Most of us grew up on stories of missionary giants—Amy Carmichael, Hudson Taylor, William Carey—who traded the comforts of home for a life of service among the broken. While inspiring, these stories often leave us with a lingering ‘missionary guilt.’ We feel that if we aren’t living quite that radically, perhaps the mission isn’t for us.
Yet, that isn’t true. We’re all called to love the lost, whether we’re overseas workers who dedicate ourselves fully to reaching the lost, whether we live in our country of origin and work full time in “normal” jobs, or whether we’re somewhere in the middle.
Life With a Mission
My situation falls in the middle. While I’m originally from the U.K., I lived most of my life in Portugal, where I got married and had my three children. A few years ago, God began speaking to my family and I to leave Portugal—the only place my children had ever lived—and to move to Italy. We did so in the summer of 2025 after much prayer, counseling, and preparation.
We don’t fit the classic missionary mold—we aren’t tied to an organization, and our main income comes from “secular” work rather than ministry support. Yet, we are sent by our local church, living missionally as we go about our day-to-day lives. We believe that God has led us to Italy to reach the lost and to strengthen the local church.
At the moment, my husband works full-time for a tech company, and I write and take care of the kids and home. We also both help in the local church we’re part of, with our growing but still limited Italian language skills!
As a family we are trying to live life with a mission as we go about our day-to-day lives. The children are enrolled in a public school and are involved in sports, I do pilates at a local gym, and my husband plans to start a co-working space in the church building.
We sense that one day God will call us to pioneer something here in Italy, and we have a strong vision of helping the church look beyond the church walls and establish missional communities, where followers of Jesus disciple others in their everyday life.
Our move to Italy is simply our family’s “yes” to a command Jesus gave to all of us.
Love Is a Verb to Act On—Not a Feeling
Before ascending to heaven, Jesus left us the Great Commission; He told us to make disciples, to baptize them, and to teach them all things. (Matthew 28:16-20) What are all these things? Jesus taught many things (love your enemies, turn the other cheek, pray for persecutors) and He gave us a summary of all of God’s commands: to love God with all our soul, with all our mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves. (Matthew 22:36-40)
Jesus not only told us to live like this but He embodied it completely. While on earth, Jesus taught the crowds, released the oppressed, dined with the outcasts, loved the poor, and healed the hurting. Ultimately, Jesus embodied love by dying for us all, even while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8).
Loving the lost won’t happen by our striving. We need God’s agape self-sacrificial love so that we can love our neighbors as image-bearers of God.
But here is the reality: We cannot wait for feelings of love to strike before we obey. After all, love is a verb!
So, while we are to pray and ask the Lord to fill us with His Spirit and enable us to love, we are also called to take steps of obedience and go out and love others—feelings or no feelings. As we do, we may encounter those who are “difficult to love”, but again we need to depend on God for the love that will help us to have compassion for their brokenness.
Indeed, to experience compassion for the lost, we need to actually spend time with them.
As pastor and author Tyler Staton once said: “Compassion is the fruit of proximity.”
When we spend time with the lost, we will see them as sheep without a shepherd, as those who are lost here and now. Jesus saw people in their current state, harassed and hopeless (Matthew 9:36).
When we see people like this our heart posture will be full of compassion, as we enter into the suffering of those who don’t know God’s peace, presence, and life.
Another important consideration is that while God calls us to be active in serving the lost, we need to be careful not to buckle under the crushing weight of the needs of the whole world. We simply can’t respond to all needs, everywhere, all the time. God doesn’t expect us to!
Rather, God’s will is to use different people in different places at different times. Our part is to be obedient in what He is calling us to do, and then to trust Him for the outcome. This might mean serving at a homeless shelter in one season, and serving a family next-door in another. The key is for us to surrender to God’s direction in the unique path He has for each of us in the seasons we’re in, instead of capitulating to our own or other people’s expectations.
5 Ways to Love the Lost
1. Time and attention
It can be tempting to spend all our time with other followers of Jesus, and while that is important, God also calls us to spend time with those who are lost so that they too will encounter God (Mark 1:17-18, Mark 16:15).
During His life on earth, Jesus spent a lot of time with those who were hopeless and helpless and He brought them hope, healing, and truth. If we hope to do the same, we also need to spend time with them. We need to stop and listen to their hearts. We need to open ourselves up to their pain, their brokenness, their fears, and from there direct them to God’s life, freedom, and healing. Spending time could be meeting up with mom friends at the café, going for a walk in the park with another family, or having an elderly person come over for a meal.
2. Service
Serving others in our local community or city is a great way to demonstrate love. The best way to do so is in a way that doesn’t directly benefit us (cleaning the streets in a different neighbourhood, helping families move house, inviting those who can’t invite us back for dinner, making meals for young parents who have had a baby, helping unemployed youth find jobs). By serving others we will be pointing them to Jesus who came not to be served, but to serve.
3. Prayer
We can and should pray for the lost when we’re on our own, but let’s also offer to pray for them when we’re with them, and in that context offer words of encouragement. By the Spirit, our hearts will move with compassion and God will help us to bring forth His truth that will directly address their struggles.
4. Teaching
Jesus taught His disciples what the Kingdom of Heaven was like. He taught them in parables, and He demonstrated His teaching of the Kingdom by His very own life. Jesus taught the crowds that they should love enemies, pray for those who persecuted them, and give to the poor.
In the same way, we too are called to teach the lost. We can do this by sharing our testimony, answering questions, sharing what life with Jesus looks like for us, and telling others that He is the source of all our hope, joy, and peace.
5. Acts of kindness
When we’re going about our day-to-day life we can practice love for our fellow human beings by carrying out acts of kindness: letting them go ahead in the check-out line, opening doors for them, smiling and striking up conversation.
We might never have our names in a history book alongside Hudson Taylor or Amy Carmichael. But as we open doors, offer prayers, and share our lives in the mundane moments, we are doing exactly what they did: participating in God’s great heart for the lost. We are simply neighbors loving neighbors, one step of obedience at a time.
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(Photo by Rosie Sun on Unsplash)
