MEET JENNIFER DURHAM: Part One

We’re so excited to share the heart of Jennifer Durham with you! Jennifer is a 34 year-old wife and mom of two who has been seeking the Lord since she was a child. The Lord recently relocated their family from Atlanta, GA to Mission Viejo, CA. Jesus is the most important person in her life and her heart is to encourage anyone who will listen that their story matters, no matter how much drama or lack of drama has taken place in their life. She loves to encourage and challenge the children of God to own their stories and live like each day matters.  She enjoys doing this as the Lord leads on her family blog: www.thedurhamites.blogspot.com. You can also find Jennifer on Twitter and Instagram.

Listen to the first podcast in the series, Be Missional and Build, by clicking here!

I started writing this post awhile ago. I wrote one long, deeply complex explanation of what I thought God had been teaching me about what it means to be missional, and somewhere in the middle of writing that long explanation I had a giant “Ah-ha” moment.

My entire life has been missional; it is missional. It’s not something I do, it’s who I am in Christ.

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.” (1 Peter 2:9-12)

You see, according to Google, mission can be defined as “an organization or institution involved in a long-term assignment in a foreign country.” Which means from the moment I accepted Christ into my heart at the age of four, I not only became a new member of the body of Christ–the institution of God’s church–but I have been on a mission for Christ ever since and didn’t even know it. (Hebrews 11:13-16, 13:14, Philippians 3:20).

This world is not my true home. I have felt this in every part of my inner being since I was eleven and old enough to decide Christ is who I wanted to follow, He was what I wanted to pursue.

Every day after that for me has been one missional day lived after another. Because to be missional means to live for Christ. “Ok, ok,” you’re thinking, “I hear you. Being a Christian is a mission in itself, but aren’t we called to more? What about our dreams, our passions, our gifts? Don’t those play into our mission?”

Yes! Absolutely! Take a big picture look at your life, then look closely at the details. What do you see?

Google also defines a mission as “a strongly felt aim, ambition, or calling.” This is where it gets tricky because I think God sends us on many different missions within the big mission of simply being His child.

• At the age of 11, my mission was being an obedient child to my parents and a growing seeker of Christ. (Isaiah 30:21)
• At 15, my mission was to discover the truth about who God says I am. How did He see me? (Psalm 139, Ephesians 1)
• At 18, the mission became to discover who God says He is. Do I relate to God correctly? (Isaiah 55:8-9)
• At 21, my mission became to be a godly wife. Do I exemplify how the church should love Jesus Christ in my relationship with my husband? (Ephesians 5:22-24)
• At 27, God added the mission of being a godly parent. He gave me the responsibility of shaping young hearts and minds that were created in His image. Do I represent God in a such a way that is honoring to Him and appealing to my children? (Deuteronomy 6)
• At 34, God sent our entire family on a mission to move across the United States from east coast to west coast in following of a call He had clearly laid on our hearts. (Exodus 14)
• And now at 35, as if all those missions aren’t large enough as it seems, I can feel Him stirring my heart for something more, something deeper. (Isaiah 43)

If people looking from the outside in, see my journey, my life, as being missional, then to God be the glory! I’m praising God in writing this blog because He’s shown me my life HAS been missional; it IS missional. Living for my Jesus has required deep sacrifices in all areas of my life–physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

It has required that I hold nothing back from Him. I have learned to bare my soul to Him and for Him. (Psalm 62:8) I have to practice living life with open hands, and it is not easy. Because open hands means my husband, my children, my dreams, my anything are in those open hands. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. (Job 1:21)

Will God still be enough? To be missional, the answer has to be yes. That is both a terrifying and freeing place to live depending on the day of the week and whether I’m experiencing a flesh-filled or Spirit-filled kind of day.

And friends, I am a nobody by the world’s standards. I have no books, no speaking engagements, no cause to promote, no ministry calling (at present) except for being a child of God, a wife, and a mother. Don’t you think that’s a pretty BIG “except for?”

I believe God is teaching me that if I live out the missions I already have, faithfully, He will continue to add to those missions in His time, in His way, slowly building me toward those hopes and dreams He’s given.

I don’t have a name for my next mission, but I can feel the Holy Spirit preparing me for it. I can see God’s handwriting all over the pages of my life. He’s uprooting old dreams, long dead and buried, and breathing new life into them.

He shows me even in the stillness, the seeming nothingness of life, that He sees me right where He’s placed me. He proves that He hears me because my prayers have never been more alive or answered.

Being missional means doing life with Jesus. Not like He’s some distant religious god or statue or figurehead. No, being missional means Jesus Christ is as real of a relationship in my life as my husband lying breathing in bed next to me–warm, close, and intimate. 

Being missional means living like I value that relationship so much, I don’t want to do anything intentional to screw it up.

It means I spend my life seeking after the heart of God. Whatever that looks like, whatever that takes, wherever the Spirit leads and God calls–that’s where I am to be, and that is being missional.

Come back next week to read part two from Jennifer!