Pastor Pete challenged us on Sunday to answer the following questions. I scribbled some answers in my journal during the sermon (sorry!) but want to expound on them here. These are my answers for this season of my life. 2 years ago, they were probably radically different… 2 years from now, they may be different, still.
Shamelessly ripped from Without Wax:
1. Who Am I To Serve?
Your deepest purposes must bring good to someone who is without justice, reconciliation, or hope. It might be abused women, orphans in Africa, or business men who don’t know Christ.
2. Where Am I To Be?
What is the primary context where I will serve the people I’ve been called to love?
3. What Burden Am I To Bear?
This is so important!! Everyone of you reading this right now is called to battle some unique effects of the Fall. Don’t just blow by this. Stop for a moment and think about this… there’s a problem in this world that brings you to tears or makes you downright angry. What is it?
4. How Am I To Engage?
Your engagement to the problem might be to pray, administrate, teach, serve, lead, paint, sing, confront, repair or nurture. EACH of us will do what we do with a style which reveals something about God in a way that no one else can.
My answers:
1) New believers… I am sure there are others but I don’t know right now.
2) The City. I have always been a city girl. Two day at my granny’s in Rockwood, TN would drive me insane. It’s too quiet.
What city almost doesn’t matter (unless we are talking about Atlanta… and I don’t have the grace yet to love that city). I love Nashville, Denver, Toronto… When I re-discovered Mars Hill Church a year or so ago, I read about their passion for the city of Seattle. I need to listen to their nearly year long series on Nehemiah “Building a City within the City” series.
Hmm… I’ve lost count how many messages in the last month or so have dealt with Nehemiah… wow…
Cities gleam with prosperity and hope for a better future but what lies beneath is drudgery, conflict, and broken dreams. How many stories can you think of that talk about the young man or woman taking off to the city to find their fortune? Some make it. Most don’t. In Nashville, you can hang out down on Broadway or Second Ave and find any number of people who came to Nashville to follow their dream but it didn’t happen the way they thought.
Cities are home to very wealthy and very poor people. Both need to be served and both need to love and grace of Jesus Christ.
3) What breaks my heart is the persecuted church. I read the stories in the news about Iraqi Christians forced to flee Mosul or from Voice of the Martyrs of Chinese pastors taken into custody for years at a time and I weep. I pray that God gives them the strength to endure for the mission they have been called to carry out. I pray for grace. I pray for a miraculous way out. I pray for their safety. I believe many American Christians are completely unaware of the situation of their brothers and sisters in the faith abroad.
Human trafficking.. being more ecologically friendly…
I am also passionate about the education and training of new believers (or any believer) in solid, Biblically based wisdom and theology. I want them to have the right tools to answer questions (apologetics) without being a jerk about it.
They may seem a bit incongruous given my love for the city but… I’m still working on it and God is constantly teaching me.
4) I don’t know yet.
Habhak 