Even mono is missional!

You know how it is when you've been at something for a long time, everything, I mean everything relates... even mono.

I got mono on or about Easter and boy howdy, what a bug! Just wiped out all the time and the least little bit of activity is just too much. Bad bug. But as I was laying there one day it hit me... mono is missional too. As a matter of fact mono is a great metaphor for how to live spiritual life.

Before you roll you eyes too far check it out:

As soon as I got mono all my buds in the medical field gave me advice and all my new friends (let's call them the 'mono fellowship', those who've had it before) weighed in too. Here's the gist of the advice: Your only hope for recovery is complete rest. If you fight it, it wins. Rest and you will get well, don't rest and you will stay sick. Here is the Bible verse that came to my mind as I was 'getting it':

There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest (Jesus) has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest. Heb 4:9-11

The work is done. 'It is finished' really means that it is finished.. Jesus is at rest at the right hand of the Father. And he invites us to "be diligent to enter that rest". So many times as missionaries we strive and strive to make improvements in our own lives and in the lives of others. We suffer if we are not improving at a pace which suits us or if those we are serving aren't. I don't know how many days when a friend suffers a setback, or falls on even harder times that we second guess and say "if only we'd have tried harder or done more". Hear all the striving in that thinking? No, there is a rest, a finished work that we can enter into, a trust and a hope that God is at work in and through us without our striving at all.

Listen how Paul said it: To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me. Col 1:29 Yep, Paul was working (I labor, struggling...), but it was with HIS energy. Seems to be if God is gonna provide the energy for His work in and through us, then burnout and stress and exhaustion and anxiety may be a work of the flesh (me trying to do God's work instead of letting God do His work in me) instead of a work of the Spirit.

There is a rest for the people of God... be diligent to enter into it.

PS Works for mono too.

BC