ATL is for everyone!

Something that was really hard for me was this idea that living on mission meant that I had to be some great evangelist and always have these grand expectations placed on me. I was under the impression the ministry had to look a specific way, that we had to be on the streets every day, or constantly producing something greater than last week. 

I couldn’t get over how unsustainable that seemed to me, I couldn’t fathom living out this “Ministry is life and life is ministry,” idea that was so frequently referred to in AIM. 

So going into this month of Ask The Lord ministry (ATL) was a little scary for me. I kept thinking that I was going to be drained and stressed the whole time. When, in fact, I have learned that it isn’t a change in your life so much as a change in the way you look at your plans. 

As I would wake up each morning, we would have a plan, it would involve a sequence of things that we wanted to do and about the times that we wanted to do them. It usually included a time of prayer, worship, team time, and at some point cooking and eating meals. Now this is a really loose schedule and can easily be moved, flip flopped and adjusted as needed. 

Now I realize that back at home and in the real world, we have jobs, we have schedules to keep to, places to be, people to meet and important things that we can not miss. 

What I learned is that it isn’t about how structured your schedule is, or what you are doing, the only thing about ATL that you need to have is a willingness to be interrupted by the Holy Spirit. You simply have to hold your schedule with open hands, and constantly ask the lord how He wants you to move that day. 

So for example, instead of sitting around waiting for God to tell you where to go, what to do and how to do it, we would get up and do our regular routine; 10-12 coffee/ brunch, then we would write letters, schedule things for next week, do laundry, prayer time, worship is at 5pm and then dinner at 6. But I don’t think there was a day that we actually did all of that in that order. We would wake up and there would be new people there for breakfast so we would sit and talk with them for an hour or so. We would plan on going on a hike, but it would rain so we would sit inside and intercede in prayer for the people coming that night, we would actually go on a hike and end up talking to different people the whole way and meeting exactly the people we needed to to make connections for our next country! 

So it isn’t about never having a plan and waiting for God to send you, and it also isn’t about having such a structured plan that you don’t allow God to guide you. It’s about allowing everything to be in the Lord’s timing, listening to the still quiet voice of the Lord in the little moments throughout the day and being ready and willing to throw your plan out the window so that you can see God move in the day to day. 

So sometimes living on a mission means painting a mural and building houses for the poor, and sometimes it is simply folding laundry for some nice country folk, and sometimes it is going to a random town in the middle of Albania with no plan and waiting for God to show you why you are there. 

But really I just want to encourage you to get in the habit of letting your plans be adjustable, let God into the process. 

What does this look like? 

Well it is going to be different for everyone. For people with flexible schedules, maybe it is just looking around you as you go. While you’re at the coffee shop, stop for a second and ask God if there is anyone here he wants you to talk to. Maybe it could be blocking out an hour a week to do ATL, just listening to the Lord and actually doing whatever it is he asks you to do. Maybe it’s just waking up every morning and asking God how he can change your schedule today. 

All in all, it’s a practice, it’s going to be hard at first and weird and I can guarantee you that God will push you outside of your comfort zone, but that is when you lean into God and rely on Him for the strength, courage and wisdom of how to do His will.