Living Missionally knowing Who I am in Christ Everyday and Everywhere

This was the small snippet I was going to share at Missions night for AACF UCI.

Share background of how AACF was where I was saved ( shout out to Brittney) and now just got into my gap year for PT school and I thought God was going to use this year for big things, but instead, it seemed very very slow. I thought God was going to allow me to go abroad and volunteer here and there and just make a difference. But what God kept whispering was this:

Before you even try to do missions for God, understand God’s mission for you.-in college and even post grad, I felt like I constantly had to be doing so much for God because that’s what I thought He wanted. But rather than feeling like God was using me in big things, I was at home, working at job I didn’t really like and being humbled like crazy at my new church. But it’s been a joy because God showed me the one thing that was necessary, sitting at His feet rather than doing more and more. In this season God has opened my eyes up to catch a glimpse of what it means to understand His mission for me and what it looks like to be missional even in the mundane.

When I moved back home, God has been so gracious in all the areas I worried about like family and church, but somehow I struggled A LOT with work. I knew that at work, like school, was the main focus of where I thought God wanted to use me. He did, but in the beginning it was a quiet not yet. And to be honest, I myself did not want to be missional especially with people I worked with. There was something about the cliques and the loneliness I felt there that just made me want to leave, yet I felt this tension of what I should be feeling and doing is sharing the gospel.

So as I kept having this idealistic picture of how my relationships would be with them and how I would be digging into their lives, I was constantly left disappointed. The reality was, I was consistently feeling alone and never able to go deep with anyone. I didn’t get it. Why God? And that’ when people within my small group began to pry into my life and into basically the lies I believed about God and how God views me. And I realized, I didn’t quite understand the depth of Christ’s sacrifice in terms of His love for me and His grace. Which are actually two core things about His mission or the gospel. I got intellectually but by my actions trying to find my acceptance from my coworkers and trying to feel like I need to do more for God- it was obvious that His love and His grace were not enough. But as the months went on, God began to uproot a lot of fears and lies and still is and began to replace it with His word- His truth about who He is and who I am. One day it just made sense, I don’t know how but the power of the Holy Spirit helped me to finally comprehend that God loved me, He formed my very days - He celebrated me and delights in me. There is absolutely nothing I can do to add or to subtract what Christ has already won. The way God sees me is the exact same way God sees Christ. These are the things my soul needed to learn how to believe before I could actually live out missionally. It became a natural overflow rather than an obligation.

And so as I began to step into trusting these things about who God is, He is steadfast in love, gracious, merciful, just and who I am: a child of God, His beloved, His creation. God began to slowly provide small opportunities to be present and build relationships there. And then from there, just being bold about talking about what I do on the weekends and not being afraid to ask harder questions and engage what their beliefs are. So living missionally every day at work hasn’t been so much about sharing the gospel right away, here are 5 points and therefore believe. But has more been about understanding what matters to them in order to one day have the opportunity to point them to what matters most. And even if that opportunity doesn’t happen, I know that God controls over it and I don’t have to feel like like it was a failure if it never gets there. God may use someone else for that part, I am just a small piece in the story.

So yes I’ve been on an intentional mission to Japan and plan to go to Mexico to build a house this month but, I think what I’ve been finding is that missions isn’t necessarily about what I do, but who I am. God cares that I become His image bearers rather than feeling like I need to reach this standard of “holiness” or “Christian living”, although those things are important and are a product, I strongly believe that God wants to first tear down any lies and barriers that keep you from truly knowing the true and living God and who He has already called you to be. And something I realize that it’s not something I’ll be able to understand over night, but it’s a process and that’s okay. Trust God’s timing and know that God wastes nothing. I encourage you guys to rest and meditate on how God already sees you. And then engage with other people outside of AACF, invest in their lives and be present and be prayerful. Then watch God do what only He can do, allow Him to work through you and for you. Results may not come, but that’s okay, God may be using the situation to shape you. He just asks us to trust Him, not produce the results.