just passing through; missional living for a year

As long as I’m alive in this body, there is good work for me to do. If I had to choose right now, I hardly know which I’d choose. Hard choice! The desire to break camp here and be with Christ is powerful. Some days I can think of nothing better. But most days, because of what you are going through, I am sure that it’s better for me to stick it out here. So I plan to be around awhile, companion to you as your growth and joy in this life of trusting God continues. You can start looking forward to a great reunion when I come visit you again. We’ll be praising Christ, enjoying each other.
Meanwhile, live in such a way that you are a credit to the Message of Christ. 

Beloved, 
I would like to invite you on a journey with me; focusing ourselves for one entire year on living out our true citizenship. 365 days of intentionally understanding that we are resident aliens here.

What would that look like to you? How do we live in the world but not be changed by it?  How do we become light, salt, living water, fragrance of life? 

This is not a magic formula, it is a lifestyle modeled after God as revealed in the Old and New Testaments.

Where do we start? 

First light.... Before there was anything, God was. Before a flower bloomed, an atom split, a cell divided, He was. Before a Seraph's wing brushed the wind, before the water pooled in the seas, before light came from dark, He was.  We did nothing to create anything. We can at best use what he has given us for good.

This has not changed. 

How do we live missionally at first light? Be thankful. 

Before our feet hit the floor, when our minds first sense that we are alive. Say thank you. It can be that simple. It acknowledges the fact that we did nothing while to slept to keep yourself safe or alive. We did not tell yourselves to breath or pump blood. We did not tell the sun to burn or the earth to spin. We did not ask gravity to continue. We simply laid still, or if you sleep like me, thrashed like a wounded fish. And viola, we awoke again!

What is our response to this great miracle we have been given? How do we respond as an alien in this world to the simple fact we woke up?

 Say "Thank you Lord" Amen.