“If we start to learn to integrate the extra hours of our life with the life of unbelievers there will be unlimited opportunities to share the gospel. It isn’t hard to find opportunities to share the gospel. It’s hard for us to make our lives available and open for those opportunities. That’s the real challenge.” – Jeff Vanderstelt (See the whole 3 minute video here)
This insightful. I find Jeff's words wise and true. The challenge for me is sharing life with unbelievers in the extra hours of their day. For my family that means sharing life with those who are at Shatto Park and the challenge now is to find times for integrating life beyond coaching their games and practices. I feel like my family is on the right track, but still so far from an integrated life of mission to love people with the intention of explaining and applying the gospel message to them. Our church has one mission team that is open to learning how to live this life, but I need to identify what the next steps are.
For my family, I as the husband and father need to make sure my wife and kids feel treasured and focused on while also being able to train them to engage our neighbors together. I am not good at this. When we have a neighbor over, it is very hard to integrate the lives and experiences of my 5 and 3 year old into the conversation. My wife and I are still trying to figure this out.
For my mission team, this means eating together with open invitations to others at least weekly outside of the Friday team meeting. Maybe we should identify Sunday nights or Saturday nights or Wednesday nights and make it a point to just eat together and invite whoever God brings us across.
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