On the Mission Field, Why Am I Doing Anything That’s Not Serving?

As a full time missionary in another country, the hours and days that I take time to rest can make me feel guilty. People supported me with their money and time and prayer to be here, so when I rest or take time to refill by doing things that I enjoy, or seem like “vacation,” or even when we have half days here on base, I feel like people get the wrong idea. Or maybe I’m just doing it wrong altogether. It can be a constant obligation to be clarifying, “This is paradise, but not vacation.” My mindset often is, “I am called to the mission field this season, so why should I be doing anything that’s not serving or considered ‘mission’ like?”

It’s hard. 

I think about Gainesville often. We spent almost a whole three months completely on base ministering to no one but each other. We weren’t bringing people to Christ, doing any radical evangelism, or even leaving base at all (for obvious covid reasons). And we found a lot of rest there.  

Why? Why would Jesus call us to such a long season that carried the sole purpose of being a time where only we were being discipled? And even while I am on the mission field, why would the Lord continue to give me and my squad mates days of no ministry? Aren’t we supposed to be constant, every day vessels for change in this world?

The past six months of my race, God has given me a lot of clarity on these questions. I am learning He likes the wondering of our hearts because it means were seeking. Complacency and the gospel don’t coexist very well. If at all. 

First off, let’s talk about Jesus. His life is utterly important when trying to figure out how to live our own. Jesus was the God of the whole-entire-freaking-universe in human form. He lived the perfect life of grace and truth and love for us and then died and defeated the stronghold of sin by raising from the dead. And now we can be in heaven with Him one day even despite not being ale to live a perfect life like Him. All heroes that walk this earth are a shadow of Christ and what He did for us. 

The four gospels all summarise Jesus’ life a little differently from four disciples perspectives. But the weird thing is that they only include His birth, a little story about His childhood, and then the majority of the gospels are written about Jesus’ life years later when He started His ministry as an adult. Jesus lived 33 years on this earth, and it’s only the last three years of his life that he left his childhood town and started preaching. So the question that remains is, “What the heck did Jesus do in the first 30 years of His life?” We get a tiny glimpse when Luke tells us a short story of how Jesus’ parents lost Him for three days after their travels to the Festival of the Passover. They eventually found Him in the temple courts, “…sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at His understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:46-47). So one thing we know Jesus did was sit listening to the wise teachers and disciples of his day to learn about Yahweh. God began revealing to Jesus His identity as he grew up. So if I were going to take my best guess about the rest of Jesus’ 29, wildly unrecorded years of life before his ministry, I would assume that He spent a lot of time getting to know His Father. Before He could share about who the Creator is, He had to intimately know the the Creator and what the Creator had to say about him.  

Paul is another person we should be paying a lot of attention to. He is a major disciple in the Bible who is a lot like Jesus in this subject. Over half of the new testament is Paul’s Holy Spirit filled letters to churches all around the world. Before the Lord wrecked His life and renamed him Paul, he was Saul. And Saul was what we would consider a modern day terrorist and a pharisee of the old laws. He was known for murdering Christians out of his pure hate for them. But one day God decided to wreck His life on a road to a city called Damascus, revealing His true nature and mercy to a man who deserved absolutely none of it. And from that day on Paul’s life became dedicated for the kingdom. In Galatians, Paul reveals a really important detail about His life that I think most people miss. In chapter 1:18-19, Paul describes a trip He made to Jerusalem three years after God met Him on the road to Damascus to meet some known disciples of the Lord. And then at the very beginning of chapter 2 in verse 1 he states that the second trip he made to Jerusalem was 14 years later, this time to get acquainted with a church and start preaching the gospel to the Gentiles. In the midst of 17 years, Paul only made two trips to Jerusalem to preach and share and acquaint himself with other disciples. So the same question can be asked about Paul as Jesus, “What else did he do during that long amount of time before his ministry years?” And I can only assume it’s the same answer. He was getting to know his Father. He was waiting for the voice of the Lord to command his next move, and you can’t recognise the Shepherd’s voice unless you know the Shepherd. 

Maybe our three months in Georgia was simply the Father drawing His children close. We got to be like Jesus by being discipled and surrounded by wise women and men of the Lord; we got to be like Paul with our abundance of time to sit at the Fathers feet and understand the heart of the One who called us to something so radical. God wants us to know Him like Jesus and Paul knew Him. That’s wild. And their intentionality to get to know God for such a long period of time only reveals our deep rooted need to take time to know who God is, the truth He brings, and our identities in His Kingdom. 

And just as Jesus took so many years to fill up with Abba’s love and Holy Spirit before He poured out to the nations, He also took time during His ministry to allow God to refresh his Spirit. There are many recorded moments in all four Gospel’s where Jesus removed himself from the overwhelming crowds and questions and pharisees to sit in solitude with the Father. He fought for His secret place. 

That means the half days we take on base to sit in solitude, or the sabbath Saturday’s we are gifted to rest our bodies and our minds, are times in which we get to put aside any distractions that serving can bring to sit in the presence of Abba. If Jesus, the perfect son of God, needed to be refilled and refreshed by the Spirit during long days of ministry, how much more do we, imperfect vessels of God, need it? 

In Psalm 116:12-13 it says, “What shall I return to the Lord for all His goodness to me? I will life up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.” Wow. The only thing I have to offer to God is the cup of salvation which He already gifted me! I lift up my cup in grateful recieving because He is ready to fill it. And before I can do anything for God and through God, my cup needs to be full of His Spirit and goodness. The more intimately we know our Father and his heart for us, the easier it is to be like Him and share his heart for others; the fuller our cup, the more it’s going to automatically spill over everywhere we go. 

The days we get off, or the times we do the “touristy things” are not moments we need to be guilty of, but moments that we are choosing to lift our cups to the Lord by resting in the good gifts and pleasures he has created and gifted us to enjoy. We get to rest in awe and wonder about the most beautiful place He has brought us to be apart of brining more kingdom. It’s a time to fight for our own secret place with the Lord and a space to relieve our tired bodies before we pour out again for another week. 

Thank you Father for redefining rest for me daily. Thank you that you don’t require us to pour from our own and often empty cups, but you continually overflow the cup of salvation you gifted us. Thank you that you recognise our own human weaknesses and give us time to rest our bodies. Remind us that your rest is not just offered on the days we get off, but in daily communion with you. Continue to make us look more like you, Jesus, and more like Paul and other disciples that walked so radically obediently to your call on this earth. Let the only desire that rules in our hearts be a want for more of you. 

Thank you for loving us before we ever loved you,amen <33