So when I was a child, missionaries would regularly visit our home church while on furlough to talk about their work. Generally these folks were from what was then the Congo or Japan or Ecuador, and they would show slides (yes I am dating myself) of the churches they served and the homes they lived in, and would talk about being CALLED to be a missionary.
I would sit there, I kid you not, praying that the phone would not ring. I lived in fear that I would answer and a deep voice would tell me to pack my bags for Africa. Isn’t that how it works? I had absolutely no desire to 1) live in another country in apparent squalor (sometimes those people even ate BUGS!) or 2) speak PUBLICLY about my faith. I would squirm just thinking about it.
Of course, I was in like, the fourth grade.
It never once occurred to my 10-year-old mind that if God wanted me preaching his gospel in a foreign country, he might give me a heart for that. And the skill set.
I am not saying that we aren’t ALL called to work for the kingdom. Christ makes it very clear in his great commission that we are to “go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation” (Mark 16:15) And sometimes it is very easy to get a little too comfortable in our own milieu and think that this mission business is someone else’s job.
But what is our mission? We aren’t all called to head for Ghana. Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to go into all the world and preach the good news. It is not specified exactly how that should play out. And we ARE given a choice. We either obey the summons, or we don’t. In the book of Esther, she must choose – does she go before the king and risk her own death, or does she do nothing and allow genocide of her own people on a mass scale?
Obedience must come from love, and respect, relationship and trust. Do I love and respect God? Am I in relationship with him? And if I can say yes to the first three, do I trust God to use me to forward his mission in this world? Do I trust that he will give me the necessary tools to do this? Or should I stick my fingers in my ears and sing at the top of my lungs so that I can’t hear him talking? Or worse, do I let the call go into voice mail and listen to it in my own sweet time?
We don’t have to listen to the still small voice telling us to write a note to a distant friend. We don’t have to volunteer at the local thrift store. We don’t have to sit with a grieving friend that has just buried his infant son. But isn’t this as much God’s call as living in Thailand? And maybe that is how God calls most of us to evangelize.
I think it is time to stop feeling guilty that I am not hopping on that plane. I think it is time for me to accept that God uses me – us – in ways that are as unique as we are. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13. “So the body is not one part but many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,’ in spite of this IT STILL BELONGS TO THE BODY.” (1 Cor. 12:14-15. Emphasis mine.)
I’ve always viewed this extended passage as an admonition to not think that some spiritual gifts or jobs are better than others and therefore feel that my job is more important. Wouldn’t want to get a big head! But can’t it also be viewed in reverse? What I am called to do IS important, AND it still makes me part of God’s kingdom work. So I shouldn’t feel like I’m missing some spiritual boat if I’m not on one to Tanzania (or is that land-locked? I’m a little foggy on the geography of sub-Saharan Africa. Hey, I just looked it up – bless the Internet – and I could take a boat there! Google really is a blessing to the mind of a mother of teenagers. But I am off track. Which is also not uncommon to the mind of a mother of teenagers.)
What Paul really wants to emphasize is that whatever we do, we need to do it out of love (1 Cor. 13 – the whole thing!). Not out of guilt or shame or fear of a phone call.
Aren’t all the following examples of heeding the great commission call?
A group of women help a single mom pack up her house to move, a job that, if done alone, might leave her rocking in a corner in the fetal position.
A bunch of teenagers band together to rake an elderly woman’s yard.
A pastor makes it his private little mission, in addition to all his other duties, to make sure the ice-cube tray in the church kitchen is always filled.
A couple of elementary school kids hold a lemonade stand – free lemonade but donations gratefully accepted for the local food shelf.
A neighbor’s pet dies, and my husband and son help bury it.
A caravan from the church heads to a reservation to help mend roofs and teach VBS.
My middle child, unasked, unloads the dishwasher for her sister.
An introverted mom-to-be stands up in front of the congregation to tell her story of miscarriages and God’s faithfulness.
The call to mission comes in many different ring tones. As many as there are of God’s children and their inherent gifts. So we shouldn’t fear to answer. God doesn’t cold-call. God only calls those he loves best. And he loves us all best.