In the previous blog I used the phrase ‘live intentionally’ quite a few times and I just wanted to take the time to try and explain exactly what that looks like for us.
Here’s a little glimpse of what our lives look like every day:
We go to work at 8a. Every day we have the choice to get up and be in the word and prayer, or to sleep in. Whatever the choice is breakfast is at seven, so if you want to be alone (like really alone) you have to get up at like 6a. If you want to exercise you go at 6:15 and get back in time for breakfast. Some of us do our alone time during breakfast because we want to go exercise. My point is that it’s a daily choice; we are not forced to read our bibles or be in prayer. We go to our different ministry sites and have a choice – just do the work and come back, or somehow fit a conversation about Christ into the work. We aren’t always teaching kids and people about Jesus in some sort of structured setting. We still have to seek to have redeeming conversations with people.
Here’s an awesome example: My ministry this month is road crew. We go out from 8a-1p to dig holes to fill other holes. We work with two men that do maintenance for the orphanage and it didn’t dawn on us until yesterday to be intentional with them. For some reason we had been pretty chill with just filling the trenches and coming back. We had decided to take a thirty minute break and were chatting when I finally realized that we weren’t being intentional with the time we had with these guys. I realized two things: during breaks we don’t sit with them, our team sits together and the two guys sit together and they never have any water with them. We do talk to them while working. They are two very funny, very nice guys, but we weren’t utilizing our time to get to know them better and just pour into them. We decided to bless them by starting to bring them water and snacks for the days and being intentional about taking thirty minute breaks every day to get to know them on a deeper level. The Lord showed us that our ministry wasn’t just filling trenches for the orphanage, but pouring into the two men the Lord has partnered us with for the month.
Every day you wake up you have the same sort of choices. My choices don’t have more value because they are happening on a different continent. My conversations with people don’t have more value because they happen with people that aren’t of the same ethnicity. These people have the same value to the Lord as you and I do. The Lord cares about souls not accents, colors, and whatever else we can come up with. The Lord doesn’t just care about the people around me, but He cares the same for the people around you.
I used to get so frustrated because I thought that I had to have some sort of title in ministry to reach people. I lived like I couldn’t reach out to my co-workers if I didn’t work in a church. How dumb is that? Being a follower of Christ is the one and only title I need to reach out to His people. I don’t have to have a degree to talk about Christ. I don’t have to be qualified; I just had to be chosen. He chose me. He chose people to go before me and called them to be intentional in my life. He has chosen us, and in choosing us He wants us to live intentionally. He wants us to seek out those redemptive conversations with people. They don’t always just happen. Coming on the World Race didn’t somehow have this overnight transformation in me that has made all my conversations redemptive or wise. These people that I am living life intentionally for are no different than the people back home that I should have been living intentionally for. The Lord loves us all the same, so take a look around because the souls living right next to you; the souls that work with you in the restaurants, in construction, in the offices, on the streets, in the coffee shops, in the malls – those are souls that the Lord wants. He wants them all, so what are you going to do about it? Live intentionally.
