![\"Nine](\"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Nine-Reasons.jpeg\")
Traps and Tendencies that Keep Us from Global Ministry<\/h2>\nTraps and Tendencies that Keep Us from Global Ministry<\/h2>\nBy Shane Bennett<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s note: We hope this month\u2019s Practical Mobilization article provides some insight for you. You may, however, find it more applicable to those you are currently <\/em>encouraging<\/em> to follow God to the nations, essentially the ones you\u2019d like to mobilize. Can I invite you to reprint this, share it widely, and forward it to the friends it might help? Thank you. \u2014 Marti Wade<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s the pinnacle of Christian service, right, the role of the foreign missionary? The long-dress-wearing, once-a-week-hair-washing, pop-culture-unknowing, weird-food-loving, strange-language-speaking, stunningly holy, terminally single woman who has given her all for an odd set of people and a hopeless work:<\/p>\n Is it any wonder you don\u2019t want to be that?<\/p>\n But let\u2019s say you\u2019ve outsmarted the stereotypes. You\u2019ve seen through the gauze of hero-worshipped missionaries. You can actually picture yourself serving God where God is little known. And now you\u2019ve set your heart and head in that direction. You\u2019ve put your hand to the plow (1 Kings 19:21<\/a>).<\/p>\n Good for you. But you want the bad news? There are a thousand little evils in your enemy\u2019s bag of tricks all custom-designed to keep you from doing what God has laid out for you to do. Here are just nine of them. Be on your guard.<\/p>\n He\u2019ll fulfill 24 of the 25 items on your list since puberty, but he won\u2019t care about the world. This doesn\u2019t make him a bad guy. In fact, it makes him sort of a project and, for that, all the more intriguing.<\/p>\n Or Bubba may be a Barbara, and when you\u2019re standing next to her in church twelve years down the road, you can know the capacity of God to make plans B, C, and Z work but still wish you were worshipping in another culture.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what people have said and done to you, nor do I know what dumb stuff you\u2019ve done as a result. But I hear the whispers of those things even now: \u201cYou\u2019re damaged. You\u2019ve slept with too many. You\u2019ve messed up too much. Your contribution to things that matter may be small. Don\u2019t get your hopes up!\u201d If you only hang onto 18 of the 1300 words here, let them be these:<\/p>\n You did not deserve the damage that was dealt you, Like air and gravity, your culture exerts tremendous and largely unnoticed influence. It is relentless and almost always wins. The \u201cbet the rent\u201d odds indicate you will grow up to love, spend, and vote like your parents. The more that tweaks you right now, the greater the likelihood it will happen.<\/p>\n Thirty-one years ago, I could fit everything I owned on the roof of my little yellow Ford Fiesta, shared with two friends and all their stuff for the summer. Three months ago, I had three houses, a mountain of debt and five kids. I\u2019m not kidding about the culture deal.<\/p>\n To be fair, some causes are trendy due to their merit and many of us should rally to them. Matt Damon is right about water<\/a>. Malala is right about educating girls<\/a>, and Jesus was right about justice for the oppressed (Matthew 25:31-36<\/a>). But offering the life of Jesus in cultures that so far have heard little about it has not often been trendy, nor is it now.<\/p>\n Causes are rarely single and compartmentalized, for sure. It\u2019s a messy world. But this is true: If some of us do not focus on and work terribly hard to tell people who haven\u2019t heard about the life Jesus offers, we will drift toward work that\u2019s easier, more measurable\u2014and honestly, trendier.<\/p>\n I have no right to judge your viewing habits and I would not float mine forward as a good standard. But let\u2019s be honest, we live in a time when you can see pretty much anything you want at pretty much any time. Our dads had to hide their dirty magazines. You get email invitations to look at stuff and you simply need to angle your phone a bit.<\/p>\n This is not easy to deal with, but it certainly works against our spiritual health and maturity. At the shallow end, it makes us weak. At the deep end, it will leave you disqualified and sitting on a pile of manure you\u2019ve shoveled together yourself.<\/p>\n It may have seemed like a good idea or it may have looked like the only way, but now, oh my, what a mess. Again, I have no grounds to judge, but let me encourage you to question the common narrative, to consider who benefits from you buying that next shiny thing, to think critically about the messages of your culture, and to bring someone older and smarter than you into the loop of your money habits. (Yeah, people actually do that. It hurts like heck at first but makes you happy later.)<\/p>\n Right now, you may be doing any number of things simply because your parents wouldn\u2019t want you to do them. That\u2019s normal. But over time it\u2019s also normal for us to want to live a life that makes sense to the people most important to us.<\/p>\n This is part of what makes society work and shouldn\u2019t be written off too hastily. But it must be weighed against the tendency of God to ask for radical obedience and his track record of using ordinary dopes like us to accomplish extraordinary things, and often to the bewildered surprise\u2014even disappointment\u2014of friends and family.<\/p>\n Life is hard work and most of us at some point give in to the desire to float downstream for a while with a cooler nestled in the tube tied to ours. But to find yourself doing effective work in North India, speaking Urdu like a champ, will require more than going around the bend of a lazy river.<\/p>\n You may be flush with your own power and energy, right now. That\u2019s God\u2019s gift. Run with it! But keep your head up and your eyes open. You wouldn\u2019t be the first rock star to find yourself satisfied plinking a couple of tunes around a campfire.<\/p>\n ISIS and the devils in Burma<\/a> (and elsewhere) notwithstanding, tolerance is the tenor of global culture these days. It is the utopian theory du jure.<\/p>\n Honestly, it has a lot going for it. Jesus was certainly more tolerant than the religious leaders of his day. And people will like you better if you overlook their quirks and flaws. But what do you do when the wave of tolerance washes over you and you wonder if Jesus really is necessary for life?<\/p>\n Tolerance to the right degree will enliven your Christianity. Taken too far, it will neuter and then kill it. Well before getting to that point, you will have compromised enough to give up the crazy notion of raising your own salary and raising your kids in a killer hot place with little or no access to the internet.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve made it this far, can you do two things for me?<\/p>\n 1. Respond<\/p>\n Take a second to share which of these would most likely knock you or your friends out of the race, or another thing if I failed to mention it. Comment on Facebook<\/a>, reply on <\/a>Twitter<\/a>, or share your thoughts on our website<\/a>.<\/p>\n 2. Remember<\/p>\n Since this list is too grim for even my worst days, remember with me that God is more powerful than all of these, in all their various combinations, in all areas of our lives.<\/p>\n These nine reasons you\u2019re not going to make it could be\u2014should be\u2014proven wrong. One day I\u2019d love to have coffee with you right in the middle of what God calls you to and celebrate our respective victories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Traps and Tendencies that Keep Us from Global Ministry By Shane Bennett Editor\u2019s note: We hope this month\u2019s Practical Mobilization article provides some insight for you. You may, however, find it more applicable to those you are currently encouraging to follow God to the nations, essentially the ones you\u2019d like to mobilize. Can I invite … Continue reading \u26d4 Nine reasons you\u2019re not going to make it ????<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-practical-mobilization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8352"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8355,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8352\/revisions\/8355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIntroduction<\/h3>\n
1. The bubba you\u2019ll fall for<\/h3>\n
2. The specter of your past<\/h3>\n
\nand it does not have the last word.<\/em><\/p>\n3. The weight of your culture<\/h3>\n
4. The lure of trendy causes<\/h3>\n
5. What you take in as entertainment<\/h3>\n
6. The debt you\u2019ve accrued<\/h3>\n
7. The need to please others<\/h3>\n
8. The lazy longing for comfort<\/h3>\n
9. A numbing love of tolerance<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n