And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew 22:37-39 ESV
“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”
Psalm 46:10 ESV
Why do we do missions? Why do we urgently go to the nations? Why do we boldly interrupt the lives of those around us with the good news? And how do we confront this astounding lostness, permeating from these deeply dark places in the world? These are some of the questions I wrestled with, alongside my team, in trying to answer this week in South Asia. As we spent time around our city conversing with nationals and nightly discussed our struggles with the brokenness around us, conversations arose to the whys and hows behind what we were doing. Not in a rebellious sense, for the work we understood was for the king’s glory, but from a place of wanting to understand and know God’s heart for the lost. These questions and the answers God revealed will primarily be the focus of this post, as I work to unpack my heart’s position and relation to these pivotal ponderings.
However, before I dive into these queries, I want to directly exhort my team. For those of you whom I joined in D.C. (Josiah, Vincent, Acacia, and TJ), all that I said previously continues to ring true. Each of you has, is, and will continue to be an overflowing encouragement to my soul. Your boldness, intentionality, faithful leadership, and loyal friendship carried me pivotally through this trip, and from my heart, I am exceedingly grateful for this second opportunity to glorify and serve Christ alongside y’all. For the three that newly joined this second leg of our adventure (Harrison, Ellie, and Maggie), I want to directly lift up each of you and the ways I saw God working in your lives this trip:
- For Harrison, thank you so much for modelling the way one loves God with their whole mind. From your ravenous reading to your readiness to know more, watching you desire grow for God over this trip was exceptionally encouraging to me. Though many of our conversations were challenging, through you, I have grown exceedingly, and for that I am absolutely grateful.
- For Ellie, thank you for your boldness and overflowing love for those around you. Watching you care for your friends, the lost, and for those in sorrow was a truly moving thing to encounter. Through you, God has challenged me to grow in such an other-focused love as Christ has called us to, which you displayed and live out so faithfully. Glad you made it back alive 🙂
- For Maggie, thank you for your contrite heart and steady, gentle leadership. From taking the lead to navigate us through airports, to lovingly supporting those in need, you modeled servant leadership in every way this trip. Seeing your heart for others and the way you treat them was a highlight of my week, and I’m grateful to have gotten the time to witness the ways God is undeniably working in you.
In all of you, my heart rejoices, for God is truly raising you up to be servants who live faithfully for his name. I continue to lift you up, and I exceedingly look forward to continuing to watch as God grows and transforms you day by day to be more like Him. God bless you all!
Now, to the struggling’s. While I could beat these questions with a verbal stick until some answers haphazardly fall out, instead, I want to separate these ponderings into two main points. First, adjusting my missional focus and second, remembering my ministerial fuel. With that understood and my thoughts somewhat sorted, let’s dive into these two pools of growing experience.
Missional Focus:
Are we so focused on glorifying God tomorrow that we lose sight of the opportunities God is providing today? As I sat myself down in a small coffee shop next to Harrison and our local missionary friend, this was not one of the many questions rattling around in my brain. I wanted to know more about balancing family and ministry, remaining faithful over long periods of hardship, and finding rest amidst the urgency of the surrounding lostness. But as we dug deeper, a question emerged that our team had been fiercely wrestling with ever since we set foot in the country: how do we deal with brokenness, both in relation to our calling and in relation to our conviction? The first of these, dealing with calling, is what accompanies this reorientation of missional focus. When it comes to brokenness, does the phrase “the need constitutes the call” ring completely true? Are we “called” to go because of the lostness in the world? This starts to stray more into my second reflection, but experiencing lostness demands a response. The question follows: how do we respond? To find this answer, as our missionary friend directed us, we must zoom out. What are we called to do? Simply, as the verse at the beginning of this post lays out, we are to “love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength” and “love our neighbor as ourselves”. This is the call God has placed upon all of our lives. So, before we zoom back in to the question of “am I to go”, we must ask ourselves, “are we living faithfully in the first calling God has laid out for us?” This becomes challenging as we realize in many ways that we are often not obedient in this primary command, whether it be at home or overseas. But as we struggle to be faithful in God’s universal calling, where does a specific calling to go and serve overseas come from? Does it come from the heavy burden of seeing the need of the lost, or does it come from the command to love our neighbor as ourselves? Now, in walking this line, don’t misunderstand me thinking I’m trying to minimize brokenness or even the call of the Great Commission. I hold both daily in my heart. However, what I’m striving for is the foundation of a conviction that will sustain us. This is where I move into my second point on remembering my ministerial fuel.
Ministerial Fuel:
If brokenness is the reason we go, we will not survive the mission. Our team experienced a taste of this firsthand, as witnessing brokenness led to weight, and weight to despair, as we struggled to share the Gospel with the lost. It became easy to feel like we were failing, falling short both in body and mind, to meet urgency with energy. However, this directly points back to the distinction of our missional and ministerial convictions. If we go strictly because of the need, we will live in daily deepening despair as the weight of the lost continues to remain an ever-present reality that we cannot solve in our own strength. However, if we go instead because God has called us to love Him and our neighbor, then the burden lifts as we go not with weight but in worship. Another truth that lifts this burden further is an understanding of God’s sovereignty. Yes, we go, love others, and share the gospel, but God is the one who changes hearts and brings about revival in the darkest and most dreadful places. When faced with brokenness and responding with conviction, we begin to feel like the burden rests on us and us alone. “We must go. We must save the lost and the hell bound.” But again, it is not we who save, but God. Therefore, why are we going to these places that are broken? Because God has called us to love Him and our neighbor image bearer, and to be faithful and go. To love the global church, which in many places is more equipped to spread the gospel to their neighbors than we, the outsider with our own different values and culture.
In all of this, do not hear me diminishing brokenness or considering the call to go in a cross-cultural context. The need is great, but the point I’m trying to make is that that is not the “why” behind why we go. We go because God has called us to love Him and love our neighbor. And that love, permeating from abiding in God, is what has and will continue to sustain us as we strive in faithfulness before Him. So my question to you now is, are you living faithfully in loving God and loving your neighbor? Are you being a faithful steward of what God has given you today, or are you so consumed with glorifying God tomorrow that you miss his leading now? And are your hands open to giving up everything and going to the heart of a foreign country, or maybe the inverse, in being a backwater pastor to the middle of nowhere Kentucky, if that’s what God leads you into? Have you wrestled with brokenness and found sustainment in the Gospel and God’s sovereignty? These are the questions I meditate on now, days after returning home, as I begin to recognize what it means to live missionally in all parts of my life. To love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to faithfully love my neighbor as Jesus loved me. Continuing to advocate for the nations and stoking that desire in myself to go, but remaining steadfast in holding my hands always open to wherever he might lead. This is where I want my heart to rest, in the center of God’s sovereignty and loving plans. He deserves all the glory; therefore, let us faithfully raise up worshipers from every nation, tribe, and tongue before Him. He is worthy. Worthy of all praise.
What a gift this trip has been to me, and how persistently God is shaping me through these wrestling’s with his plans. I am abundantly thankful to have experienced so much, including some highlights like:
- Morning Chai
- Crazy Game Nights
- City Amazing Race
- Fellowshipping With Global Church Family
- Wild Egyptian Rat-Slap Games
- Engaging the City and having open Gospel Conversations
- Next Level McDonald’s
- Visiting a Local Seminary and Playing Ultimate Frisbee
- Temple Visits and Prayer Walking
- Superman Movie in 4D
- Bowling and Team Ice Cream
- Spending Time with our Missionary Friends
- Hanging with the NT peeps
- Late Night Convos with the Boiz
- Deep Intentional Times in the Word
…and a whole lot more.
Part 2 of my trip finally comes to a close, and the summer approaches its end, so I now ask the question “what does God want me to carry forward?” As I unpack this trip, its experiences and wrestlings, and vitally pull from God’s word, my mind settles on a single phrase. “Wait on the Lord.” This is directly convicting as my thoughts continually race forward to tomorrow. To the next days ministry, the preparations that need to be made, to my future. However this word of waiting, along with the lesson of being faithful in the work today, nips my pride and anxiousness right in the bud. I want to live obediently in the now, loving those around me where I’ve been placed. This is what brings glory to God: waiting on the one who acts for those who wait on him (Isaiah 64:4). As I come to the end of this chapter, walking further into this journey with the Lord, I want to leave you with the lyrics to a simple song. Words that my heart cling to.
I will wait on You
I will wait on You
I will trust in You
I will trust in YouI will remain confident in this
I will see the goodness of the Lord
I will remain confident in this
I will see the goodness of the LordEverlasting God – William Murphy
May we wait on the Lord and watch him act, as he brings every ounce of glory to himself. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen and Amen.
Thank you for this reminder!