Throughout taking a high school Missions course I have been taught and reminded of many important things that apply for missions all over the world but especially even right here at home throughout our everyday lives. There are so many people in need around the world and locally. If we helped them, most of them would gratefully listen to and accept the Gospel, because they would have seen it first hand and how it had been lived out through our lives and see how it had affected us and led us to help them. Locally, we should always be a good witness and should always try to share our faith with people we meet who are not saved and our friends who we might be close to but who are not believers or who may be questionable believers. We should always pray for them and be persistent in attempting to lead them to Christ.
In order to live this lifestyle, we should always be focusing on what Christ has done for us on the cross. The idea that Christ came to earth, suffered for our sins even though he was perfect, died, and was separated from the Father should be motivation for an absolute love for Christ and a great desire to live the way he would have us live. We should place reminders in our way each day in order to keep our focus on Christ. These reminders can be anything from a video or a scripture passage to a book or a podcast on our ipod. We should never take our eyes off Christ and his will for our lives. One way to do this is to have a steady quiet time/devotional with Christ in his Word every morning when we wake up so that our focus is on him all throughout the day. If we spend time in the Word focusing on Christ, He will bless us with the right thing to do and the knowledge of how Christ would have us react to every situation that we may be in throughout our lives. Going off to college, we should also find a good Bible teaching church to go to where we can receive good teaching and help from elders and spiritual leaders. We should find a close group of friends that are solid believers to also help us through college. These friends can keep us accountable and we can have steady bible studies with them. Through this, we can continue to be strong in our faith on a college campus, and we can also be a light to those around us and our professors that may teach different doctrines. The best thing that we can always do to be a light in this world is to always do the “next right thing.” This may be anything from refraining from certain temptations by our peers to being on fire for Christ and always sharing his love with every person we meet. Sometimes this can be as simple as just doing something nice for somebody who needs it.
The Devil unfortunately has an infinite list of ways to distract our attention from God and attract it to anything but God. Most of the time, we are not distracted by bad and evil sins immediately, but we are led away from christ by simple everyday things that simply take our focus off of Christ. Many things like relationships and material possessions are not bad things and can in fact be very useful and positive things in our life; however they take our focus off of Christ and should not be priorities in our lives. When our focus is on these things and no longer on Christ, that is often when we begin to fall even farther away from Christ and the farther away from Christ we are, the deeper into sin we fall. If we are separated from Christ and are fallen deeply into sin, we are much less likely to be used by Christ or to follow His will for our lives. When we are not following His will, we miss out on the greatest things in life, the ones that will truly satisfy us and will never disappoint us.
If we live our lives for Christ, there is no greater satisfaction than the one that he provides in us. We can be truly fulfilled when we focus our lives on sharing the Gospel like we were created to do.