Sometimes living conditions on the World Race look like living in a two floor apartment with three bathrooms, a fully functioning kitchen, a washing machine, and a living room with a tv. Sometimes ministry on the World Race looks like walking to our shifts at a coffee shop and developing friendships with locals.
Our hosts in Vietnam last month live in a nice apartment complex with a pool, homeschool their children, buy nice clothes, eat American style food, go to church (with a whole bunch of internationals), run a business and a church, and watch TV.
Before I left on the Race I kept talking about how ALL Christians are missionaries. Some are just called to do that overseas. Well, last month in Vietnam I got to experience the life of a wonderful American family that felt called to be missionaries in a closed country where its illegal to do what they’re doing. However, their every day life doesn’t look much different than what people are doing in America.
All of this reminded and reassured me that even if I don’t feel called to go into full-time mission work overseas when I get back from the Race, I can still live with intentionality at home. And so can you. Because all Christians are missionaries.
We are ALL called to GO and MAKE DISCIPLES.
That can be in your office, your family, your friend group, even at a coffee shop.
You don’t need a special title. Compared to the whole Christian community, there are very few people in full-time ministry and lot more people in the workforce.
I think the most impact we as Christians can make is in those “ordinary” places.
Let’s make them extraordinary places!
Who says you can’t have a Bible study at Panera Bread?
Who says you can’t start an intentional friendship with the person who serves you coffee every morning or the person you serve coffee to?
What’s stopping you from discipling your co-worker during your lunch break?
I personally know people, young adults like me, who have been doing this in America. They are on fire for God’s people and for God and are changing the atmosphere every time they walk into a room!
Don’t ever think what you’re doing is not “holy” enough or effective. Jesus never called us to live boring lives. Your life will never become boring and your faith will never become complacent if you keep searching for that one person God wants you to invest in. Your time with that person may be just one minute or one hour or it may be a year or a whole decade.
We are partnered with God in the business of changing hearts and lives and that never looks boring.
How to live MISSIONALLY:
Be intentional with your time, and know that your time isn’t yours, its God’s so ask Him how He wants you to spend it.
Ask God who needs to hear the Gospel (or see it actually acted out) in the settings you find yourself in every day. Ask God “Why have You placed me here, in this _____ (fill in the blank: job, city/town, country, family, neighborhood, school) What is my purpose?”
Now LISTEN for His answer! And OBEY!
Those are some of the hardest things in the Christian life. Hearing God’s voice or feeling the Holy Spirit’s nudge and then actually having the boldness to act on it.
Let’s pray together for the boldness to be a missionary wherever we go.
Hey, check out my teammate Joanna who wrote an amazing blog about the same lesson called Mud Huts!
