Who, Me? A Missionary?

I’m sure you have heard the sentence, “A failure to plan is a plan to fail.” So encouraging, right? This is 2020. Has anything you planned this year played out the way you imagined? Guess what? Things are working out the way God planned. You can be a part of that.

I am a missionary kid, so I grew up in a foreign country. Whenever my family was back in the States on furlough, I felt like a superstar. We were the missionaries, the people who give up home and family to travel across the seas to distant lands. In Brazil, where I grew up, our family always received a lot of attention by virtue of being foreigners. We were cool because we were from America. People liked us and wanted to be our friends. But I say all this tongue-in-cheek. Missionaries are just like everyone else - believers, saved by grace, obeying God’s calling in their lives. I’m not a superstar or amazing or cool. I AM a child of the King, saved by faith alone in Jesus Christ.

Fast forward a decade or so, and I had graduated from college and begun my career as a teacher. I diligently worked in my classroom every year, and when May hit, I was gone. When I say gone, I mean gone. The Lord had continued to cultivate the missions burden in my heart. For several consecutive summers, I partnered with missionary families overseas in a variety of settings. This was a blessed time in my life where I learned much. I saw God at work, friends, using humble and faithful saints all over the world to build His Kingdom. (And when you pray for missionaries, you become a vital part of that eternal work.)

You may be sitting on your couch or laying in bed reading this and thinking, “That’s great that Tiffany has been able to travel and do those things, but that’s not even possible for

me.”

Think again.

Ok, yes, I admit, you may not be in a position to drop everything in your life (work, spouse, kids, parents, home, local ministry, grandparents, etc.) and go to a foreign country. This is exactly what I am here to tell you. Remember that whole idea of “failure to plan is a plan to fail?” I encourage you to stop what you’re doing. Stop reading this article and jot down three priorities in your life right now. I did this one evening back in 2018, after a full and tiring day of teaching. I realized that in certain aspects, I had lost my intentionality. I was going about life just trying to keep up, reacting to everything instead of being proactive.

I prayerfully realized that one of my desires was to center more on evangelism. Growing up overseas, it was high on the list of priorities. We focused consistently and heavily on seeking out the lost. We were missionaries. It was practically our job. (Actually, it is the job of every believer. Matt. 28:18-20)

Now, I am a Christian school teacher. My school is located in the same building as my church. I spend seven days a week in the same place surrounded mostly by - you guessed it - other Christians. It was time to get creative.

I sat on my couch wondering, “How do you get to know people? Where should I go to meet people? Will I come across as a total weirdo if I try to make friends with people that I have little to nothing in common with? Why would someone I hardly know want to hang out with me?” That is when the Lord put an idea in my head: A part-time job.

That way, people have to spend time with me and will have to talk to me because we are “stuck” at work together. A few weeks later, I was the newest staff member at a local UPS Store.

Armed with God’s promise of “I am with you always” and my shiny new name tag, I got to work in my non-Christian job. This is where I encountered my next road block. How does one share the gospel? How should I work salvation into a conversation about my coworker’s new couch or her sister’s weekend visit?

Thousands upon thousands of words have been devoted to this topic. There are mountains of resources on sharing the gospel. Talk to your church leaders for resources and help. But today, I am going to show you a couple of the tools in my toolbox.

First, pray. You are making a plan to share the love of your life (Jesus) with someone. Pray to God that He would give you boldness to speak the truth in love. Pray for wisdom in knowing when to speak up (i.e. don’t hijack your coworker’s conversation with a customer to start sharing the Romans Road.)

Second, speak. I am not trying to oversimplify anything here. We know that it is God’s will that you make disciples (Matt. 18:19). You know that God loves the person you are about to speak to (Jn. 3:16). You know that the Lord’s desire is that they would come to repentance (II Pet. 3:9). You also know that there is a possibility that the person will reject you. Jesus knows perfectly what we face. He left us these words for exactly this kind of circumstance:

“Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness'; sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” (Matt. 5:10-12)

Take comfort in II Timothy 1:7. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord.”

One of my go-to ways of introducing the Gospel looks like this:

Me: Where did you grow up?

Person: I grew up just down the road, here in North Carolina.

Me: That’s cool. Did you go to church anywhere growing up?

Person: Yes. My family went on and off to such-and-such church when I was growing up.

Me: What did you like about your church?

Person: There was this guy, Mr. Jones, who always gave out peppermints to the kids.

Me: That’s fun. It seems like every church has a person like him. Did your pastor ever preach from the Bible?

Person: Oh, yes. Every time we went, we took our big family Bible. Our pastor always preached from the Bible.

Me: So, what do you believe about Jesus?

Person: What do you mean?

Me: Well, the Bible teaches that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is very important in the Bible. The Bible talks about Jesus all the time. You said your pastor preached from the Bible. What do you know or believe about Jesus?

Not all my conversations go this smoothly or make it this far. The point is that by asking questions, I am allowing the other person to segue into a conversation where I can witness to them. Often our conversations are interrupted by other coworkers or customers. That’s ok. The Lord knows. I can trust in Him to provide opportunity again. Another of my favorite ways to share Christ is on Monday. Everyone comes in dragging their feet on Monday. It seems the universal question is, “So, what did you do this weekend?” Take this opportunity to share what you did, which hopefully is that you went to church. Be ready with a quick answer like, “I went to church and my pastor spoke out of the book of Revelation. I was so encouraged to know that God is in control and has told us His plan for how He is going to glorify Jesus forever.” Or “I went to church and we sang one of my favorite songs called Blessed Assurance. I love how beautiful it is to sing with other believers about how I can be sure that I am saved and Jesus is mine.” Voila! In less than 60 seconds, you laid another brick in the foundation of sharing the Gospel.

Are you spending time regularly in God’s Word yourself? This will increase your burden to speak to others about Him - because you love Him. We all naturally talk about what we love. When your coworker asks you what you did yesterday, be ready with an answer like, “Yesterday I had a great time reading the book of Acts in my Bible. I was so encouraged to see how God used Christians to build His church. They traveled the known world telling people about Jesus, who had just died and risen from the dead.” Good Gospel sharing opportunities flow out of the natural rhythm of your life. As you consider God in everything you do, then He will naturally come up in your conversations.

Third, pray. We began with prayer and need to end with prayer. This is vitally important because it helps you recognize that God is answering YOUR PRAYERS. You prayed for an opportunity and boldness to share the truth in love; God made that possible. Thank Him for showing you that He is able. Ask Him to open the eyes of your lost friend to the wonderful, powerful, regenerating truth of Christ Jesus. You have done your part of the process, as you have shared the saving gospel of faith alone in Jesus. The work of making a dead soul alive is God’s (Eph. 2:5). Pray that He would indeed cause the seed of the gospel to fall upon the soil of a receptive heart (Matt. 13).

You are now an expert on my three-step process: pray, speak, pray. Remember when I asked you to stop what you were doing and write down three of your priorities? Did you do that? Find that list and add evangelism to it. Before you close out of this post, pray. Ask the Lord to help you be proactive in telling someone about Jesus. You can be a missionary today. Make a plan and watch God bring it to fruition, in His own way.

Remember, failure to plan is a plan to fail.