A Missionary Every Day

Last night, my husband’s sister and her husband sat in our living room telling a group of people about their upcoming medical mission to Togo, West Africa. They hope to head out next spring for a 2-year term there. They are not only raising support, but also on a mission to encourage Christ-followers to be missionaries themselves.

They talked about going to the ends of the earth, to places of great darkness where people still have not heard of the saving work of Jesus. It is hard to imagine, isn’t it? There are people who have not been told the hope God has made them for and called them to.

That’s a sobering thought, and it affects my life. Do you let it affect your life? We can get so wrapped up in our own selves, can’t we?

Here in America, it’s a different story altogether. It’s a different kind of darkness. Most people know the story of Jesus. Some of us believe and live like we believe it. Many accept it as true but refuse to adjust their lives around that truth. Many reject the story, reject Jesus, reject followers of Him. Many who know the story have never really seen God’s love in action. It’s a dark world full of evil, yes.

Listening to Steve and Katrina last night, I thought for a minute about the prayers of my youth. “Please, Lord, don’t call me to go to one of those faraway places where they live in huts with dirt everywhere and always eat their food outside!” I’d been around lots of missionaries, even knew some personally. As a group, they were excited about what God had called them to. They loved the people in the faraway places. They told adventurous stories about eating cow brains and finding themselves in the middle of the jungle. Other than the precious people, it all sounded terrible to me--the dirt, the “adventures”, the being far away, and the eating outside…

Sometimes I think long and hard about all the wrong things.

I was all about the list of things I thought I would hate, and I explained myself to God just to make sure He knew I didn’t prefer that kind of life.

Yet God put me together Himself. He knit me together in my mother’s womb, and I’m not saying He’s responsible for my hang-ups. But He put together the me that feels like food eaten outdoors is full of dirt and miniscule bugs. Not that that has anything to do with missionary life. I’d guess there are gobs of missionaries who eat nearly every meal indoors. I’m just a victim…of the missionary slides stuck in my head. :)

Maybe you have hang-ups about living your life for Jesus too, and maybe they’re not quite as juvenile as my aversion to dirt. And food. Together.

Are you holding back your life from the Lord? Do you have a list of reasons tucked back in your mind, reasons why you can't live completely for Him? He is looking for people who are willing to give their lives up, to whatever He calls them to.

I am in no way discouraging the missionfield. There is great need for people to sell all and head out. I just think we have to start with our hearts again, make sure we are following Christ wherever we are, and make sure we are willing to follow Him anywhere.

Right now, I am called to Cary / Raleigh, North Carolina and its people. I have not been called to create a picture-perfect life full of things and full of social events and full of my own pleasures and indulgences. Full of ME. And I have totally lived there. Trying to figure out how to do life as an adult, my husband and I found ourselves so full of fun, our lives so full of inch-deep relationships with really great people, our home so full of beautiful things, and yet, we knew something was missing. We wanted more of Jesus. We knew God had not called us to be so self-focused.

The call on our lives is to follow Christ. It is to be Jesus to the hurting, broken people all around us. At one time, I looked around here and prayed, Who do I need to help, Lord? Everyone is so put together, they all seem to know about God anyway, what can I even do here?

Time and experience told me to look past the put together. To embrace my own brokenness and my need for repair. To remember that we can be chained by other’s perceptions of us. There is a missionfield right here. It used to be invisible to me.

Are you willing to follow Him in small ways and big ones? Are you available to obey Jesus? Are you running hard after Christ, seeking Him as if you must? Or are you simply living for you? And what you really, really, really want. And what makes you happy. I ask myself the same. May it be the former. May we rise up in great revival!

To learn more about Steve and Katrina’s journey, visit http://padgettsintogo.blogspot.com/

The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Luke 10: 1-3

From heaven, the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; from His dwelling place He watches all who live on earth--He who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do.
Psalm 33:13-15

Think About...

Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things. --Pascal, Penses

Is someone you love running in the wrong direction, going astray the way “all we like sheep” tend to do?

Are you enduring the sickness of a loved one? It hurts so badly, you want to take it for them. And yet, you’re so afraid of that terminal diagnosis that lurks around every corner these days, as cancers suck the life out of people we love, friends we’ve known, invading story after life story.

Have you already lost someone you really needed? The grief still blows you away every single day, while people around you go about their lives, unaffected by your heartache.

What about the marriage you hung your hope on? It didn’t quite turn out the way you expected, did it? After the sweeping you off your feet occurred, selfishness set in. On both sides. Now your sin fights against his sin, and it can get ugly. Maybe you figured out ways to make it work, but it’s still just plain hard sometimes. Or maybe it didn’t, and now you’re on your own, reassembling pieces of a broken life, hoping you can make it work again.

Was it all you ever wanted— to be the Mommy? Or at least all you want right now. But no matter what, it doesn’t happen. Still. You wait, and you try, and you wait some more. Finally, you give up, and decide not to ask God for anything anymore. Your view of Him shifts and devastates. Something changes inside, and you fear you’ll never recover from this. Unless… But no, it’s another no, and you just stop dreaming, hoping, wishing. You go numb and protect your fragile heart instead.

Maybe you did become a Mommy, but it’s nothing like you thought it would be. You’re outnumbered, struggling, and you don’t love it the way your friends seem to. If you have time for friends anymore.

Or you could be grieving the way things turned out for your precious ones. They’re adults now, and you are still begging God to invade their hearts, or at least clean out their ears so they can hear Him. Are you heartbroken that they chose the path you warned them against? And they don’t even see how it hurts them. Or they don’t want to admit their sin and come to Jesus the way you wish they would.

Life on earth produces great hurts, pains, and concerns. Each situation above applies to people I know and care for. And even though James flat out tells us that we will have various trials of many kinds, we wanted to land just outside of his box. We wanted to slip through, unscathed by the damage.

Sometimes we don’t see the need for the prizes James offers—maturity and perseverance. Step right up! You only have to be thrown into the fire in order to win them. Your trials will leave you crumpled on the floor for a season, gasping for air, a heap of humanity seemingly broken beyond repair. BUT…you will become perfect and complete, lacking in nothing!

My mind is often earthly and unspiritual. I would not willingly step right up to that plate. I want to be safe and live the life I dream of.

I want to live a long, happy life with my sweet husband. I want to make millions of sweet memories with my three little people, and I want them to grow to love and follow Jesus. I want them to marry sweethearts who love Jesus first and love them next. I want to “get to keep” my parents around for a very long time, and I want to “get to keep” my sisters too. I want to love people and point them toward their Creator. I want to leave a legacy that I will be proud of and humbled by.

I’m entitled to none of it. I can control very little.

This is earth and not heaven. Earth mangled with sin and death, hunger and sickness. If it’s not invading your life right now, would you face it on behalf of others?

I admit, I often don’t know what to do with all the pain around me. But God is drawing me to embrace the difficulties of others, even in tiny little ways. In the past, I would not think about such things, but I’m learning to stop looking away.

It all starts with love in every day life. Love does not look away and keep going. Love does not keep all the stuff I like so much for my own personal enjoyment. Love does not run errands in a hurry, wrapped up in the cloak of my own concerns.

Love happens when I slow down, look for opportunities to show kindness, see people the way their Maker sees them, pray on their behalf, care. Even for people I don’t know.

Today God gave me the chances to care for several of His loved ones. A man sitting on a bench in the heart of Apex—the Peak of Good Livin’— North Carolina. It didn’t look to be the peak of good living for him just then, and all I did was pray earnestly on his behalf. A gray-haired woman who struggled just to get to the store and needed an open door, a shopping cart to lean on, and a smile. A mom whose kids were misbehaving, who just needed someone to understand where she was at and tell her to hang in there.

They were small gestures, but I believe God uses our little acts of love for others big-time. And then He increases opportunities until all we can say is Praise God! Love thrills me.

Will you look around and see who needs your kindness, concern, and compassion today?

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:2-4, NIV

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6:5, NIV

If you love me, you will obey what I command.
John 14:15, NIV

If I speak the languages of men and of angels, but do not have love,
I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have [the gift of] prophecy,
and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith, so that I can move mountains,
but do not have love, I am nothing.
And if I donate all my goods to feed the poor,
and if I give my body to be burned,
but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind. Love does not envy;
is not boastful; is not conceited;
does not act improperly; is not selfish;
is not provoked; does not keep a record of wrongs;
finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth;
bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
1 Corinthians 13:1-8, HCSB