Living Out Your Faith in the Real World

What does it mean to live out your faith -  putting into action that truth you believe and have staked your life on? Our model and guide is the life of Jesus. So what does it look like to model Jesus in the real world? Aka your world. The corner of the world you currently occupy.

According to Merriam Webster, to live something out means to spend the rest of one’s life in a specified way; in our case, faith in Jesus Christ. So what does it look like to spend our lives modeled after the Way that is Christ? It is to be so overcome with love for God that every ambition pales in comparison to the joy of knowing Christ and making Him known. In the words of Matthew, it is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… And to ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. These are the first and second greatest commandments” (Mt. 22:37-38). Essentially, Jesus is saying, at the end of the day, if you do nothing else, commit your lives to these two things. Love me, and love people. 

There are too few people who are living their lives on mission with their greatest affections being for God and the people around them. For too many people their primary aim in life is getting 100k followers on IG, retiring early to live off a passive income, or defying aging with a 20 step skin care routine rather than making disciples of Christ. Only one of those legacies will last past this forever. The places we invest our time can be windows into our hearts and show us what we really value.  Those things that you most value will be what orchestrate the rhythms of your life.

I personally have had the privilege of getting to do ministry as both a full time vocation and as a layperson. One is not superior to the other, but I think for us to see God move in the remarkable, generation altering, and world-changing ways the Church longs for, we need more of the latter. We need more people seeking the extraordinary works of the Spirit in the midst of the mundane and the ordinary that makes up most of our lives. Most of the time life is boring and requires us to do things we don’t want to do but are necessary for survival. Unfortunately, sometimes these things can take a front row seat and distract from the things that hold eternal value - our relationship with Jesus and the souls of those around us. When Jesus looked around Him, He saw things with crystal clarity. There was no doubt in His mind what mattered most and He set Himself to it fully - the redemption of mankind that was only possible through the cross. But the story did not end there. Christ rose from the dead, securing the gift of eternity for any who put their faith in Him. However, it is baffling to consider the method by which He chose to reach this world that God so loved enough to send His Son to earth to die for it. The twelve men Jesus spent His few years on Earth doing ministry with were His means to the reconciliation of the world. In Jesus’s parting words to his disciples He said, 

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). 

Jesus left them with a purpose and a promise. He gives us a purpose that supersedes any achievement this world can offer, an invitation to be His ambassador and proclaim the goodness and glory of Christ to any and all. But he doesn’t just send us out and wish us luck from afar. He gives us the promise of His presence every step of the way, not letting us do this journey alone. 

While I will forever be thankful for my time on staff with the college ministry Campus Outreach, the peak of my ministry has since followed. I have had the privilege of transferring my ministry efforts from primarily college students to the corner of the world I find myself in, which for me is currently Murfreesboro, TN. The areas where I rub shoulders with people most regularly are my neighborhood, the hospital where I work, and the crossfit gym I workout at as well as coach at. While I try to be on the lookout for opportunities to build relationships and have spiritual conversations no matter where I’m at, it is at my gym that God seems to have poured out His favor in abundance, stirring up a revival of sorts. In the last two years, God has saved 13 people at Crossfit Rampage, all between the ages of 17 and 44. Of those 13, three are coaches, two are college students (one was in high school at the time of her profession), three are married couples (all who came to Christ within a few months of their spouses), and four are new moms to babies under 12 months old. When I look at those facts, first, I see God’s goodness, and secondly, I see generational change. The truth is, because those married couples and new moms started following Jesus, their families are destined for a new legacy, a lasting one. Now that the course of their lives have been altered, they get the opportunity to disciple their children into the love of Jesus and generations to follow will be impacted for the glory of God. 

The profession that started this cascade of newfound affection for Christ in a gym of all places, began with a 38 year old woman named Alessa. Moving to Tennessee all the way from Toronto, Canada, Alessa immediately set out to find a Crossfit gym in the area as a starting place to meet people and build a community. Ironically, the reason she even decided on our gym was because it was not associated with any Christian ties as a lot of gyms in the area are. Little did she know that even so, there were members at this gym whose passion was to share the beauty of the gospel with others in a consistent and authentic way. It was at a winery outside of Nashville that I sat with Alessa and the gym owner’s wife over glasses of cabernet on a brisk fall evening and got to be front row audience for both of their stories. I mostly listened, but asked questions here and there including some of a spiritual nature. This was the first time I had a spiritual conversation with Alessa and I wanted to learn about where she was at spiritually. For me there was no goal to share or preach, rather I needed to understand what she believed about God, the world, and herself. This outing was no accident, although to them it probably felt very casual and spontaneous. And it was. But for me, it was important to make it happen and take advantage of a more intimate setting with these two women compared with our usual interactions during the hectic group classes at the gym. The next day Alessa texted me and asked if she could come to “mass” with me, as that's what she knew from her Filipino Catholic background. This started an ongoing conversation about Jesus and spiritual things as we simply did life together: at the gym, reading the bible over coffee, her spending Christmas with my family and I, etc. We built a friendship and I shared Christ with her in the process. Over time, God changed her heart, and in a coffee shop at 6:30am on a frigid winter morning almost exactly two years to date, Alessa decided to accept Christ’s invitation to know Him and enjoy eternal life. Currently she is investing in several women - both in TN and in Canada - and learning with grace what it means to walk with Christ day by day. 

You never know how one small interaction might change the trajectory of someone’s life and eternity. Living out your faith means holding what God loves most dear, and loving those He created to live in a perfect loving relationship with Him for the rest of time. However, we will only ever truly live out our faith in the most practical of ways if we are regularly in God’s word and allow Him to capture our affection, arrest our attention, and assure us He is worthy of our whole lives.