Everyone Gets to Do This

 “John was the lamp that kept on burning and shining.”—John 5:35

When Jesus told His disciples to “Go, therefore…,” He was giving them—giving us—not just a Sunday job or a good deed to do, but a ministry. A full-time ministry. Maybe not in a pulpit, but certainly in a place of influence. Robe, pastor’s parking space, or “the very right reverend” on the sign out front not required. And not only that, a ministry that isn’t a one-shot deal, but rather something of lasting impact and influence that would reproduce itself in others, who in turn touch others in situations and places beyond our imagination

Everyone gets to do this. Everyone.

Our everyday ministry is not unlike that of John the Baptist, who wasn't out to promote his own talents and accomplishments and personality that will eventually wither as the grass. Instead, it's an everyday ministry of humility and testimony that simply points others to the Christ who is the only everlasting Light of hope and love that can overcome the darkness and unraveling of this world (not unlike the world's condition when Jesus first walked the shores of Galilee.) The pointing is all ours. The results are all His.

And like John, our most meaningful pointing ministry opportunities probably won't be in a church and when we're feeling spiritually "up," but awaits in the wilderness—an actual place or environment (like someplace un-churchy), or even or especially the moments when we feel dry and God seems to be nowhere. Both scenarios totally God-dependent and God-glorifying. We can be encouraged to know, however, that Jesus knows the wilderness really well, has walked through it Himself, and shows up there to walk among us still and work through us.

Most of all, there is John’s mysterious internal lamp. The one that that not just shed light during a moment of a heavenly buzz, but that somehow burned from deep within…and kept on burning, even when it seemed like little good was resulting from all the pointing and passion, even when simply seeking to walk out what he knew was True, day in and day out. John seemed to be supernaturally fueled by an undying faith, by having seen God's love and faithfulness over and over and over again, and undoubtedly by cultivating a lifestyle of abiding-listening-trusting-doing.

And for us, add the most powerful fuel of all: His Holy Spirit running through our veins.

Maybe we can pass on John's locusts and wild honey diet. But Lord, we want in. Let the Baptist’s example fuel us in every way for our everyday ministry, big or small, knowing that each one of us has been created to "point," to prepare a way in the wilderness until You come again.

"What, then, is the witness that we all are bound to bear, and shall bear if we are true to our obligations and to our Lord? Mainly, dear brethren, the witness of experience. That a Christian man shall be able to stand up and say, ‘I know this because I live it, and I testify to Jesus Christ because I for myself have found Him to be the life of my life, the Light of all my seeing, the joy of my heart, my home, and my anchorage.’ That is the witness that is impregnable."—Alexander MacLaren