Are You a Missionary?
When I think of missionaries, I think of my niece who went to Africa and lived far from home and discipled total strangers from a different culture. Imagine my surprise recently when I felt the Lord was moving my heart to be more of a missionary. To be a woman on mission for Him. The word missionary just kept coming to mind, and I did not feel comfortable with it at first. What did it mean? How could I with all my physical limitations be a missionary? So I began to study and seek God’s meaning and direction.
To set the stage, let me take you back to December when the Lord let me know through prayer that 2020 was going to be different for me. I did not know it would be different for the whole world. I am the kind of person who likes an assignment. I like to go to work each morning knowing what project I will be working on. Ambiguity is not pleasant for me. But I felt God was preparing me not to have a series of speaking engagements in 2020 or a book to write or any big project that would define my days. Oh, how right He was.
When Covid 19 hit, everyone stopped doing the type of corporate seminars I do. I had already cut back my blog to once a month, so I had much less to do. I knew the Lord had cleared my calendar for something but what?
I began to pray and seek His face. I felt He was talking to me about what to do with my writing. I have never worried about the effectiveness of my writing. I feel that if there is Scripture in it, that the Word will do the work. It is never what I say but what He says that will make the difference in someone’s heart. I felt He told me that I had done okay in transcribing the things He had taught me, but that I was not being a good missionary with what was produced. He showed me that I mostly shared with people from my church and their likeminded friends and family. I began to feel I had kept these Scripture based writings to a very select group. I had been exclusive and had not had an eye to reaching people who probably needed it more.
Asking myself how I could share the Word with more people, I began to look at publishing in Christian magazines. I have a deep belief that many Christians are not living in the fullness of His love. Though I have a heart for the unsaved, I also know there are many churchgoers who do not have a deep personal relationship with the Lord. I decided to devote July to educating myself about Christian magazine publishing in order to get some verses out there that have encouraged me and that might encourage others. Before my month of self-education on magazine publishing was complete, I submitted a few articles to magazines familiar to me and began to have email conversations with some of the editors who accepted my work. I will tell you that there are incredible selfless people out there working in Christian publishing. In a discouraging year, that encouragement alone was worth the effort. I have made new friends who share my desire to reach more people with the riches of His Word.
But my self-education led me to other magazines that are completely aimed at bringing the lost to salvation through their publications. For example, the magazine Halo strategically places their magazines free of charge in doctor’s offices and other waiting rooms around the nations. They reach hundreds of thousands of people this way who would not attend church. Praise the Lord for this and other magazines that reach out to a secular audience with Christian material.
God had encouraged me to be more of a missionary. I wonder if He might have you reading this right now because 2020 is your year to think of yourself more in terms of being a missionary. We all know we are called by The Great Commission:
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20 ESV
Or as Mark 16:15 ESV states it:
And he said to them, "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
We know that every one of us, not just missionaries like my niece, is charged to “declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples.” 1 Chronicles 16:24, Psalm 96:3 ESV
But more convicting to me than that are the verses that tell me how I am to live in my neighborhood and workplace and community. Matthew 17:20 NASB states a challenge to every believer that is repeated throughout Matthew as well as in Luke and James and other books:
"So then, you will know them by their fruits.”
If my life is my witness to those I meet every day in every sphere, what do people know about me? Am I being a missionary for Him? Am I a woman who enters each encounter knowing I am on mission to present the “gospel to the whole creation?”
The most convicting passage of all to me has been Romans 10:13-14
The Lord has awakened me to the fact that when in verse 14 He talks about “someone” reaching these people who may never have heard the Gospel that He is not just talking about the missionaries we support. He is talking about me! He is talking about you!
How has God equipped you to be a missionary? As you live your life in your community, do people see something different about you? Would your equipping as a baker of chocolate chip cookies be how you enter their lives? Or as a tutor who could help a mom who is overwhelmed with her new role as homeschool teacher? Or as a really good listener to that co-worker who clearly needs a lot of listening?
God never gives us a commission without equipping us. He convicted me that I was not being intentional about using my equipping to share His Word with others. I was keeping an absolute treasure to myself. Are you?