Ministry has no limits. One of the nuggets of wisdom that our squad mentors drill into our heads is that life is ministry and ministry is life. So, what does ministry look like for an “Ask the Lord” month? It looks different for everyone, and it looks different on a daily basis.
I woke up feeling a little off this morning. At the start of ask the Lord, our team felt led to a specific hostel, The Grocer’s Inn, and that’s where we’ve been staying the entire time. The people here are warm and welcoming, and the owner gave us free coffee one morning and then went onto the street to buy us Malaysian snacks! Day one of Ask the Lord, half of us felt led to go sit in coffee shops and pray and read our Bibles. About midweek, Alisha and I felt drawn towards a building across from our hostel that had a cross on the rooftop. We walked over there, come to find out it was a church, and we talked to a man who’d been working there for fifteen years, and we prayed with him before we left. We had made plans to go to Penang on Friday, but they fell through which led us to stay in KL, and we attended a Good Friday service as a team and took communion.
Although I felt like God was guiding each step this week and unfolding the plan for us each day, I couldn’t help but find myself doubting it this morning. I know this week has looked a little different for each person on my team, so I can only speak for myself, but I haven’t encountered any of what people would say is a divine appointment. I don’t have a story of where I was led to go to this place and a person was there and we had a conversation about the gospel, and Jesus. I had to pray about it and process this with God this morning, and I heard Him say, “I care about the little things.”
It got me thinking about how much closer I feel to the people on my team after this week, and how I much time I was able to spend with them. One of my favorite memories made was taking the time to mail stuff back home with some of the other people on my team. We were doing life together, and for me, the ministry this week has been to my team, and also feeling refreshed by the time I’ve spent with them.
Although, I may not have had conversations about the gospel with people this week, there have been many times where God has urged me to show kindness and friendship to people. It looks different each day, some days it could be a smile, or small talk with the workers at the hostel. When I think about how Alisha and I were able to pray for the man at the church, I see it as a door that was opened for us to encourage a brother in Christ.
I got to thinking about a book called “The Practice of the Presence of God”. Briefly paraphrasing, it’s about a monk named Brother Lawrence who lived a very humble life, but because of his love for God, impacted those around him. One of my favorite quotes of his is:
“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”
So, although these accounts may seem small and humble, it’s what God had me doing this week. He had me living life, and being interruptible, and He had me participating in small acts of kindness. It’s the little things that over time add up to bigger things, and that’s what I’ve taken away from this past week and will treasure. It’s not the work that God is concerned with, but it’s the direction of your heart as you do the work. It’s about having a heart full of love for God, and out of that love is what allows you to do whatever He has you do. It could be praying for the blind to see, or it could be taking a trip to the post office with a friend.
