A Privileged Life

It occurred to me the other day that I lead an incredibly privileged life.  Perhaps you’re picturing a trust fund baby, a yacht, a luxury car, etc. when I say ‘privileged life.’

That’s not the type of privileged life that I have in mind.  The privilege I’m referring to is that of seeing Jesus at work in a new context.  If you follow Jesus, you lead a privileged life as well.  

You get to witness what He’s doing in your context.  It can be difficult and necessitates a certain skill in ascertaining where He’s working.  However, if we learn to cut out some of the noise around us, we can see and hear Him more clearly.

Every day on our walk to language school there are 2 things that are reminders of Him.  One I had walked by every day for two solid weeks without even noticing it in spite of its stature.  Another is more difficult to notice but is there all the same.

Somehow they both give me a clearer sense of how Jesus is already present here.  In the one, He’s hard to see if you’re not looking for Him.  In the other, He towers above without myself or anyone else noticing His glaring presence.  

Once you see the picture you will wonder how I never noticed it.  I walk by it.  Every. Single. Day.  Men are constantly being stereotyped as oblivious but I think I take the cake on this one.

For our first 3 weeks in Salamanca we were living in a flat with 3 young men.  We didn’t last too long...A) Steffani obviously didn’t feel comfortable and B) The final straw was bed bugs.  

One of our flatmates was an 18 year old Dutch guy.  We talked about religion briefly and of course Christianity came up.  

He was shocked when Steffani and I told him we attended church every Sunday.  

I asked him if any of his friends were Christians.  He replied he didn’t know any Christians, friends or otherwise.  Not a single one.  How is someone 18 and not been exposed to Christ?  In a country that has freedom of speech nonetheless?

It’s always a different thing when a statistic suddenly has a face, isn’t it?  We were told many countries in Europe have less than 2% of their population who are practicing Christians.

Gratefully, Europe may be a ‘post-Christendom society’ but it is certainly not a ‘post-Christ’ society.  That society simply doesn’t exist.  Christ is everywhere.  He is not bound by border nor by ethnicity.  

As missionaries we do not ‘bring Jesus’ to some new place or country.  

He is already there.  He is already at work.  We are simply called to point people to where He already is, right there in their midst.

Heartbroken & Confirmed

It was an interesting morning here in Salamanca.  Steffani and I took our regular walk to our language school, roughly 15 - 20 minutes.

This particular walk couldn’t have been more different than almost any other walk I’ve ever taken.  You see, a few weeks or a few months ago, I asked God to give me a heart for the lost.  It’s one of our organization’s core values after all.  It seemed like a great core value to have myself.

Sometimes it can be so easy and tempting to be lulled into a lukewarm faith, can’t it?  We love spending time with other believers.  This is not unique to our subculture or even our country for that matter.  One of the things I’ve noticed at our cafe during breaks at language school is how Chinese people hang with other Chinese, Dutch people hang with other Dutch, etc.

Anyway, God answered that simple prayer this morning on the way to school.  For some reason I started looking at people in a whole different light.  Back in March, a seasoned missionary here informed us Christians make up less than 2% of the population here.

For some reason that hit me in the gut today.  When we passed a group of 10 people I mused to Steffani, “Only 1 of those 10 people are Christian, maybe.”  We passed at least 100 people on the way to language school.  2 or less of those know Christ as their Savior.

This is incredible motivation to work as hard as I can to learn Spanish and speak it fluently.  It’s truly a blessing to be able to focus exclusively on language learning for 6 months.  Many missionaries don’t take the time to do so and inevitably regret it later when they can’t find the words to express themselves.  It can truly be a handicap later on in mission work.

Three quarters of the way to our destination I had another thought.  In my mind I was thinking about how many people are without Christ in this country.  Immediately it occurred to me that was why God put us here in the first place.

Not everyone is built for living overseas.  Personally though, I feel more confirmed than ever before.  A friend mentioned to us after our last church service at our home church that we are truly built for this unique experience.  Right now, I couldn’t agree more with that sentiment.

Heartbroken and confirmed; it’s a good place to be.  Undoubtedly there will be periods of doubt in the future about whether this was a mistake.  Hopefully I can look back at this post and be reminded of why we’re here.  It’s not about us and our comfort.  We’re here to be witnesses to Christ and point as many people to Him as He graciously allows us to.

Maranatha!  Come, Lord Jesus!