Available

How available am I? I don't me available to folk at church, and in a strange way I don't mean available to people beyond the church or on the fringes of the church. I actually mean "How available am I to God?" As I continue to walk with the question drawn from John 5 in my head, I wonder about how available I am for to God to use in his mission.

At times we confuse availability with usefulness. We feel useless and then think we are useless to God. But that's simply not true. If he can make dry bones live, who can ever consider themselves useless in his hands?

So I look for opportunities to be available and yet they seem so rare. Why is that? Is it busyness or just an inbuilt inability to see opportunities as they arise. A combination I suspect. And here's another thing. Being available or being more available isn't just about more conversations, or is it? If evangelism was just a numbers game, then it would be a simple matter of having enough conversations to secure success.

But it's not a numbers game.

God is on a mission and I want to partner with him in his mission. Because I'm not surrounded by people who are far from God all the time, actually I am but I don't have contact with them, I have to become more intentional about being amongst them. This is why I go to Costa Coffee. I don't have shares and I don't drink coffee, but where else can I make myself available. The same is true about going to the local rugby club, joining a a walking group, taking an evening class. It certainly doesn't come from sitting at either of my desks!

Somehow we need to liberate evangelism from a programme we do, to becoming a life that we lead.