When we have been disappointed, it is not easy to let ourselves risk again. So often, our past experiences dictate our willingness to hope for something different in the New Year. Being “realistic” leaves God out of the picture. It puts the God of the impossible on the shelf, the God who loves you and is able to do what you can not do. Take a risk and hope again.
“What are you waiting for?” The phrase conjures up negative thoughts. In my mind’s eye, I see angry, hurried people, pushing, and prodding. Hurry up! Get a move on! Delays can be miserable. Waiting isn’t all bad though. There is both joy and pain in …
Imagine with me. Party invitations were handed out in the room. You waited breathless and anticipating. Your card must be at the bottom of the pile they clasped in capable hands. Until the final card was distributed, there was still a glimmer of hope. Would you be invited to the special meal? Would you receive a Christmas invitation?
Seeing all the cards were gone, disappointment shot through your heart, like a thermometer’s mercury rising rapidly. I guess I wasn’t on the list, you thought, feeling sad at heart.
You may wonder where you’ll spend the holiday. At home alone? With friends? Invitations represent acceptance, love, and are an expression of friendship. They’re a symbol of inclusion in a special circle of people and can mean a lot. Christmas is a season of many joyous invitations.
Perhaps you miss celebrating with family and friends back home. Or maybe someone you loved passed away this year and it will be your first holiday without them there. Christmas can carry a multitude of bittersweet emotions.
Christmas also offers us some wonderful invitations from Father God. Will we stretch out our hand (and heart) to receive what He offers us?
A Happy, But Different, Christmas
One of our happiest Christmases on the mission field was in India. We’d been pioneering a small, but growing, ministry in the slums. Through a series of miracles, a group of believers had formed and been meeting regularly to learn from God’s Word.
Christmas is not a culturally Indian holiday. Our city had only a few signs of Christmas cheer during the weeks leading up to December 25th. No Christmas music in the stores, nor decorations and lights in the streets. What brought great joy, though, was sharing the stories of Christmas in that small fellowship as we sat on mud floors covered with simple mats.
We told of how the shepherds saw the angels appear, then went to find the babe in a manger. Watching the eyes of those we shared these stories with for the first time…it was as beautiful as any sparkling tree’s lights!
The miracle of Christ’s virgin birth somehow seemed amazingly clear.
3 Special Invitations Christmas Brings
An invitation to gaze in wonder.
This Christmas, ask God to renew your sense of child-like wonder. As adults, we can grow dull to the joys of the holiday. Even the mystery of Christ’s supernatural virgin birth can lose its miraculous glow. We’ve heard the story so often, preached it, read it. Ask God to renew your sense of awe at the reality of the stories surrounding His incredible birth.
One of the things that help me maintain a sense of awe is sharing this story with those who’ve never heard it before. Is there someone in your area? Perhaps an immigrant family, or someone from another religious background, that you could make a special effort to share it with this year?
Don’t rush through the rituals and ceremonies of Christmas. Let your mind slow down and your soul take in the joy of the season. Christmas is a time when even in the little things, you can find a rich balm for your soul.
It’s been a hard couple of years. What is one thing you could do that would bring with it a sense of joy and symbolize for you the peace God brought to this earth when He arrived?
An invitation to share with others.
Missionary life can be stressful, especially when it comes to finances. There have been times when the financial demands of the Christmas season made me wish the holiday would hurry up and be over. How will I buy new clothes for my kids this year? Gifts for our staff?
Avoid the pressure of materialism. Determine to be a giver during this season. What could you make to share with someone in need? A meal? Or could you can serve them in some way, clean up their garden or help them with other chores?
It’s amazing when we put together the little we have, how God multiplies it. Train new believers and those in the churches you’ve started to give what they have. Don’t raise outside money to feed them a feast. Instead, invite them to bring what they can. Sharing with others is part of God’s invitation to us at Christmas time.
An invitation to join His feast.
“At the time of the banquet, he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’”
Luke 14:17
As mentioned in the scripture above, Jesus often told parables about feasts. The Kingdom of God was likened to a feast the Father was hosting. When the well-to-do and religious didn’t show interest in His feast, He told His servants to go and bring in the lame, blind, and those without a “right” to be there.
He is still calling us, His servants, to go out and bring them in. The poor, the broken, those with little hope. Don’t wait for your invitation to a party this Christmas. You’ve already been invited to serve at it! Go bring others in! The Master waits to welcome them through you.
What will you do to accept our Lord’s invitations this year?
“Suck it up!” My basketball coach used to tell me that when I was acting tired during our practice drills. “No pain, no gain!” In many ways, we are taught to ignore pain and push through it. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for …
Every year I ask the Lord a question. “What one thing do you want me to do this year?” I like to get my priorities crystal clear. When I know what God has said to do, I have my marching orders. I know my one …
Have you ever lost your temper? Gotten upset with fellow team members? Differences in personality, culture, and spiritual gifting can drive us apart. Or, these differences can make us strong and effective as a missionary team.
My husband and I are extreme opposites in many areas.
Sometimes he drives me crazy! Yeah, I know. I make him want to pull his hair out sometimes too. Over time though, we have learned to appreciate one another’s differences. That doesn’t mean it isn’t ever difficult!
We are so different! Sometimes that is hard. We have learned though, that it is important to make space for one another’s gifts and desires to be expressed. That makes our lives, ministry, and marriage much happier.
He is a slow, steady, and thorough processor. I am a fast, rapid decision-maker. Most of the time I am far down the road in my thinking by the time he catches up. From his perspective, I miss important details that matter when I only see the big picture.
It can feel like a real challenge some days to journey together in life and ministry. Yet together, we are a strong team, especially when we can appreciate and honor one another. As we celebrate our differences we move forward with joy.
Though this example is from marriage, it is the same in our teams. After all, if you are married, you are a missionary team first with your spouse, right?
Do They Strengthen Or Divide Your Missionary Team
Though our differences are a challenge, they can become a significant strength if we keep the right attitudes. If not, they will weaken and divide us. Over the next weeks, I will write about key areas where we commonly experience differences in our missionary teams.
I will share some of my personal experiences in these realms and give tips you can apply to your team as well. As a bonus, if you are married, you will find these articles useful for your marriage too.
A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. 1 Cor. 12:7 NLT
The Purpose Of the Gifts
I love this verse. It comes just before the list of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12. The purpose of spiritual gifts is so we can help one another! God made us different for a reason. He gave us our uniqueness so that together we would represent and serve Him well.
Are you tempted to think that different = bad? Or maybe in your mind you know different is good, but your feelings don’t line up. Different can feel really bad indeed! It certainly isn’t comfortable.
3 Areas Of Difference
In working with teams for the past twenty plus years, there are three primary areas I’ve seen teams struggle.
1) Personality and Temperament.
This has to do with who you are. Many different tools can help you understand more about yourself. They can also bring insights into who your fellow team members are. I will mention them in another resource.
Are you an introvert or an extrovert? A fast or slow processor?
Do you prefer things to stay the same or do you love change and variety?
These have to do with personality and temperament. They affect our team dynamics in very significant ways.
2) Culture and Worldview.
Some teams are made up of people from different cultures. At times those differences are extreme! Other times the variance is less radical.
On almost any team culture and worldview differences come into play as we work together. Understanding one another’s cultural background is necessary. Then, we can celebrate and benefit from differences. That is so much better than becoming angry and divided.
How important is community? Individual freedom of choice?
What do respect and honor look like in your culture?
These ways of thinking about life have a big impact on how we function as a team.
3) Spiritual Gifts and Ministry Passions.
The five-fold ministry gifts are a good starting point when talking about spiritual gifts. Those gifts are; apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher. We should consider the other lists of spiritual gifts in light of our team as well. Check out my conversation on the Dare to Multiply podcast with Neil Cole about this. He calls it APEST.
Teachers can clash with evangelists. Why bring all these people to Christ if they never learn the Word of God and get rooted deeply in their faith? So the teachers say.
Pastors often feel apostles are too brash.
Evangelists think pastors waste too much time nurturing the flock when people are dying without the gospel.
Prophets tend to offend almost everyone at some point! Sorry, prophetic friends.
Yet each of these gifts is important to have represented in our teams. We need to make space for them to function and be welcomed if we want a strong team. Watch for more on this in future articles.
Start With Prayer And Appreciation
Let me return to my first question. Do you ever struggle with anger toward those on your team who are different from you?
Some people get angry and show it. Others simmer internally. Almost all of us find it a challenge to work with those who are not the same as we are.
It helps to remember that God, who knows what is best for His Kingdom’s advance, designed us this way. He made us different so we could help each other build His Church and take His purposes forward. We need each other.
Take a moment to thank God for the differences in your team or marriage. Pray a prayer and thank God specifically for the person you struggle most with.
Thank God for that perspective or personality trait that is so different from yours. Then if you want to go the extra mile, this week, let them know you are grateful for who they are.
Which of these three areas do you find most challenging in your team? Differences in personality, culture, or ministry passion?
Before I went into missions I had a grand desire to do something meaningful with my life. I think most of us long for something like that. Our search for meaning and purpose can leave us feeling disappointed with God or ourselves. Disappointment in how …
Ever talk to yourself? Every once in a while, I accidentally find myself exclaiming something out loud. I suddenly notice what I meant to say silently in my mind has slipped out my lips. “Come on Anderson, do it right!” is one. Or I utter …
Though I was born in Nigeria, my passport says I am an American. I love my country. But I have never felt like a “real” American. Preparing for a trip back to the USA, someone asked me, “Are you going home next week?” That is a hard question to answer. Where is home anyhow? Is it where I now live on the mission field (Asia)? Is it my passport country? They both feel like home. Neither of them feels like home. There is a kind of “homelessness” we missionaries feel.
I Don’t Fit Anywhere!
As a cross-cultural worker, do you ever feel you don’t fit anywhere? You are not fully a part of your new culture. But you are no longer at home in your old culture either.
God wants to use these missionary challenges to draw us closer to Him. He wants to turn these difficulties into a blessing.
A sense of homelessness can lead us toward a deeper discovery of our true identity.
Embrace this journey into a deeper understanding of what it means to be at home in God. We can learn to be at home in Christ no matter where we are. While waiting for the day when we will be forever with Jesus in our new Heavenly home, we can rest with Him now.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?”
John 14:1-2 NIV
Home Is A Promise of God
In the Old and New Testaments, we read God’s promise to create a home for His people. Finding “home” is part of what it means to experience salvation. In Christ, we finally and fully belong. He says He will both…
1) bring us to, and
2) plant us in, the place of our inheritance. We will have roots going down. We will not be nomads forever! God has prepared a place for us- a place to call home.
Several years ago I struggled deeply with this issue. I had become a new grandma. My heart longed for a place to welcome my children and new grandbaby. We rented homes in India and Nepal, but they were not ours to own. The Lord had even spoken to me saying He would give us a home, more than fifteen years before…but it had never happened.
Will I ever have a place to call my own? I wondered. This unsettled feeling disturbed my heart. Sometimes it affected my marriage, as I unfairly shifted into blaming my husband for not finding a way to provide a home for me.
I needed to go back to God in prayer and find my home in Him again. Only then could I find peace.
3 Ways to Get Through the Sense of Missionary Homelessness
1. Recognize that your true home is in His embrace.
In John 13, there is a beautiful description of John’s intimate friendship with Jesus. It says in that chapter, John reclined on Jesus’ bosom. He was leaning up against him. They were close. They were comfortable together. John felt Jesus there. He was home.
Intimate friendship is like that. We hang out and relax together. This looks different depending on the culture you are in. In Asia, both men and women walk down the street holding hands. Where sports is popular, a soccer team huddles in, to plan for their game, arms around each other. In other cultures, they greet with a kiss on both cheeks. Most cultures have some way to express closeness and intimacy through physical nearness…through touch.
Like John, we can come close to Jesus. He wants to draw us into that place of intimacy and friendship where we are at home. Jesus wants us to lean against Him. Dependent, close, comforted, loved, hanging out with Him. This friendship is ours to have. He calls us to it.
Loneliness on the mission field can drive us to negative things. We feel the shame of not belonging fully. We pursue inappropriate solutions. Food, too much time on the internet, self-condemnation, overworking, and many other things are where we tend to go. When you feel the ache of missionary homelessness, run home to His arms. He is where you fully and forever belong.
2. Remember you are a citizen of a different Kingdom, a Heavenly one.
As we encounter Jesus in that place of intimacy, He shows us once again who we are. We are sons and daughters, members of His family. We are also His chosen ones, royal priests in His Kingdom. Not only do we have a home in His arms, a family in which to belong, but we have a country. We have a Kingdom of which we are both citizens and ambassadors.
Understanding our Kingdom identity gives us a different worldview. It gives us new values and ways of behaving. Life on the mission field creates an incredible opportunity. In the midst of the trials of transition or feeling homeless, we can learn to deeply embrace our true identity in Jesus.
While we work hard to adapt to our new culture, we also reject some behaviors and ways of thinking we find there. We need to recognize things in the culture around us that are not in line with God’s values and ways. As we discern these, we live out our Kingdom identity. We are in the world but not of it. (John 17:14-15)
Another thing happens as we come to love the ways of those we now live among. Our eyes open to our own culture’s faults. This too is an opportunity to embrace who we are as Kingdom citizens. We don’t reject our home cultures. Discern what is of God’s Kingdom and what is not. Our loneliness, our missionary homelessness, creates in us a longing for the Kingdom to come on earth as in heaven. That’s a good thing.
3. Get help if you need It.
If this feeling becomes severe and affects our ability to function well, we may need to talk to a counselor or member care person about these issues. They can cause great anxiety and distress, particularly among women. God created females with a desire to make a home for our families. Things like COVID-19, visa challenges, or other crises sometimes force us to travel endlessly and prevent us from going home to the “nests” we made around the globe.
If you need to talk to someone and get some debriefing on this issue, do it! You are not going crazy. Living in constant transition wears down emotional strength. What I’ve written in this article is not meant to be an easy fix to a complex problem.
Come Home Today
Ask God to use the challenge of missionary homelessness for good in your life. He is calling, “Come into My arms. Let Me show you where home truly is.”
Won’t you turn to Him even now?
Want to share your story, or ask questions about this very real issue? You can do that on the Missionary Life Facebook group. Or post in the comments below.
Disruption releases innovation. We discover untried ways of serving God, of accomplishing His purposes. Do you maximize or resist the opportunities disruption or crisis brings? Often, instead of embracing new things, we get stuck. We experience a nostalgic longing for the way things used to …
