God with Skin:

1 John 4:12
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

I have to admit, my idea of ministry has gone through a divine transformation the past couple of months.  You see, for me, ministry and service to God meant big and bold things.  Serving in foreign countries filled with poverty, helping people deal with intense emotional and spiritual issues, visiting with families in the inner city projects, and trying to leave huge dents of God's love in a world full of pain and brokenness.  

All these are good things, and all these are still a passion of mine that will never die.  But in this season of my life God has called me to something new, something different. 

You see, this new move has left us uprooted from the ministries and the people that we loved.  There are not many homeless men and women in the streets of Hershey, PA.  There isn't row after row of project housing and poverty-stricken areas.  There aren't barefoot children walking around with no food to eat.  But at the end of the day- there are still people.

These people may not be what I had formerly envisioned as "my ministry".  They are dressed well, financially set, and intellectually stimulated.  They are the new set of people that God has placed in my life.  People He still loves.  People He still longs to be in relationship with.  People who's lives still need to be dented by the powerful love of God.

They may not be homeless and needy- but all of them still in need of the same thing:  love and relationship.  This season in my life God has given me much time to devote to either myself...or to others.  As tempting as it sometimes is to choose the former, I am choosing the latter.  I am choosing to try and make myself available to this new kind of ministry, and choosing to allow this new kind of ministry to change me as well.


I am choosing to invest in relationships that I may not have otherwise felt a desire to do.  To invest in people who I may have otherwise passed over.  They may not be "poor" on the outside...but many of them are still poor on the inside.  Longing to fill a void that this life will never succeed in filling.  I am choosing to love, because it is only in love that God is made tangible, it is only in love that He is made complete.

God calls us to love one another and invest in each other no matter what season of life we are in.  He calls us to step out of what we are comfortable and into what matters...even when it's uncomfortable.  He calls us to take His love...and put some skin on it.  Make it real.  Make it believable. 

Choose to make Him tangible to someone today.