FULL SURRENDER

“When did we begin to ask ourselves, ‘Am I called to missions?'”

Growing up in the church, I’ve only recently realized that I was never really pushed to be or go beyond what my church expected of me. I was involved in leadership in my youth group and even served in varying capacities in different ministries, including outreach to the homeless and serving on the AV team. While many of these things were good, the extra grace I was given by the church reduced any sense of urgency I had for what Jesus actually calls us to do. I was holding back from truly giving God my all.

Now, the keyword on my mind is surrender.

I grew up knowing this word in Sunday School, but what did it really mean? When I first accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior as a child, my faith was based on the hope of eternity with God and less about what I was going to give up. But surely there were many, many things in my life I did not want to give up. Even innocuous or seemingly good things like friends and family would become idols if they stopped me from fully worshipping God.

When I looked at the few missionary families sent out from my church, it was easy to view them highly as examples of surrender. After all, they were giving up their family, friends, and finances to serve God. Everyone can see how hard it must be to give up all those really good things. Besides perhaps a select few in the church, who was actually going to push me to surrender everything to God?

And thinking back to the Gospel, how is it that we surrender to Jesus as Savior but hesitate to surrender to Jesus as Lord? Our Almighty God is on mission to be loved, served, and worshipped by all humanity. Jesus commissioned all of his followers to this calling to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in His name.

After being a part of many different projects, including short-term mission trips to East Asia and the Middle East, I’m still learning what it means to fully surrender. While participating in these missional projects, I did make the mistake of asking myself, “Am I called to missions? Is this a possibility for my future?” But full surrender can’t happen later or when I feel ready, it needs to be now or not at all.

So what does surrendering look like for me? I know that God has shaped me to be who I am, including my gifts and personality. And since God has blessed me with these, surely he can utilize them in me to serve in His global mission. I’d love to continue to use media to tell stories, especially the need for Jesus in the lost, and to gather people together in mobilizing my generation of younger Christians to our calling and missions.

Please pray for me!
Addison