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