Are you interested in using your life to tangibly share God's love with the broken? Do you want to live on mission by being the hands and feet of Jesus? Could you use some inspiration on how to help the spiritually lost be reconciled to God? Read on to see how one woman has radically put skin in the game, and how her story is causing me to reflect a lot lately on what it truly means to live “on mission.”
In church circles we speak a lot about going on missions, supporting missions and living on mission. Recently I’ve started realizing something deeper...God forms us through mission.
When we step into the work of God in the world, He’s not just doing something through us; He’s also doing something inside us.
When Jesus taught us to pray, He said we should ask God the Father:
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” — Matthew 6:10 (ESV)
Think about that prayer for a moment. When Jesus prayed that, He was acknowledging something: there are places around us where heavenly ways are not being experienced. There is brokenness. There is pain. There are fractured relationships. There are people living disconnected from God and from one another.
And into that reality, Jesus calls us to be ministers of reconciliation.
The Apostle Paul puts it beautifully:
"In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation." — 2 Corinthians 5:19 (ESV)
The word reconciliation simply means bringing together what has been separated.
Crossing the road.
Sometimes the best way to understand a big spiritual idea is with a simple picture.
Imagine you’re driving down the road, and you see a mother goose standing on one side of the street. Half of her goslings are with her. But the other half are stuck across the road. Cars are flying by. The little ones are confused. They don’t know how to cross.
What do you do?
Most of us would instinctively slow down. Maybe stop traffic for a moment. We'd want to make sure those little ones make it safely across.
Why?
Because something in us knows they’re meant to be together. We want to reunite what has been separated.
God’s heart for humanity is like that. People are separated from Him, our loving Father, when He wants to be close to us. Sadly, many people don’t know how to get close to God. They don’t know how to cross the road.
Enter God's mission for us: He invites us to cross the road and help lost people by bridge that gap and showing them the way to the Father.
There’s a powerful passage in Isaiah 58 that captures what God’s heart really looks like.
The people were asking about fasting and religious devotion, but God responds by describing something much deeper.
He says:
“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness…
to let the oppressed go free…Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house…Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily.”
— Isaiah 58:6–8 (ESV)
Did you notice that?
God connects our healing and renewal with pouring ourselves out for others.
Now I’m not suggesting this is some magic solution to every struggle in life. But I do think there’s something important here. True fullness cannot be experienced without sharing with others. God call us to vessels of His love in His relentless pursuit to reach those who are broken and suffering.
Sometimes our culture encourages us to focus on ourselves the most — on our feelings, our struggles, our needs. And while those things matter, Scripture reminds us that life flows better when we allow God’s love to flow through us.
There’s an interesting feature in Israel's terrain that paints a good picture of what life looks like when we don't engage in God's mission. The Dead Sea is famous for being…well...dead. No fish. No real ecosystem. Just salt and minerals.
Why? Because it only has an inlet. Water flows in, but nothing flows out.
Now compare that with the Sea of Galilee. It’s full of life — fish, plants, activity. The difference? It has both an inlet and an outlet. Water flows in, and water flows out.
Sometimes I wonder if our spiritual lives can look a little like the Dead Sea. We take in sermons. We read books. We listen to podcasts. We attend Bible studies. Input, input, input. But if nothing ever flows out, something inside us can start to stagnate.
God designed us to be channels not reservoirs.
Not long ago, I was reminded of this in a very real way through a woman who emigrated from Rwanda to New Hampshire several years ago. During the genocide in 1994, many of her family members were killed. Like so many others, she came to the United States seeking safety and a fresh start. And in many ways, she found it.
She was safe. She was free. She had opportunity.
But something inside her wasn’t right. She began to struggle deeply with depression, anxiety, and even physical illness. It didn’t make sense. She had escaped the trauma of her past. She had made it to what many people around the world see as the land of opportunity. Yet she still felt broken.
Eventually she began praying, “God, what is wrong? Why don’t I feel peace? Why don’t I feel joy?”
And in prayer, something began to stir. The Lord reminded her of the people she had left behind. Children who couldn’t afford school. Families living in extreme poverty. Communities still recovering from unimaginable trauma. And she wondered, "Maybe I’m supposed to do something about that."
So, she started small. She founded the Rwandan Children’s Education Foundation, helping connect families in New Hampshire with children in Rwanda who needed help paying school fees. As she began helping children go to school, something unexpected started happening.
Her depression began lifting. Her health improved. Joy began returning.
As she joined God’s work in the world, God was restoring something inside of her.
But the story didn’t stop there. While spending time in Rwanda, she noticed families living in fragile mud homes that were collapsing during heavy rains. The government had declared many of them unsafe.
A question arose deep in her heart, "Where would these families go?"
She started asking churches in the United States to help build homes. Grace Capital Church is part of that story. A few years ago, our church helped build a home called Grace House. During a recent visit to Rwanda, a few of us had the privilege of meeting the family who now lives there. They prayed a blessing over us that was incredibly moving.
But even that wasn’t the end of the story.
One day she heard about a woman in a nearby village who went into labor. There was no clinic nearby. The only way to reach medical care was by motorcycle taxi. Imagine being in labor and climbing onto the back of a motorcycle, trying to reach help. The woman never made it. She and her baby both died.
When she heard the story, she couldn’t shake it. She prayed again, “God, what are you doing here?”
The answer seemed clear: This community needed a clinic.
So, she started raising support. And during our recent visit, we discovered something incredible. They weren’t just building a clinic; they were building a hospital!
Grace Capital Church has had the opportunity to be a part of that project — helping provide flooring and interior doors. Soon, the hospital will serve thousands of people in that region.
All because one woman kept asking a simple question: “God, what are you showing me?”
There’s something powerful that happens when we step into God’s mission. Our vision changes. We begin to see people differently.
Matthew tells us that when Jesus looked at the crowds:
“He had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” — Matthew 9:36 (ESV)
Jesus didn’t just see a crowd. He saw the overlooked. The weary. The spiritually lost.
Mission begins when we start seeing people the way Jesus sees them.
Here’s some good news: we don’t have to save the world because Jesus already did that.
Our role is simply to pay attention. To pray, “God, what are You doing around me?” And then ask, “Would You let me be part of it?”
And when we do, something surprising happens. God doesn’t just bring healing and hope to others. He begins forming something beautiful in us too.
And we discover that our lives take on new meaning and bring more fullness. It is then that we begin to understand that we were created for this kind of life all along.
So, take the first steps. Ask God to show you what He wants you to see, and that you will see through His eyes. Ask Him to move in your heart, giving you vision and wisdom. And, involve other Christians, praying together and working together. Your life will never be the same as you live on mission by helping others reconcile with God and have their needs met.
Do you have a story? We'd love to hear from you! Comment below.