I don't want a life full of missed opportunities

A verse that permeates my thinking just about every day is Philippians 4:4-5. I'm especially enamored of the way it reads in The Message paraphrase:

Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you're on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!

This is what I want my life to be like. I want to work with the people who I encounter every day. I want to always be open to ways that I can let God minister His love through me to people. To never miss out on a chance to share this great gospel of love, reconciliation, and eternal life with God.

Because of this, as we're sharing this week about an opportunity we've had to share God's love, I decided to simply share a recent opportunity that I've had. Because I truly believe that, although sometimes God does do spectacular things through us, sometimes He does choose to manifest His great power through us, but, that much of life seems ordinary. Scripture indicates repeatedly (Ephesians 6:11-13, 2 Kings 6:8-23, & Daniel 10:1-14 just to name a few locations) that there is an unseen reality, a spiritual realm, and often we don't really know what's going on in that realm. We don't always see how God will use even the smallest of gestures to work in another person's heart and life to bring that person to Himself.

Close to 3 months ago I started a new job. The quality manager, who is in a sense my boss, is a wonderful woman who I like more and more each time that I deal with her. She's smart, funny, positive and has a whole heart for the work that we do. But, you know how the Holy Spirit bears witness in you when you meet another Believer? Well, I've never gotten that from her. I know that she's without faith. Just the other day I was in this woman's office discussing some work issues and for "some reason" she suddenly says something about how when she really looks at it she thinks religion isn't such a good thing, that if you look through history at all the different religions, they've all done just as much harm as they've done good. I smiled at her and said that I think, from what I read in the gospels, that Jesus Christ would agree with her. That when you look at His life here on earth, the ONLY group of people He was hard on were the religious people. Then I went on to talk a little bit about how Jesus came to give humanity so much more than religion, that He came to make it possible for us to come into relationship with the God who created the entire universe. We didn't talk for long, and nothing "big" happened. I didn't even get to give her a chance to pray with me. But I'm continuing to pray for this woman, continuing to believe that God is going to bring her to Himself.

I think that daily life is like that. When the opportunity presents itself, we just step forward and leave the results to God.