What does living a life on mission look like?
I was reminded recently of Shepherd Community Center in downtown Indianapolis and the sign that is right next to the doors as you exit the church. As you leave the church; as you leave the place that is so typically associated with doing good works; a sign reads, “You are now entering the mission field.”
The mission field isn’t meant to be something that is contained within the church or even on mission trips. Every time I step out of the doors of my church, I am entering the mission field. Every time I step out of the doors of my comfort zone, I am entering the mission field. Every time I step outside of my own wants and desires and instead live my life for Him, rather than myself, I am entering the mission field. I am realizing that you don’t have to cross oceans and continents to live your life on mission. If you are willing, God will use you wherever you end up.
Living a life on mission also looks different depending on where you are. In Thailand, it looked like working in the rice and cassava fields, being ready to serve our ministry hosts in whatever way they needed, loving our new community well, and always eating what “Mom” cooked for us, even if we did get to experience some…fascinating food (think insects and every part of a cow you can dream of). Sometimes living life on mission meant being willing to teach English camps while we were a little under the weather, or taking 7-hour long drives in the back of a truck to visit and pray for the leper colonies across Thailand. Sometimes it looked like killing centipedes that were as long as my forearm with our translator and bonding over our interests about each others cultures. It even looked like learning to bake cakes with our Thai family and performing a traditional Thai dance in tube tops and skirts (it was a sight for sore eyes) because we knew it would make them happy. We were expanding God’s Kingdom in the strangest of ways… and I learned so much because of it. It finally clicked with me that living life on mission is a lifestyle… it can be as normal or as strange as you want it to be; its only constant is Who you’re doing it for.
It may seem strange that I am realizing how important it is to live my life like I’m on a mission trip in my own community when I am miles and miles away from home. But being so far away from my own community, I am able to reflect on the opportunities right under my nose that I could have taken to live differently at home. I am able to see that I could have lived my life continuously on mission in my own community, not just by traveling to different countries and living the more obvious missionary lifestyle far from home.
You don’t have to cross the entire globe to live your life on mission. Heck, you don’t even have to cross your kitchen to live a life on mission. I have learned that wherever we end up, we can choose to let God work in and through us. We can set our sights on a bigger mission than our own.
It is our job, our right, and our greatest reward to get to share freely about the things that we are experiencing in our life and how God is working and moving in us. Every day, we get to intentionally seek out a way to share the gospel in a new light. We get to use the tools and the talents that God gives us and share these things within our own community, wherever that may be. We get to live our lives on mission.
