Around the World // Let’s All Be Brave

We’re here to help you learn and grow, so naturally, we share affiliate links for products that we use and love. When you click on one of these links, we will earn a small amount of money, at no additional cost to you, which we’ll use towards keeping the lights on here! You can read our full disclaimer here.

I’m a home body.  There I’ve said it.  When others are out living it up on Friday nights, where am I?  At home, curled up on the couch with a book, an episode of Doctor Who on, or chatting away with family.

But as I grow, I keep get this hankering for something more.  No, I don’t mean that I need to be out on the town, doing whatever it is everyone else is doing.  I need to be out there, doing what everyone else isn’t doing, being brave.

I’ve always felt the most alive when I’m surrounded by God’s people.  I thrive in Christian community.  I feel at peace with who I am, can let my guards down, and feel at home.

So if I feel at home surrounded by fellow believers, does that mean that my home can be outside of the four walls that I live, eat and sleep?

As I continue to read the words of David Platt in Radical, I can’t help but get fired up for spreading the word of the gospel.  Going to church on Sunday and small group on Tuesday nights is not enough.  I need to be with people who have a heart for Christ, but also have a heart for sharing His love, His grace and the promise of salvation.

The thought of going into the world and sharing these things scare me and fill me with doubt.  I am not good at expressing myself verbally and often feel uncertain if people are able to follow my rambling (the jumbled, excited thoughts that flow from my mouth when I am impassioned for something).  So how am I supposed to go out and accomplish this mission?

I turned down a fully funded mission trip to Haiti because of a lot of doubts and for some of the selfish reasons in which I had originally signed up.  So maybe instead of going with the “go big, or go home” route, I should start small.

These words of Annie really opened my eyes to the potential for my faith and the faith of others.

“If you’ve never gone, go.  If you’ve never had a moment when no one around you speaks your language or shares your pigment or knows how elementary school works, you need to go.  You need that.  You need to see that the world is big and diverse and maybe God doesn’t look or sound the way you always thought he did because the world has a lot of different-looking and different-sounding people, all who are made in his image.” — Annie F. Downs, Let’s All Be Brave

It may not be my time for an international mission, but I look forward to the day that I can learn about a people foreign to me and how they view my God differently.

Since starting this study, I’ve been asked a half dozen times if I’ve thought about holding a retreat for the participants of The Intentional Filling, and the answer has been YES from the very beginning.  But as I thought more about it yesterday, a different approach crossed my mind.

So many of us are looking for ways to step out in faith and be brave.  So many of us feel called to missions that extend beyond our local communities.  And so many of us are desperate for Christian community.

So what if instead of a retreat that would “treat” us, we use our time together as a way to “treat” others and help to further the Kingdom?  What if we did our own local (within the U.S.) mission trip?

I don’t have any plans or ideas of where this would or could take us.  I don’t know when it will happen.  But what I do know is that it’s something that will take a lot of planning, a lot of prayer, and an ounce or two of bravery.

What do you say?  Are you ready to take that step?  Send me a message if so!