How to Welcome My Right-Here Neighbors into My Right-Now Life

It’s been a journey—a slow learning of new rhythms, a gradual opening of my heart, an incremental growing of a missional mindset—this welcoming of my right-here neighbors into my right-now life. But what’s taking me years to learn, I hope to make easier for you.

If you feel there is something more to life that you haven’t been living yet. If you know you were built for relationships yet struggle to open up and let the people around you in. If you want to be with God where He is just are unsure how that looks in your actual life. If your heart is being gently tugged in the direction of mission but you don’t yet know if your feet are ready to follow—there is something I want you to know:

God sees the thoughts shaping into a dream inside you. He sees you. Your ordinary life is not too ordinary to be used by Him. You may feel insignificant, but God doesn’t see you that way. He sees one who longs to look like Him, and He treasures you beyond your wildest imagination.

This missional life may look daunting. I know, because I’ve been there, peeking in, wondering how God could use someone as introverted as me—someone who’s lived years in a place without knowing more than a few of the names of my neighbors—someone who looked elsewhere for community as if the call to love my neighbors well excluded the right-in-front-of-me neighbors.

If you remember one thing from my words today, it’s this: God readies you on the journey, not before you start.

I was stuck at the starting line for a long time. I thought we had to have a bigger house and a fresh slate first. I thought I had to become more extroverted. I thought I had to feel ready before I could be ready.

But the first step will feel insurmountable until you take it. The first decision to linger out in the front yard, the first awkward hello offered, the first choice to gift your availability, show up real, let your imperfections be seen and your lack acknowledged—it may feel like it will take more than you have to give.

But look at your little and you will always feel less than enough. Look at His enough and your smallness will help you point all the glory to His greatness.

And that’s the point of it all, really—to live a life that points an arrow to the ever-present hope and goodness and glory of God.

It’s not about you being someone other than who He made you—but about being truly real, with God, yourself, and others. It’s about discovering who God made you, and beginning to live it. It’s about walking in freedom rather than fear. It’s about building others up rather than building walls to keep yourself safe.

The intentional inclusion of those in closest proximity to you begins with a heart-shift. Mission is both a mindset and an action, but we begin by cultivating on the inside what we want to ripple out beyond us. What’s growing on the inside won’t stay locked away, out of sight within us, if it’s thriving. But if we try to create on the outside what isn’t first on the inside, we walk a façade. We can’t shake the emptiness. And we can’t sustain the movement.

So how then do we begin to build a life centered on Christ that welcomes our right-here neighbors into our right-now lives?

1—Start small

Everything that grows is first planted. The smallness comes first. Then comes the ordinary yet necessary season of roots pushing down deeper through the ground before the smallest seedling pops up to feel the sunshine.

In the same way, a missional life begins with what God plants inside us. It begins within, and must be nurtured and well-grounded before the good growing becomes visible to others.

So welcome the process of beginning small, of tending the kingdom work in your heart in the everyday moments. Missional living looks like a ripple effect, and what ripples out beyond us has to come from within us.

2—Go slow

Farmers don’t bypass the planting, and neither do they rush the growing. Good things take time to mature. If we rush the growth, we risk the plant above the surface not being supported by a strong enough root system beneath-ground.

In the same vein, the habits we form begin with choices made in the very regular moments of our day. If we want to adopt rhythms like noticing and being available to our neighbors, we have to live in the moments that feel unimportant.

So don’t dismiss the smallness of the beginning or the process of slowly growing, of gently developing a missional mindset. Don’t discount the baby steps—they are the foundation of habits and will begin to gain momentum if you keep leaning in.

3—Be real

This is a hard truth, but it’s key to life that’s lived in community with the right-next-to-you people. Drop the airs, quell the impulse to show only the polished and pretty parts of your life, and embrace instead humility. Vulnerability. Openness.

Our relationships will only be as deep as we let others in. This is true of faith as well as community. The hard work of learning to be real with God and those in our lives is worth it many times over—but it is work.

We must choose, over and again, to let our imperfections and questions and lack and less-than lead the way to connection.

We must accept that there is trade-off: comfort or connection. And when we stay behind the walls we’ve erected to keep us safe, we can’t really be known. We aren’t fully ourselves. We aren’t really living our lives.

Yes, there is risk in opening up and letting others in. But there is risk too when we don’t—and I’ve lived it for most of my life. I still have so much further to go, but I’m not planning to ever let go of my 2019 word of the year, open, that’s pushed me to invite God into the places where I’m tempted to stay comfortable and closed off. And I’d love for you to join me on this journey.

Remember that line we talked about at the beginning?

God readies you on the journey, not before you start.

It’s a freeing paradox you can’t know for yourself until you slip your hand in His and walk with Him into the unknown. Into the risk of choosing openness. Into the freedom and joy of learning to be truly real with Him and with those around you.

As we close for today, I’d like to pray a prayer of blessing over you.

May that unrest in your heart, that discontentment with the way you’ve been living, be the catalyst for change. May you listen to and lean into the Holy Spirit promptings to open up further and let Him in deeper, and step out with Him further. May you know He is with you when you don’t feel brave. May you learn to rest with Him and let the good things He plants grow slowly so they can mature and flourish. May you begin to taste the freedom of letting the walls crumble so you can show up for your right-now life. In the precious and holy name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Change your actual life in less than 5 minutes per day!

You can change your actual life in less than 5 minutes a day because baby steps truly can change the trajectory of your life. If you want 2021 to be the year you actually start living on mission in your neighborhood, this little book (available as a paperback and on Kindle) will help you get there. Each of the 30-day devotions takes but a few minutes to read, but they will lead to lasting life change.

If you’d like to check out Part 1 of the devotional FREE and also gain access to the rest of the missional living resources I’ve created for you in the new For You library, let me know here where to send the unlock code!