I'm trying to stay focused at Harvestfield on bringing out the importance of missional living in the most insignificant opportunities. I believe that many Christians feel so "out of the loop" with Christ's mission because the traditional church has led them to believe that if they don't prescribe to traditional measurements of following Christ, they don't measure up. God has laid it on my heart to try and change that.
In doing so, I am trying to cultivate a new mindset in my own life. I have been pouring over the gospels each week and asking the Holy Spirit to stir my imagination to see what was important to Jesus and what wasn't. How did he reveal the kingdom of God to those whom His life touched?
I have experienced the guilt of feeling ineffective for the kingdom because I was handed a faulty measuring rod. Programs and check marks can be useful at times, but the majority of what we do for the sake of Christ is done without notice, measurement, or acclaim. We have a handful of stories about what Jesus said and did, and as important and sufficient as those events are, he did more much more interacting with people that we don't know about than what we know about. (That is not to say that the New Testament is lacking in any way to reveal the record of God's mission.) Even the disciple John speculated that all the whole world would not have enough room to hold the books containing all of the details of Christ's ministry.
So, how I interact on a daily basis with the activity of God around me, is huge in the kingdom-revealing mission to which each Christ-follower is called. This mission is seized the same way Christ moved in and out among people. From the most insignificant extensions of kindness, to the most profound displays of gospel, the fluidity of following Christ takes on many forms that are outside of traditional systematic Christianity.
Life with Christ is too supernatural to describe only with human categories of piety. Although useful to certain degrees, each Christ-follower must come to grips with the fact that walking just as Jesus walked cannot always be categorized in columns, but must experienced through cognitive obedience to His Word. Then the community of Christ can focus on missional experiences that trust the sovereign orchestration of God, over the linear measure of typical religious indicators. Stories of God prevail over statistical measurements. (I'm retraining my thinking!)
What things are you doing as Jesus did that know one will ever know about or record? Sometimes your name might get mentioned as a tool of God's activity, but more often than not, we impact other people's lives in ways that they personally experience, but that they may not notice. Hmm.
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