I love mission trips. I often tell people the best definition I have found defining a Christian missionary is, “Anyone who is born again who goes anywhere to tell anyone about Jesus.” Now, I must admit some prejudice for that definition since I wrote it but it simply reminds us that each born again follower of Jesus is a missionary every day & everywhere. Recently we took a team of mission volunteers to KY and soon we will take a team to Trinidad. I tell each mission team things I have shared and learned over the years as a life-long missionary.
I tell them to “Be Flexible”. One never knows what God has in store. We make our plans but Isaiah 55:8 reminds us that our thoughts and our ways are not the same as His. The trees that are more flexible survive the highest winds and most severe storms. The more flexible we are in life, the more we are able to be missionaries, servants and experience the joy that God has in store for us as this sin-scarred world blows unexpected storms our way. We must remember, as His missionaries, His plan is for us to follow His wind no matter where it may blow us as Jesus told us through his conversation with Nicodemus. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8)
I also tell them, "The mission trip starts ‘right now’ now when we arrive at the site or our destination". We need to be ready to reflect the light at all times. On the way to Kentucky we made our first stop for lunch at Wendy’s (my teams go first class). As we were traveling and trying to make time we breezed in for a quick lunch but a group of outsiders from another state always attracts attention. My wife & I were last in the line and a local man sitting at table with a friend asked where we were from. I told him Columbia, SC. He responded saying, “I know where that is. My son got shot there.” Well, that opened the door for conversation but another sentence spoke volumes. He told us his son-in-law committed suicide that very morning. After that stunning declaration he said, “He was a good man and a deacon in the church. I hate that he won’t go to heaven now.” This let Cathy and me know he misunderstood Biblical salvation. At that moment our bus driver came to get me with a problem. As the leader I had to be called away. As a missionary Cathy got to explain that one’s faith in Christ not one’s actions whether good or bad determines one’s eternal destiny. When anyone places their faith in Christ and becomes born in the Spirit their eternal destiny is determined by what Jesus did on the cross. We planned to swing into a fast food restaurant for a quick lunch and get back on the road. God had a divine appointment for a missionary that had eternal results. In our life as a missionary every day we need to be open, attentive, ready, flexible and willing to be used when God gives us the daily opportunity to be missionaries.
Today I was completing a hospital visit and headed to my car when I noticed a lady who seemed confused as she was receiving more confusing instruction from an attendant to the Sumter Street parking garage. I was parked in that garage so I interrupted (my wife corrects me for interrupting but she was not with me and I thought it would be OK this time) and said, “Follow me!” I pulled my Clergy badge from my pocket to let her know I was safe and was not hitting on her. (I stuff my badge in my pocket after my visits so no one looks at me funny when I get lost…preachers should know their way around hospitals. But, I get lost in my own thoughts and miss turns when I drive or walk…kinda like now). Anyway, as we walked to the parking garage she told me about her elderly mother whom she was visiting. She had recently moved her mother here to be her caretaker and it was becoming stressful.
II Corinthians 1:3 tells us our God is the “Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our troubles; so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” As we walked to her car I told her of our recent experience moving my dad from MS to become his caretakers and was able to comfort her in her trouble with the comfort I had received from God in my recent “troubles”. I thought I was “being flexible” to do a good deed to help a lady find her way out of the parking lot but I wound up being a missionary to a sister who was struggling to find her way through a more puzzling corridor.
As believers we are simply ‘Beggars showing other beggars where we found bread’. Be flexible. The mission trip starts as soon you leave the door each time you leave the house. You are on a mission trip. Jesus is your passport!
