Mark 16:15

And then he told them, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone, everywhere. Anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved. But anyone who refuses to believe will be condemned. NLT

I think it is the desire of every Christian person to work within a “Christian” environment. How often have you wished you could have a job (albeit with your same salary) at your local church, at the local Christian school, at a Christian bookstore, at a Christian camp? The desire of Christians to be together is inbred into us at our salvation, the desire of “family,” the desire to be with ones who are like-minded in the things of the Lord.

But the fact is, the highest calling of the Christian is very likely the calling to be “in the world, not of it.” The Lord Jesus has commanded us to “Go into all the world.” And while He tells us to “preach” the gospel, it doesn’t mean that we all are preachers. The fact is, the preaching that is done when we “go into the world” is more often done with our lives than with our mouths, more often done with our deeds than with our words.

When I was growing up, chalk artist evangelists and preachers were very popular. These were people who had the ability to draw pictures related to their sermons on large canvases or sheets of paper. As they talked and quoted scripture, the pictures would come alive under their fingertips. The importance of chalk sermons isn’t the medium, but the fact that these pastors understood the importance of the visual (what we see) as compared to the auditory (what we hear). Often what we see far outweighs, in our hearts and minds, what we hear.

“Your actions speak loud than your words.”

The Lord Jesus needs His Church to refuse to cloister itself, but to permeate the world with the gospel through our lives. Paul taught, in Philippians:

“You are to live clean, innocent lives as children of God in a dark world full of crooked and perverse people. Let your lives shine brightly before them.” (2:15b-16 NLT).

The Lord Jesus taught us (also) that we are the salt of the world (Matthew 5:16). But think about salt. By itself, it is bitter and distasteful. Added into food, it permeates everything it touches and changes it through it’s very nature. If we, as salt, cloister ourselves away, then we become useless and should be thrown out.

It may be that we are working a job that is difficult, where being a Christian is hard. But that may be the very situation where God needs us to the most: in politics, in public school teaching, in the military, in the retail industry, wherever it’s difficult to easily shine as a light for Christ . . . that’s where Christians are needed the most! We need to stand firm in this invisible calling to ministry and to remember that we are there first to serve the Lord and His purposes. Like an underground army, we are the army of the Lord, spreading the gospel in covert and overt ways as He makes possible.