Ministry at Home

We are to be salt and light in the world, but we should remember that who we are out there to everyone else should also be who we are here at home.

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Easter Sunday always brings a sense of brightness and renewed happiness in my life. I look forward to attending church service and seeing all the beautiful dresses and families getting together to celebrate with lots of food and decorations. This year, it brought more revelation for me and thoughts to ponder.

I got to thinking about how many people only attend church on Easter. There was a statistic that I read somewhere that said 82% of people attended church on Easter because they were invited. This got me thinking about missions and ministry as a whole. We put so much emphasis on missions abroad and missions in general. While missions are extremely important, I wondered how we were doing with our missions work here in our very back yard.

Are we walking out our faith here at home? Do our children, spouses, friends, community, or nation see the truth illuminating out of us as a church body? We can go to the other side of the world and point unbelievers to the truth, but are we guiding our family at home as well? Or do we assume they already know? Are we afraid to offend somebody? Do we assume they are a lost cause? Have we forgotten that they need us here, too?

We are to be salt and light in the world, but we should remember that who we are out there to everyone else should also be who we are here at home. We need to proclaim the gospel all over the world, but we are still needed in our own community.

The United States has progressively gotten away from so much of the truth we were founded on. We have compromised and coddled the ideas that go against the fundamentals of the Bible. I believe, in many circumstances, we have had good intentions, but instead of allowing the Lord to guide us, we have made the wrong moves for the right reasons. We are at a point now where there are so many ideas of what the truth really is. People would rather go on not rocking the boat and just appeasing everyone’s version so that there is peace.

As I have prayed and pondered what we should be doing as born-again believers, what I should be doing, the word “balance” came to my mind. How does the word “balance” model our witness? I believe that is where we look at Jesus in the Bible. Where we look at the testimonies of His disciples and we look at His very own testimony. The answers are right there in the text.

How do we as Americans, as Christians, witness without offending someone? Does it matter if we offend someone? Do we dare come across as a “Bible thumper”? Or do we only model our Christianity by the way we live and the choices we make and hope that someone will ask us what our deal is? How do we as Christians simply be a Christian?

We are a blessed nation, and I feel we have become so distracted that we have allowed the enemy to get us off track. There is a political divide, gender divide, and there are questions of “If He was real then why does He allow…”? Even Christians struggle with unbelief. The apostle Thomas struggled with some unbelief.

John 20:27, NIV: “Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.'”

1 Thessalonians 2:13, NIV: “And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.”

Hebrews 11:1, NIV: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

In 1 Kings, chapter 10, we read how the Queen of Sheba believed because she saw the fruits of King Solomon and realized the things she had heard about him being a man of God were true. I believe that we should be able to answer those that question our faith without any hesitation. Our reputations for loving the Lord should precede us.

God has blessed America, and we have become so accustomed to our way of life that we have, as a nation, become lazy. If we want to continue to have God’s hand on us, we need to get serious about our relationship with Him. We need to decide if it is us or Him. There will come a day when our chances will run out.

Either we are for Him or we are against Him. There is no middle ground. There is no gray area. I believe we need to get our house in order and be ready. We need to be ready to answer the question: us or Him? While we are ministering to other countries and bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth, how is the spiritual health of our people here?

Some of us are called abroad, and when God tells us to go, we need to be ready to go. Wherever He calls us to go, we should be prepared to make it happen. But until or unless we are called somewhere, we need to be ready to make it happen right here at home. I encourage you to take your faith very seriously and get prepared for when God sends someone into your path that needs to be ministered to.

 

 

Featured Image by Jon Tyson

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About the Author

Valerie Close has a passion of encouraging others with the truth from the word of God and her own personal experiences. She is faith-driven and a seeker of truth with a real heart and compassion for other people to come out on the other side with a new hope and revelation of Jesus Christ.