A call to action

I went on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic my sophomore year of high school. I can still remember almost every detail. The people I encountered, the food I ate, the conversations I had, but what I remember more than anything is the feeling I felt about a week after the trip. You could compare it to the drop you feel after your "camp high" is over. It's a feeling that I now realize I had after almost every trip I went on.

While I was there I felt so on fire for the Lord, preaching His word, sharing the gospel with people and then what? I come back home to my same old routine, I fall back into my same old slump and that "GO JESUS" feeling I had seems to fade away. 

If you have been on a mission trip, whether in the states or abroad, you can probably relate to those feelings. 

But why do we get those feelings? 

I can remember telling my parents a week after my trip that I was going back. I didn't know when or how but I was. Looking back now I see exactly why I wanted to go back. It wasn't really for the trip itself, as much as I loved it. I wanted to go back to get out of my funk. I wanted to go back to feel the way I did when I was there. I wanted to feel like I was making a difference in His kingdom. 

This brings me back to my question. Why do we get these feelings of discontentment once we return home? 

The answer is rather simple. We are called to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19) that is a command from Jesus. We are to go and tell everyone the good news. 

Maybe someone's thinking, well I did that! So why do I still feel this way?

Here is one of the issues I have found, when we go on these mission trips, we feel so good about the work we are doing, and then we come home and feel "off" as we enter back into our daily routines..

Guess what, IT'S BECAUSE WE ENTER BACK INTO OUR DAILY ROUTINES!


Romans 1:5 (MSG) puts it pretty clearly 
"Through Him we have received BOTH the generous gift of his life and the urgent task of passing it on the others." 

We feel a discomfort because we see the JOY that comes from following Jesus's command of "going and making disciples" and then all of a sudden we stop. Why? Because we are home. 
Going to the nations is an urgent need, please don't get me wrong, BUT please don't forget that this nation, the one you live your daily life in, is also a mission field. 

It was once put to me like this, If you had the cure for cancer, would you keep it to yourself knowing someone next door to you is dying? We have the CURE. 

Don't let your fear, doubt or selfishness keep you from telling people about the cure. 

Jesus didn't call us to be comfortable. He called us to live a life of obedient faith. Sometimes that means we are called into situations that we don't like and I'm sorry but I'm going to be blunt.

GET OVER IT

We have a mission field right in front of us and we are too distracted from our own lives to see that we are MISSING IT! You can do work for His kingdom every single day of your life, and you should be, you just have to step AWAY from your self in order to see it sometimes.

Don't live mission trip to mission trip. We have a call to action that is to be lived out every day of our lives.