I was seventeen years old when I fell madly in love.
I couldn’t sleep at night. I thought about it all day long. Everything in my life was thrown haphazardly aside and a rose colored lens began to dominate my view. The butterflies in my stomach never settled. Everything in my life suddenly centered on one thing.
Sometime after sunset on a rooftop in Mexico, my heart was totally captured for the cause of Christ in the nations. Somewhere amidst hysterical laughter, a strumming guitar and Disney song serenades, I knew that my life was to be devoted to this very thing. The simplicity of working with my hands and ministering to people desperately poor and in need of Jesus captured me.
I have not since recovered. I began to chase this purpose and bend my life around it.
I was on a two week mission trip to Northern Mexico. We ate beans, rice, and some Mexican version of Alphabet soup every day. Where grass might have been, mounds of dirt and dust baked in the July sun. We shoveled dirt and took pickaxes to rock for countless hours. We conducted VBS in a church sanctuary without a roof. We slept on a rooftop. My bed was a pool toy. Everything was beautiful in its own desolate way. The borders of my comfortable life were gone.
It was massively romantic at the time. I told my parents I would never come home. I did physically return home, but for ten years since, my heart has been scattered abroad on five continents. Many of you know just what I mean, for you've left your heart behind even as your body return home.
It's as if you've divided yourself. Your nationality is unchanged, and your daily life may essentially be unaltered, but you see every world event and every life decision in a totally different way. When war breaks out, when a bomb explodes- it’s not a distant people who are impacted, but those you loved and broke bread with. The faces of the victims of violence and war are your brothers and sisters. When you spend money, you wonder how you can spend five dollars on a cup of coffee when people you love have so little to eat. You finally realize that in God’s economy, the least of these are the first invited to His table.
In six years I traveled on short term mission seven times. Lastly, I lived in South Asia for six months and interned for a group of believers who worked in gospel centered community development- anti-trafficking, health education, agriculture and teacher training. Every time I went, I knew God was narrowing my vision and purpose for the kind of work I must do. This was not an easy thing to break to my parents or an easy vision to explain to my peers. I’ve been argued with, questioned, ignored, dismissed and regarded as an object of fascinated pity by dozens of people.
In the last four years since I returned from South Asia, I’ve had some incredible conversations with young men and women who feel that international missions is part of their calling. (There is no joy like when God brings me such a conversation!) Where sixteen year old Jade would high five them and say, “Let’s go!" twenty six year old me and has a few more thoughts, cautionary tales, and words of wisdom.
If you want to become a missionary you are signing up for an absolutely gut wrenching, soul rending career. You will never leave your work at work and then go home. In fact, your work becomes your home. I’m talking about missing births, weddings, and funerals back in the States. And the chances that there’s any kind of a decent local coffee shop within a hundred miles of you are slim to none. You’ll probably become sick. You’ll probably want to quit. You’ll probably get grey hair and wrinkles before your time. For an American who worships at the altar of comfort- WiFi, Netflix, manicured lawns and shopping malls, it’s about losing everything you are. And it’s totally worth it. (Note: I have not in fact been a full time missionary, but I have lived life with many who are and much of what I say is reflective of their experience).
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| The Hindu temple down the street from my home in South Asia. |
When you’re overseas, everything you once placed your identity in that’s not Christ is gone. You are not a respected member of a community, a leader, a daughter of a people- you are a foreigner. The questioning stares that follow you into every corner of every city are not for the faint of heart.
But something funny happened to me in South Asia when those questioning stares were met by my own uncertain gaze, my unsteady voice speaking the local dialect like a toddler.
I fell madly in love with the community and called it home. When I saw families in MY neighborhood making offerings to golden idols, my soul was shattered. When I saw barefoot children running down my street in droves, I was broken for their future and their salvation. When women met me in front of the grocery store begging for money with empty baby bottles and infants in hand, my conscience was seared. I could no longer deny the reality of what i saw.
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| A typical day in my neighborhood in South Asia |
Idolatry is real. It rears its ugly head around every corner of the planet every day. The same sinful hearts that dwelt in the Israelites who melted their gold to create a calf to worship dwell in the hearts of every person on earth today. We were created to worship, after all, and billions of people worship demons every day. (1 Corinthians 10).
It’s all great when a seventeen year old is dreaming, but where the rubber meets the road, who of us will really GO?
Few. Churches and missionary organizations are struggling to support the cause of Christ in the nations. Hundreds of jobs have been cut back. But that will not hinder the gospel. No obstacle will prevent the truth from going forward.
In fact, if I’ve seen anything in the stories and the testimonies of the nations I’ve heard in the last ten years- persecution and hardship make the gospel EXPLODE. We serve a mighty God. What a wonder that He calls us to be on mission with Him.
That’s what I want to write on. I’ve been a learner, a goer, and a sender for ten years…but I’ve been a terrible mobilizer. I’ve struggled to share my experiences and to encourage others in the passions they express to me.
I know one thing with unshakeable certainty. Every Christian on the planet was CALLED to the nations. We are a global body- and we were not sent only to our own people. When we abandoned our lives to Christ our calling became “every tribe, tongue, and nation.”
My question to you as I write, will not be “should you go?” It will be, “How and when should I go?”
I’m willing to be transparent here for the benefit of anyone whose heart beats like mine does. It hurts to love. It really hurts to love the nations. It hurts to leave your own people for those who “keep on hearing, but do not understand, keep on seeing, but do not perceive.” (Isaiah 6:9).
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| My two favorite girls- ask me to tell you their stories. I could write a book about these two. |
Yet I believe with all that i am that every ounce of energy we spend contending for the gospel will pay incredible dividends in eternity. Every dollar, resource and moment of our time we give to see the cause of Christ go forward around the globe, is a dollar spent to hasten the coming of kingdom, which will NOT happen until it has reached all the nations (Matthew 24:14)
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| My neighborhood and my daily ride to work. |
Next time, I’ll discuss some of the obstacles that prevent us from going- in the short term (one week to six months) and long term. And what exactly has prevented me from going long term all these years? That, my friends, is another story for another day.
Will you journey with me? Will you consider prayerfully how Jesus would have you be involved in missions? Would you reach out today to internationals in your community who are in the unique position to hear the gospel because they live in your neighborhood and not in a closed, war torn country?
If I can ever pray for you, point you to resources, or serve you in any way, please let me know.
Until All Have Heard,
Jade
