A "Real" Missionary: How We're Always on Assignment

A lot of people think that missions is giving up of luxuries in Jesus's name. Like "I'm not a real missionary unless I go to the farthest corner of the earth and have no running water and run an undercover house church."

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

My Call to Go

One of the things I love most about being home for the summer is sitting around the dining room table with my family. Usually there’s something funny going on: someone is either getting picked on or just said or did something hilarious or is telling a funny story from their day.

My stepdad recently buzzed my brother’s hair, I got a trim today, and my mom is getting her hair cut tomorrow, so we recently discussed hair styles. In a bit of humor, my stepdad told me to get a crazy hairstyle before I go to Asia, so that it will catch on. Casually, he remarked that “when [I] go back in three years,” everyone in Asia will be wearing their hair like that.

When I go back in three years? Wait… 

And that’s when I felt it. That little pinprick in my heart. Kinda like a cross between a jolt of electricity and the flap of a butterfly’s wing. Or perhaps it’s easier described as a push or poke or a bright light, maybe? (It sounded like this to Abraham and smelled like smoke for Moses.)

It’s happened to me a couple times. My heart skips a beat, my peripheral vision clouds over, I can’t breathe.

Sometimes it happens when God is calling me to say something. Or not to say something. But I’ve felt it strongest when God is speaking to me. It can happen in the midst of a worship session or in a random conversation. I felt it, just for a second, at the dinner table the other night.

Sometimes it’s clear like it was at dinner. That moment during May of my freshman year when God all but audibly called me to my vocation (teaching), was more than distinct. I cried walking down the hallway with a bunch of eighth graders. When God called me to intentional singleness last February, I was sitting in the prayer room on my college campus and I felt it inside. There’s no way I could pretend I didn’t hear what God said to me.

Other times, it’s been less noticeable. I can’t remember one specific moment when God called me to Asia, and I still don’t know if I'll ever serve in Asia long-term. But my heart is hugely with Asia for this summer. I knew in May 2011 that God called me to be a teacher, and I am drawn towards late middle school / early high school, which is what led me to volunteer with the organization I’m serving with this summer. Then Asia came into the picture, because that’s where the organization works. So I said: Cool, I've never been to Asia. I want to do something awesome this summer and for God to be glorified. And it’s teaching English, something I’ll be doing for the rest of my life.

And slowly, God broke down my defenses against Asia and revealed to me that he has great plans for me there. He has great plans for the team of college students I’ll meet in Los Angeles and work with Asia. And he has great plans for the students I will be teaching.

Recently, I’ve been having a hard time keeping my eyes from "leaking." I was given a copy of a pre-service Bible study called “God’s Heart for the Nations” for my trip and my eyes started watering while I was completing the first lesson. I couldn’t even get through the first preface to the third edition of John Piper’s Let the Nations be Glad without tearing up. The Sunday before Memorial Day, I spoke at my grandma’s church and received a love offering from them.  While I was preparing, the pastor and I previewed the video I was going to show before I spoke. I couldn’t even see the video once it started playing because my eyes were watering, and I struggled to keep myself from being noticed. And don’t even get me started on when I received the Operation Servanthood book, my luggage tags, T-shirt, waterbottle, and official journal in the mail. I opened the journal and skimmed a couple pages and felt like my heart was exploding.

It’s weird, because while I do have a tendency to cry, I don’t cry all that much. Nothing (except for the beauty of my Savior and my vocational calling) has captured my heart so much as this trip to Asia. Maybe it’s because this trip opens up a world (literally) of overseas opportunities for my future. Or maybe because this is the longest time I’ll be overseas, without anyone I’ve met before.  Or maybe because Asia is hitting me hard. (I would love to share more about that when I return!)

While I was getting ready for this trip, a guy friend of mine who has been to Asia three times before handed me an envelope with some cash for my trip. It was quite a lot of money for a college student, and I thanked him profusely.

On the outside of the envelope, he wrote a note, signing it “sincerely, with blessings, from a bro,” and his name. One line from the note caught my attention: May your preparation be worship. …That makes me cry, too.

In these next three weeks before I leave, I must make prayer a vital part of my preparation. I must make worship (the conscious effort of placing God first and giving him the glory due him) a vital part of my preparation. My friend was saying that all of my preparations, whatever I have to do to get ready, be an act of worship. I love that.

I have no doubt this trip is going to be difficult. Five weeks, two countries, over thirty-eight hours in airplanes (not to mention layovers), at least three different beds and roommates, and a classroom of 16-20 teenaged students. Yeah, it’ll be tough. But, hey, with God, nothing is impossible. With God, I have nothing to fear.

"No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you." (Joshua 1:5)

"The One Who called you is faithful and will do what He promised." (1 Thessalonians 5:24)

"God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful. (1 Corinthians 1:9)

What I'm Listening To:

"Hold On" - B*Witched (this is one of my pumped-for-the-summer songs)

"I Refuse" - Josh Wilson

"Conmigo Estas (You Hold Me Now)" - Hillsong

P.S. I won't be updating this blog while I'm Asia. If you would like to receive my e-mail updates, please scroll down to the bottom of this post. For more information about my trip and how you can help, see my page here or send me an e-mail. Thanks!

Sometimes I Feel Like a Mess

But, you know what? It's okay! Because when I'm broken and desperate and needy, that is when I realize my need for God. That is when I realize how I'm going nowhere without him. In the New Living Translation, Matthew 5:3 reads, "God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs." It's okay to struggle and it's good to realize that we don't and won't have it all together, because through that we come to understand how great and powerful and forgiving and holy and accepting of us God really is. So, run to him and climb up in his lap and love him and receive his love for you! Jesus says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28)

Along those same lines, I often find myself going through life searching for the next "thing", the next "high", if you will. For many people, life is just a series of events strung one after the other. It follows that "living for the weekend" mindset that you may have noticed in high school or college: life consists of planning parties for next weekend and 'recovering' from parties last weekend.

We even see this in the Christian life. We think that we are truly Christians, or that we're doing it right, during those moments of high intensity in our Christian walk. There's this subconsious idea that, as Christians, those moments where we are completely on fire for God and we see God everywhere are better or "right" and that those times of living in the valley and struggling to see God are not "Christian" or are "wrong". But we forget that life can't lived on an emotional high everyday. We need moments of peace. Also, God may be using the times when you don't necessarily "feel" him as an opportunity to prepare you for something better in life. For example, for me personally, I can see how God is using this moment of singleness (even when being single hurts!) to prepare me for his future for me in regards to dating and marriage. I've learned so much through the struggles that I truly would not trade it for anything.

My friend Tori said it well when she said, "God is just preparing you to be ready for the best." If it's not the best, then it's not from God - and God's "best" usually looks different than mine! Hold out for God's best, trust that he knows what he's doing (because he does!), and use today to learn something. What is God trying to teach you through this experience?

Finally, have patience. Josh Wilson sings, "My friend, you know how this all ends and you know where you're going, you just don't know how you'll get there. So say a prayer. And hold on, cause there's good for those who love God. Life is not a snapshot, it might take a little time, but you'll see the bigger picture." And he's right - it's going to take time, but press on. God loves you and he has a good and perfect plan for your life and he will never fail you.

Maybe there are things you can't see and all those things are happening to bring better ending. Someday, somehow, you'll see.

- "Before the Morning", by: Josh Wilson

The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.

- Zephaniah 3:17

I hate change.

I hate change. There, I said it. If you want to know what I hate: I hate change. Hate it with a passion. After celebrating (and dealing with) graduation, mom's remarriage, moving, and adapting to a stepdad and stepfamily, I thought, with some humor, Oh, God's trying to teach me about change. This is cool. I can adapt to change. Everything is going fine.

But I guess I spoke too soon. God isn't about coasting through life or simply taking what you're given and merging into your present life. God is about change.

See, if I became a Christian and then spoke the same way, watched the same movies, listened to the same music, befriended the same people, and thought about life the same way as I did before Christ (or as non-Christians do), then has Christ made a difference in my life? Or am I simply the same as I was before I met Christ?

As Christians, we've got to be different. We must be different, so we reflect Christ instead of this world. We do this through our choices in media as well as our actions, words, and thoughts. And while we are choosing cleaner, Godlier choices in media and words, God is in the process of refining our thoughts and viewpoints and feelings. This whole, entire movement or shift in our lives is a big change! It's a change towards Godliness, an adjustment in the direction of Christ along the straight and narrow path. In theology, we call it Sanctification.

Isaiah 48:10 explains this by saying: "See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction." Whatever survives the 'furnace' is good and Godly, but it's a life-long process.

Okay, so back to the change in my life. I hate it. But God has a purpose for it. God's plan is that through the things I hate (like change), I will be refined. I will become more like Christ, and my life will conform to God instead of to this world.

Josh Wilson writes and sings about those uncomfortable, even painful moments in life that have a purpose like this:

Do you wonder why you have to
feel the things that hurt you,
if there's a God who loves you,
where is He now?

Maybe, there are things you can't see
and all those things are happening
to bring a better ending
some day, some how, you'll see, you'll see

Chorus
Would you dare, would you dare, to believe,
that you still have a reason to sing,
'cause the pain you've been feeling,
can't compare to the joy that's coming

So hold on, you got to wait for the light
press on, just fight the good fight
because the pain you've been feeling,
it's just the dark before the morning

My friend, you know how this all ends
and you know where you're going,
you just don't know how you get there
so just say a prayer.
And hold on, cause there's good for those who love God,
life is not a snapshot, it might take a little time,
but you'll see the bigger picture