What it Means to Live Radically

I have been talking to people (Believers) recently and I keep hearing over and over again about how they want to do something. They love God, and they just want to go and tell the poor and abused and hurting about His love. They want to go to Africa and India and shine God's light and show His love. They want to do something big, something real, something that really serves God.

I totally understand this, probably a lot more than other people. I am very much a do-er. And I have experience in those things - I honestly have gone and served and been Jesus to people who don't know Him. I don't say that in a boastful way, but I say it because that is what God called me specifically to do last summer. I understand reading stories of great heroes of the faith and just wanting to go and do the same thing. That desire, that yearning, resides deep in my heart. I get passionate thinking about missions, my heart beats a little faster, I physically long to do it.

But - and this is where it hurts - this thrilling, exciting, life-changing, dramatic, wonderful, real thing called missions is not what God has called me to right now. And I don't think He has called all of these people to that kind of missions either. Some of them, yes. All of them, no.

Following God is not always easy.
When I am in Hungary, it is very easy for me to follow the Lord. I am very in tune with what He is doing, with what He has for me to do specifically every day, with how desperate people around me are for Him. It is very easy for me to live out my faith, to be God-focused every minute. I learn so much, I experience faith in a very different and real way, and even the hard is invigorating because it is part of the fight.

When I got home from Hungary, I remember talking to my mom and telling her that I knew I wasn't supposed to be in Hungary right now because if I cannot follow God like that here at home, then I am not ready to be doing it somewhere else. It is hard to follow God at home, where we are comfortable. For some reason, home is different. I don't see how people need Him as much, and I see the flaws of people as their own failures rather than their need for God. I try to do things on my own, I try to be God in my life, I try to do the things that will make me grow, I take charge of my relationship with God. And that is so completely utterly wrong of me.
God is the one who I want to follow, not myself. I want to grapple with these hard things that make up following Him at home. I want to know Him and see Him as I do when I am apart from where I am comfortable. And that means I become more and more aware of my sin - my independence, my need for control, my self-reliance, etc. As that happens, I learn what it means to truly follow God. It is not always easy, in fact, most of the time it is really hard. But it is worth it. And its beautiful in a very different way because it is hard-won. It is wrestling and finally accepting. It is joy because I know intimately that God loves me and will not leave me as I am.

I am not saying that the mission field is easy. That is actually the opposite of what I mean - the mission field is hard and frustrating and tiring. But sometimes it is also easier than my mission field here because this is where my temptations constantly get the best of me. This is where I allow myself to be distracted and fall astray. So the idea of the mission field is tempting, because it is simpler in some ways.

 We are not all called to be missionaries, but we are all called to give up our lives for the Lord. Every single one of us is called to surrender to Him and allow Him to do through us, whether that means working hard in class or smiling at our neighbor or volunteering downtown or moving to Africa and giving up the life we know. The challenge comes in living out this "radical" lifestyle that we are all called to in our everyday lives. How do we sacrifice it all for the Lord at home? How do we honor Him and serve Him and care for the widows and orphans and proclaim the Gospel with our lives every single day? That is truly the ultimate challenge. That is what it means to seek after the Lord. As my former college pastor says, God needs "boring Christians." He needs the accountants and the engineers and the bankers and the teachers and the stay-at-home moms and the contractors and everyone on the list (the above list was completely random, although the first three were listed because working in those careers would be my personal hell. Thankfully God needs us all!). Because the people who impacted my life the most were not ones we would typically view as radical. Those people who volunteered to teach my Sunday school class, who led Bible studies, who encouraged me at church every Sunday, who asked about my life, who loved me as Jesus does - those are the "boring" Christians that God used to shape me.

It comes down to loving God and loving His people. I could list a number of people who probably have no idea how much they impacted my life, just by following God.