Shalom is wholeness and well-being in the fullest sense: right and restored relationship with God, ourselves, our neighbors, and the earth. It’s the lived-out embodiment of God’s justice, mercy, righteousness, love, and peace, between and among everything in creation.

Today, we are in dire need of spiritual fathers and mothers; men and women that will give their time to love, listen to, and encourage the next generation to live this gospel message.

How does God’s Jesus News bring joy when our contexts bring challenge, pain, and wounds? A short but powerful answer is that God’s Good News changes the story we live in.

The gap between the size of the coming Kingdom harvest and the number of necessary workers, heightens the urgency of radical prayer as never before in Church history. 

At first, Simon seemed like an ideal convert, shadowing the preacher Philip day and night, amazed by a power greater than himself. But something serious was amiss. Simon may have believed in Jesus, but what he desired was power and control.

Most of my life I thought every person had already heard the good news, done a little research, and then said “No.” I spent many years tiptoeing around people because I assumed they had already had a bad experience with a “weird” Christian, and talking about Jesus would be off limits. The older I get the more testimonies I hear of people who were “waiting” and “ready”…

Jesus is looking for people who have come to the end: “I’m done.” They just cannot content themselves with hypocritical leaders and abusive religion, or lifeless structures anymore.

Life is like walking up the down escalator. There is resistance to life isn’t there? There is a constant drip of difficulty that makes things hard on the best days and unbearable on the worst ones.

I remember first discovering Dallas Willard in my early 20’s and thinking, “Why has nobody ever taught me this stuff about the Kingdom?” I felt like Willard was describing a whole new Christian life from what I had learned thus far. 

When Jesus came to Earth, the Jewish people had been longingly waiting for God's promised Messiah. Because they lived in a land under Roman occupation, many expected a Messiah to come and free their nation and people from this occupation and oppression. Instead, God had a much more glorious and far-reaching plan.

“Jesus walked…with the joyful message of God’s kingdom realm” and so should we—this should be our posture as we look forward with hope and expectation for what the Lord can and will do through us.

“Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.” –Acts 5:42

This passage is one of the stories that might have shaped my call and passion to become a missionary.