Since our last blog and conversation, have you been declaring this prayer “God, may your Kingdom come to my neighborhood and may I play an integral part in it’s coming”? Anything happening?

We received some insightful comments from those who read our first blog, Taking Initiative Where We Are. I want to allow this blog to flow out of those comments.

Why is it that we Americans are all jammed up? Why do we send teams around the world to share the gospel but can’t seem to make an effort in our own neighborhoods and work places? Has the cat got our tongues?

Steve, an army Chaplin, wrote that military families move around so much that they don’t feel compelled to engage their neighbors on behalf of the gospel. But he declares that this mindset is a lie and a justification.

Stan wrote that people see themselves as participants in church programs, but not as “kingdom-bringers” in our everyday lives.

Beth shared that fear plays a part in holding us back and the key is to trust the Holy Spirit’s conviction power as we winsomely plant the seeds.

Maybe the great divide between sacred and secular has us fooled. You know . . . the mindset that our faith is regulated to a holy day (Sunday), in a holy place (church buildings), led by holy people (the clergy/the professional ministers). So we are off the hook; we don’t need to live out the kingdom of God as ordinary people in ordinary places. Rather, we need to invite people on the holy day to the holy place to receive the gospel and discipleship from the holy people, as we become more or less spectators.

Maybe no one showed us how. We tend to sit in pews and receive all kinds of instruction. Someone can tell me how to fix an engine all day long, but until they show me it remains wishful thinking. We are taught how to volunteer in church and join church-run projects outside of the church, but don’t know how to spontaneously initiate our own engagement. We are led from the pulpit and via online sermons, but has anyone invited us alongside them to do life-on-life discipleship where life counts?

Perhaps, we have bought into the Walt Disney theory of our faith. We are heaven bound and that is all we care about.

Maybe the archenemy of God has lulled us into a coma of apathy or a tornado of busyness of some sort. Funny enough, if we stop sharing the good news and living out the Kingdom of God on earth in practical, visible ways, he can rest and say, “My work is finished!”

The world where we send missionaries is growing in their faith, while most of our churches are dying. Wouldn’t it be crazy if we become an unreached people group in the next 50 to 100 years or so?

So keep praying each day, as you step out your door: “God, may your Kingdom come to my neighborhood and may I play an integral part in it’s coming?” Get ready for how He will use you!

This post written by Jean Johnson and originally posted at https://fivestonesglobal.org/still-taking-initiative-where-we-are/, and used by permission of Five Stones Global.

Photo by Tom Rumble on Unsplash.