This month has been so weird. With the last-minute changes at the beginning of the month to being on a new continent and then starting ATL (Ask the Lord) ministry with all its unknowns, Thailand has just been weird. And it’s showed me how often and how big I still mess up. Since being on the Race, I’m discovering the idealized views I had for how different I would be at the end of 11 months. I pictured so much obvious and amazing growth after being gone for 11 months doing full-time ministry and being surrounded by people who were pursuing Jesus. I thought bad habits I had struggled with before would suddenly vanish throughout the Race. Obviously, I still have seven more months to go, but I’m quickly realizing the high expectations I had for my spiritual growth, and the unnecessary burden I placed on myself for measurable growth.
ATL has been difficult for me. I know I talked about it in my last blog, but that was when I thought I knew what it was and before we had really gotten started. I quickly found I didn’t understand ATL. How do you decide what ATL is and what it isn’t? Can we go to tourist attractions as part of ATL? If ministry is life and life is ministry, then why do we even have expectations for ministry hours at all? If I’m always supposed to be asking the Lord about every part of my day, then why don’t I go about my day as normal and be open to what he says rather than having a set time for ATL? Why does it have to be 4 hours a day when we are to live all 24 hours as ministry? Shouldn’t adventure day and sabbath day technically be ATL too, if ministry is life and life is ministry?
Hopefully some of those questions made some sort of sense to you, but if not, I guess my point is I felt like I had no idea what ATL was supposed to look like. I felt like I was trying to make it legalistic when it wasn’t supposed to be, but I didn’t know how to not make it legalistic. For most of this month, I feel like I have just been doing the bare minimum in order to “do ministry” but not fully diving in. Because I didn’t really understand what it was, I allowed myself to make excuses and be selfish in how I used my time. In Africa, this didn’t seem like an issue because we had set ministry. If people asked what we did all month, I had something measurable. For instance, we preached all month in Togo, worked in a school all month in Ghana, and did children’s ministry in Cote d’Ivoire.
Well that’s easy. But if people ask about Thailand, I feel like we did nothing. Uhhhhh, we prayed before leaving our hostel, didn’t get any specific direction from the Lord, so we played bananagrams in the park with the hopes of talking to passerby (which we didn’t). Okay, well that literally sounds like nothing. It’s how I’ve felt for most of the month. Yeah, we’ve talked to a few people and had Bible studies in coffee shops, but for me, nothing at all seems to have come out of it. And I’ve just felt this weight on my shoulders in trying to figure out what ATL is supposed to look like. I know we don’t have to have any measurable results. Maybe you want to hear how we brought 20 people to Jesus while in Thailand, but sometimes doing the Lord’s work literally means smiling and saying hello to someone every morning when you pass by, and maybe after 6 months it would lead to a deeper conversation. The Lord’s timing is different from ours, and so often we never see results in our ministries. That definitely doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter though because we are called to be faithful even when we don’t get to see how God is moving in every situation.
However, I simply wasn’t intentional even in the small things this month. I didn’t understand ATL, so I let myself slack and be somewhat apathetic without even realizing it. but after talking to some of my leaders the other night, I felt such clarity and freedom. ATL made so much more sense to me. Even though ministry is life and life is ministry, we can’t possibly have every second of every day focused on sharing Jesus with people. We have to eat, we have jobs, families, responsibilities, etc. But even if our focus is on grocery shopping in one particular moment, God may highlight someone in the store to us and shift our focus to that person. If that’s the case, ministry is life and life is ministry, so we should talk to that person if God is asking us to. In all things throughout every day, we are sensitive to the Holy Spirit and willing to be interruptible. ATL is slightly different. Because we are full-time missionaries on the World Race, we have time during our day that others don’t. Time where we can focus 100% on ministry. Enter ATL. Where we can set aside hours during the day where our sole focus is on how we can share the love and hope of Jesus with others. During this time, our focus is not on getting groceries or cooking a meal, but rather we have time to be super intentional in loving people. Not to say if you have a full-time job back home that you should never have time where you are 100% focused on ministry, but it just looks a little different than being a full-time missionary and having that extra time.
Along with the ATL crisis, I discovered how much I struggled with discipline. There was more than a week at the end of Africa where we didn’t have any sort of ministry due to travel days and such, and I realized afterwards how awful I had been at reading my Bible and talking to God throughout my day. Apparently, it was much easier for me to be in the Word and in communication with the Lord when we had ministry days, but when we suddenly had no ministry, I let myself slide. And even for the first few days in Thailand, I spent time sleeping in rather than spending time with the Lord.
Looking back at this month, I started to feel a lot of guilt. I’ve literally been a full-time missionary for three and a half months and can’t even be disciplined in reading my Bible and spending time with the Lord every day? How long have I been following Jesus now? You’d think that would be a solid habit… And then with ATL, we’ve had so much freedom in the type of ministry we choose because we simply pray about it and then go and do whatever! Yet I allowed myself to be okay with days where we counted something as ministry even though our hearts really weren’t fully focused on the Lord. I let this month become more of a vacation rather than an opportunity to bring Christ to the people who need it.
And those things really disgusted me. Goodness gracious, I’m supposed to be on fire for the Lord. I’m a missionary, so doesn’t that automatically mean I’m disciplined and super excited about God all the time and just pumped about sharing the gospel with every person I meet? Unfortunately, the answer is no. I obviously would love for those things to always be true but having the title of missionary doesn’t make me any less of a messed-up human than anyone else. And I’ve actually found freedom in that. Sometimes I make huge mistakes that sicken me and make me question how much I’m even growing in my faith, but God already knew I would make those mistakes, and he already took care of EVERY sin on the cross – past, present, and FUTURE. He knew I would mess up in Thailand and lose sight of why I even came on the Race. I came on the Race to grow deeper in my relationship with God and to share his love and hope with people everywhere. I lost sight of that this month. I realize now how often I need to check my heart and my motives because they can quickly become selfish if my focus is not on Jesus. Jesus changes everything, and moving forward, I’m readjusting my focus to Him. I’m sure I will still mess up, but I don’t have to sit in unnecessary shame every time I do.
Philippians 3:12-14: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus.
