it on anyone else. My faith returns to being like a woolly sweater- as the wearer it is warm and snuggly for me, but I’m still paranoid it will be scratchy and annoying for the people who come in contact from the outside.
I don’t like ATL because the responsibility falls on me to take initiative and truly step into and endorse my faith. I don’t like ATL because it forces me to make conscious decisions and be active about LIVING my faith with intentionality. I don’t like ATL because it stretches me, because it reveals my heart, because it makes me realize that it’s not worth living a life of mere comfort- of living a sweater lifestyle. I don’t like ATL because it is hard.
And yet for all those same reasons, that is why I love Ask the Lord months. God shows up. God reveals himself, and he reveals himself in you. He points to your weaknesses, not to shame you, but to give you a glimpse of how He will perfect them in you. So you learn to be expectant. And excited. And you learn to overcome fear because of Jesus’ assurance. And while searching for contacts, you find yourself searching yourself for a greater faith and a greater God that you KNOW exists but have (for insecurity, or fear, or whatever reason) failed to fully embrace. Through ATL you learn to dump the woolly sweater lifestyle. Because, like so often on The Race, you have too much other junk to carry around and there isn’t room to hold onto it anymore. Once you do, all of a sudden you feel lighter- like someone else is carrying your load for you. And when you don’t need both hands to carry your own burden anymore, that is when you can reach out and grab Jesus’ hand, and reach out and grab the hand of another.
