The Staff In Your Own Hands

I'm not a huge fan of the way that some people put missionaries on a pedestal - as if we have some special calling or some super power. I've always been an advocate of this simple truth: we are all invited to be missionaries. A missionary is simply a carrier of the live and message of Jesus, and according to that definition and the call of the great commission on every believer's life, then we are all exactly that - missionaries. Our geographical location might be different (as God certainly wants it to be! How uninteresting would it be if all Christians were cooped up in the same place? Like a candle hidden under a bowl...) but out "call", or invitation as I'd rather call it, is fundamentally the same. We are all given a mission to carry the name of Jesus wherever we and go and with whomever we meet. 

So I make it my aim to encourage people to embrace their invitation to missions, and I like to help people see how that's possible in even your every day life. Let me give you a simple example. Let me bring "missionary" down from the pedestal and hand it to you just like God gave Moses the staff in his own hands. 

The other day, I invited two young ladies over to my house. They are new believers, teenage girls pulled this way and that by the temptations of the world yet recently recommitted and newly devoted to following Jesus. We spent the whole afternoon and evening together painting nails, playing Uno, and making rice and sauce to eat for dinner. They taught me how to make an excellent peanut sauce that I can't wait to recreate and share with other visitors that come into my home and with my friends and family back in the States. Thanks to my cooking instructors and new friends, I'm becoming more and more African by the minute! 

Before they came over, I wondered if I should prepare some kind of devotional or something. I felt like that's what a "good missionary" would do, right? But instead I decided to just keep it simple and focus on building a relationship with these young girls. 

So I never did an official devotional with them. I never gathered them around me to share a message with them from the word of God. But you know what? As we painted nails, Christian music played in the background and when the conversation died, the worship of God still rang out. When they entered my house, they read every verse that was painted on every canvas spread about the house. The ones that were in English, they asked about, and I happily explained and gave small testimonies or explanations about what each one means to me. Before dinner, I said a heartfelt prayer for them. And before the left, we prayed again to end the evening by thanking God for our new friendship. 

Even though I didn't plan a single one of those things, those girls saw, read, and heard God's word and his love for them throughout the entire evening. 

And perhaps that's all they needed. Perhaps they didn't need a formal devotional. Perhaps they just needed to be in an environment where they were loved, an environment saturated with Scripture and praise, and to see how those two connect. 

So you see, being a "missionary" can be as simple as showing hospitality and saturating the environment with God's truth and his love. Being a missionary is as simple as loving people and carrying the name of Jesus wherever you go and with whoever you meet. 

Take this story and run with it. Take the missionary off the pedestal and put the shoes on yourself because you, too, can love people and carry the name of Jesus where God has placed you. The shoes of the gospel of peace (Ephesians 6) look great on you! May God use you (and me) this week to love his people and spread his name to the nations and fame to the ends of the earth!