I’m walking the streets of a busy bizarre in Kosovo. There’s a family in front of me begging for change, little children with their hands out pulling on the ends of my shirt and pointing to their mouths.
There’s a group of men at a nearby coffee shop laughing and smoking dressed in all black fake Nike and Adidas tracksuits.
There’s a woman with a bandage on her nose, a painted face and long blonde dyed hair staring at her phone as she walks right into me.
There’s an old woman with her daughter trying to figure out how to click the iphone camera as her daughter poses in front of a mosque.
There’s a group of kids yelling and throwing a ball. A crowd of teenagers just getting out of school. A shop owner cleaning off his front stoop with a garden hose.
People everywhere. People made in God’s image. People He died to save. People He adores.
I take a deep breath and silently pray, “Who, Lord?”
There’s an unspoken weight of life on the race that is hard to name and describe but most certainly can be empathized from anyone who has felt the call to share the gospel. There is no 9 to 5 limitation. There is no 5 year plan or goal setting that can be done. There is no end to the work set before us.
Just like the motto of the church we are currently sleeping in says, “Impact- everyone, everywhere, every time.”
I’ve been told often to slow down, to stop running and to rest more but oftentimes that feels like a direct conflict with what people have sent me out to do. I know I’m only human and I know that I only have so much energy but I don’t want to look back on this life and especially on these specifically focused missional years and wonder if I could have pushed harder or done more. I don’t.
I know that I’ve been saved by faith through grace and that no work of mine get’s me to the Father. I know this. I know that the Lord would love me the same if I never talked to a single person for the rest of my life. I know.
And still, the call on my life and the Holy Spirits voice is loud within me inviting me to participate in the great commission – the work that invites every human into the great and mysterious meaning of life and eternal peace.
It is simply the point. The most important thing. And I suppose once you’ve reached that divine and beautiful revelation that Jesus is truly Lord and He truly loves you and you were truly created with purpose – you just can’t sit back and let life pass with the wind.
I’ve thought a lot about this idea of knowing the truth and having the key to life living right inside my body. As a believer and someone who professes the actual lordship of Christ, the Holy Spirit lives inside of me directing me, giving me power from God and producing fruit out of me and before me. I am without excuse. I have the answer. Will I share it?
I often, and I mean daily, think about this idea that as the body of Christ we carry the antidote. We literally carry the medicine that cures every sting of death in our hands and it’s ever present. It doesn’t run out or reach low supply. What an impossibly beautiful and wondrous thing.
I think about how if we were facing some ravaging disease, how I would spend every moment of my time running through the streets handing out the antidote. It would be the humanitarian thing to do, right? It would be the celebrated thing to do. It would be the right, honoring, heroic thing to do.
And I would give it to everyone, especially the ones I love, making sure they took the full dose. There would be an urgency to protect them from the disease and the hurt that it causes. There would be an emotional release when the antidote reached their lips and a celebration that life would no longer be threatened.
Even as I write this, tears fill my eyes. This allegorical approach is likely not lost on anyone reading.
As believers, we carry the antidote.
And sometimes it’s overwhelming walking through the streets of a country where only a small percentage of people have access to the truth. How in the world do you choose who to pursue? I imagine the disciples felt something similar and every true believer after them faces this inherited dilemma.
I have been on a journey over the past 3 or 4 years in understanding how to carry this antidote well. To be vulnerable, I rock somewhere between wanting to manically run up to everyone telling them the gospel and recognizing that the slow burn of relationship and discipleship is the way to go.
I think about Paul preaching out in the open, careless for what would happen if the wrong person heard and I think about the slow and beautiful burn of the way the Holy Spirit drew me in through a hundred conversations and a thousand prayers from believers.
And I land somewhere in between.
We spend all day every day asking the Lord who to talk to, how to talk to them and what to do. It ranges between impactful conversations with strangers who walk right up to us to praying through the streets for days, not really talking meaningfully with anyone. Some days there is a task at hand and our Western brains are so happy to check the ministry box and other days we feel like our wandering, our fatigue and our lack of faith means we might as well be worthless out here.
It’s hard. The enemy is against us. We get tired. We get socially exhausted. We miss home. We miss eating well. We miss church.
But that antidote. It burns in our chest. Begging to be poured out.
I suppose the greatest revelation I’ve reached is that God does the work. It doesn’t matter how much I try. Without Him, my efforts are moot and my antidote doesn’t exist. It is Him that brings about the opportunities for conversations. Him that shows me where to walk and what to say. Him that convicts the inner heart of the person in front of me. And Him that offers the free gift of life and eternal peace.
I carry the antidote, but He made it.
Over the past three weeks, the Lord has blessed me by allowing me to be a part of sharing the gospel and parts of my testimony with three different people curious and wanting to hear it.
That’s a huge win out here. Especially given that those three people were all very random run-ins. If you’re curious, I’d love to share how one of them housed and fed us for three nights, one stopped me on the street and the other showed up in our room at a hostel.
Sometimes I forget that in my life before this, I wasn’t sharing at all. And I remember how grateful I am to be here and to be discipling this squad and showing them the complete adventure it is to distribute the antidote.
I’m still learning. I’m still being humbled. I’m still realizing the depth of my sin and the increased need for my savior. I’m still swimming in his grace. And I’m still reaching my hands up like a little girl who needs a hug from her Dad.
And He’s still worth it.
Consider the idea of the antidote and let that sink in. Who do you know that needs the dose?
