Finding Your Missional Life
By Jacinta Russell
The Great Commission. We as Christians are charged to go… “go ye into all the world and preach the gospel” (Mark 16:15). The charge was given over 2000 years ago and yet there is still a deficit. We live in a lost world. We live in a world where there are people groups who have never heard the name of Jesus let alone the truth of the gospel.
Mission work is not something that we can pretend does not apply to us because we didn’t get the call to forsake all and move to a foreign land. Mission work first starts in the heart. It’s God’s mission and should be our passion. When you get to heaven who or how many people will be able to say they made it in because of you.
I had the rare privilege to grow up in a mission minded church, surrounded by missionaries. Every fourth Sunday I heard the word of God preached from a missionary. They spoke with eloquence and passion for the gospel of Christ. They lived and breathed the word of God. My family hosted missionaries a couple of times, so I was able to spend some one on one time with them. I have memories that will last a lifetime.
I recently attended a global missions conference in St. Louis, Missouri in December and I heard it again; that passionate testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ from a missionary. The thing that makes them a missionary is not their address, but their life; the missional life. Living a missional life is about taking all of your talents, gifting and heart and dedicating it to the mission of Jesus Christ. That could be locally or globally.
The Great Commission should be what grips our heart. Seeing the world the way God sees it. Showing His love to those in need; to the sick and impoverished to the rich and the lost. We have a responsibility to this world to get the message out to all those who will hear. The question is how. Whatever your vocation may be use it for the kingdom; business, construction, doctors, lawyers, cosmetology; whatever your vocation.
If you cannot go, physically, then support those who do. At the aforementioned conference, attendees packed and shipped 30,000 care kits for caregivers in Swaziland located in Southern Africa. There will always be a need for monetary donations, but giving your life is necessary and what he honors the most.