Our Mission Field Is Unchanging: ‘Adulting’ the Christian Way

                 


                  Tomorrow marks my last day in Southville International School and Colleges, but after April 18, 2017, I realized that it will also be my last day as a Christian working in the secular field. If you have read the Youth Camp 2017 article, you would have known by now that I surrendered my life to serve the Lord through full-time service as a Christian educator to wherever He leads me. This means that I am no longer seeing myself staying in secular education, but in the ministry and in Christian education.

            Nevertheless, I am still writing this article, with the prayer that hopefully Christian young people out there would be encouraged to stay wherever God has placed them—be it in the ministry or be it in the secular field. Why? Because our mission field remains the same—the world.

            Thus, I’d like to somehow share how my one year of experience in the secular field has trained and equipped me in rediscovering, hearing and finally answering God’s call in my life and why we cannot just waste our past experiences especially when we are serving a God who makes all things work together for our good, our growth and His glory.

            Our dreams can make us feel empty. Our bank accounts can make us feel poor. Our achievements can make us feel lacking. All of these happen when we know that the Lord wants us to do something else. I have felt this, so much, in my one year of work in the academe. I got them – a license, a good job (that can boost my credentials so much because I have been given with oozing opportunities in my one year), and money. Nevertheless, as time went by, the days became heavier and heavier. Time, despite its light and fleeting nature, became an unbearable element that I had to carry with every single day.

            I tried to evaluate myself and determine the main reason why I was having all these realizations. Then every time I read God’s Word or hear messages, for some reason, they were all pointing out to one big question:

            “Does whatever you are doing now have any eternal purpose or value? Are you really investing in eternity? Or are you investing to boost your stability in this lifetime only?”

     I would immediately answer,

              “Of course! I am, Lord! I’m doing these for You! I am enduring all these trials for You!” (such prideful answer…)

     

    But God did not end there,

   "You are not, because you are working for a company of a man, not for My work. You are following their mission, not My commission. To begin with, I have employed you here in My work, not theirs.” (now this is humiliation in love..)

            I lost. He won. His Words are Truth, and I cannot deny it. True enough, the Lord never gave me a vision to be a successful Christian educator in the secular academe. It has never been the case since 2012, or even since 2007.

DISCLAIMER: To those who are working in a secular field, the Lord must have a different leading in your life. Please do not misinterpret. I am just sharing His leading on mine.

Nevertheless, there is something to be learned from this: 

Whatever you are doing now must have a purpose that outlasts this lifetime. It must bear or carry an eternal purpose, and that is nothing less than fulfilling the Great Commission. 

The Lord may call you as a Christian doctor, nurse, engineer, businessman/businesswoman, cook, driver, carpenter, farmer, scientist, writer etc.., but His call for you is always geared with a purpose of fulfilling His great commission. If that is not the case for us, then why did He give the Great Commission 2000+ years ago? Why did He give the spirit of power, love and a sound mind to share His Word? (It just so happened that in my case, He really wanted me to be a part of His ministry and in Christian education.)

But for you, whoever you are, young Christian (or old Christian), maybe it is time to evaluate ourselves in the Word of God and see if we have become negligent of fulfilling His mission in this lost and dying world. 

Maybe you too have become so focused with the pains, the sufferings, the persecutions, the ostracizing, the weariness and heaviness that we have forgotten our main purpose as Christians in this world. 

Another worse case is that maybe, you have mistaken the pains you are feeling in your workplace right now as God calling you into the ministry. PLEASE DO NOT EVER USE EMOTIONS AS A GAUGE!!!! So many people have sadly failed in the ministry because they saw it as their escape to the reality. 

But hey, the ministry was never designed to put us far back from the reality, rather, the ministry all the more exposes us to the truth that the Christian life was never storm-free but rather, storm-proof. 

The ministry was never a bed of roses! I have parents whose lives have testified that truth. It is God’s individual calling in our lives, coupled with our obedience to heeding and following it by His grace, that sustain us in our walk in life. I had to undergo the hard way in understanding this. I had to be reminded every single day that I had to look at Jesus, and not the imperfections of my workplace nor the cruelties of this world. I had to focus on the grace and strength that He provides, not on my weaknesses, not on the criticisms around, not on the ostracizing. I had to look upward to Him alone, not sideward to people. I had to surrender my feeble and weary heart and feelings every single moment to Him before it swallows me up as a whole. Indeed, these acts have become so important in making us further hear and respond to His call, why? Because now, our attention is on Him and we can hear Him clearly (although it was still a struggle for me until 2^nd night of Youth Camp).

When we surrender our wills and lay them down at His feet, God gives us His peace, His grace, His strength and ultimately His vision as a package deal. On the last half of my stay in Southville, thankfully, He has done this miracle in my life. He has enabled me to look beyond the horizon—He has taught me how to endure whatever is around me all for the joy that has been set before me. That joy is Christ Himself, His presence. That joy is obedience to His commands, to His call, to His commission. That joy is seeing lost souls saved. That joy is seeing the Lord winning this battle. That joy is seeing how the Lord triumphantly ends the story with His glory shining forevermore. You do not need to be serving the Lord in full-time service just to experience this. You only have to serve the Lord full-time, wherever He places you. 

When we serve the Lord full-time, we mean to say that we serve Him wholeheartedly. We mean that we have completely lost our wills in His. It is in realizing our unchanging mission field that our joy in Christ begins to set sail or take flight.

Now, as I end my stay at Southville and in the secular academe, it tenderly dawned in me of how the Lord wonderfully took away all the pains, the aches, the sufferings that I have experienced. He replaced it with gratitude, all because the trials worked together in further equipping me for the next book (not just a chapter) of my life. I no longer see my past as something dark, or bitter, but as something sweet, because all the while, this was His means of providing for my future as well as honing me for the great unknown ahead.

Hindi talaga sayang. Hindi rin nakakapanghinayang. The young adulthood stage has a lot to teach us, and God placed it there for a reason. In closing, I would just like to share I Timothy 4:12,

“Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.”

Christ, in His youth, has started doing His father’s business (Luke 2:49). He did not squander His time doing other things, neither did He use His youth to complain about the world He lived in and how harsh it was compared to where He came from which is Heaven. Our youth and our budding adulthood, are not things to be look down on with much contempt as well. We millennials have craved so much of what the world has to offer, but have not we realized that Christ already offered Himself—the best we can ever have—to live in us, to be with us, to fight and overcome for us? What reason do we have then to crave the world millennials, when God has chosen, called and commissioned us to be an example, to be like Christ, in this world that has been far removed from Him?

            Perhaps it is time for some evaluation, some alignment to happen. Fresh graduates or even those in their Junior/Senior High Years may also see this as a time to readjust one’s plans and goals. We all have to do some repositioning time to time, because our ‘self’ tends to insist itself above what God wants. Remember that the ‘self’ does not know how to maintain and sustain joy in this sorrow-filled world, no wonder, we can see its quest for that which can hopefully satisfy. Nonetheless, we Christians know that the self has to die daily in order to have that joy—knowing Christ and making Him known—and that pretty much sums up this article.

            The workplace was never designed by God to be looked with so much grudges. Through the eyes of God, we realize that this world is still our mission field, whether we are students, full-time workers in God’s ministry, or employees/employers in the secular field.