But that is not true. Serving the Lord in missions is an act of giving up your selfcenteredness for His glory so that He may use you to love on and minister to the people He desires to draw to Himself. Simply, it's not always giving up world-defined "luxuries." It's giving up anything which draws your attention back to yourself. Anything that keeps you from being selfless. Anything that keeps you from listening to the Spirit as he directs your steps. Anything that keeps you from building relationships with the people who need to hear of His saving grace and forgiveness.
If you can selflessly serve the Lord in a one room shack in the middle of India to poverty-stricken Hindus, you are doing missions. If you can selflessly serve the Lord in a tiny Hong Kong apartment in the heart of a big city among unreached businessmen, you are doing missions. If you can selflessly serve the Lord in a four bedroom house near the mountains of the Carolinas among "situational" and "nominal" Christians, you are doing missions.
Missions is not always the act of being luxury-less, it is the act of being selfless. Sometimes the two are the same thing. Sometimes God calls us to be his hands and feet to people who literally have nothing and are starving and naked and thirsty. And sometimes he calls us to be his hands and feet to people who seemingly have everything, but who in reality are as broken and needy as those who have nothing.
The organization I served with this summer primarily ministers to the educated of Asia. These people have food, they have shelter, but they are hungry for hope.
Yes, there is a dire need for people like us to meet the physical needs of the poor around the world. Even Jesus did that. He healed the lepers and fed the hungry before he told them the Good News. As a teacher, I like to say that my students won't care how much I know until they know how much I care. It's the same thing with the Good News. People won't care what you know (Jesus cares) until they know that you care. I'm not saying there isn't a call for physical needs (like hunger, thirst, illness, and nakedness) to be met. I would like to argue that there is more. There is also a call for emotional and mental needs to be met. Help meet the first need (whichever one God has equipped you to meet) and people will be open to hearing about how God can meet their spiritual need.
Don't ever think that if your calling doesn't take you out of the country or to the poorest of the poor that you somehow aren't good enough. Because sometimes the orphans of the world are AIDS-infected African children. And sometimes they are black-haired, light-brown-skinned teenagers with almond-shaped-eyes whose biological parents have never told them that they love them.
And unless we learn to love the people around us in situations that don't actually call us to give up "big" or comfortable things, how can we ever love the people around us in the situations that do?
A lot of people think that missions is simply showing the Jesus film and planting a church. Maybe digging a fresh water well, too. Those things are great and we need them. But I think that "missions" can be more accurately defined as a lifestyle, not a profession. And way more than a summer trip.
We can choose professions like pastor, teacher, translator, counselor, and even auto mechanic, and can use those jobs as part of our missional lifestyle. That's one problem I have with majoring in Cross-Cultural Studies, like many people at my college do. Because what are you going to do with that? Why not get additional training? Major in Counseling and minor in CCS, so you then have a practical skill. Not only can that grant you entrance into a creative-access country, but it is actually a marketable profession you can do and get paid for and do missions through. Or major in Cross-Cultural Adult Education, because education is a great tool for relationship building which can lead to some awesome conversations.
Don't think that only people with a cross-cultural or inter-cultural studies degree can serve as a missionary. Missions is a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle whether you are overseas or in your home country. It's an assignment to make known the name of Christ wherever you are.
Interestingly, you never retire from mission work. We are always on an assignment, which proves that missions isn't something that only happens in other countries. 2 Peter chapter 3 says, "Always be ready to explain [your Christian hope]," not just when you sign up to go on a mission trip. I want to leave you with this quote from Father Sullivan...
We say the missionary is coming ‘home’. Perhaps that is the problem, for in fact, the missionary is not coming home. For it is as difficult to return and begin as it was to begin when you first went. The person has changed, the culture has changed, and the politics of the country has changed. So let’s reconceptualise it: we are not coming home, we are going on a new assignment. We have made that transition once, let’s build on a previous experience and feel we are going on a new commitment. This takes a lot of work.
What I'm Listening To:
"Send Us to the Nations" - Jarod Espy / Arisen
"All the Poor and Powerless" - All Sons and Daughters
"I Refuse" - Josh Wilson
"I Refuse" - Josh Wilson
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