This is the report I gave at our Turkey Luncheon. It is only a tiny drop in the ocean of lessons I learned, but my desire is that you are encouraged by what God did in and through my life as I journey down this road we call faith.Two days into our trip, I hesitantly walked into my mom’s room, and as I spoke to her, the words that cautiously poured off my lips were “I’m not even sure that I am a Christian.” I expected to feel something different on a mission trip, and as I looked at the people around me, the only feeling that I experienced was apathy. Here I am, the Short-Term Mission Coordinator at First Baptist Church of Geneva, questioning my passion to see the fame of Jesus Christ spread around the world, and doubting whether I was one of his followers because I couldn’t embrace the second greatest command: to love those around me as myself. I’ll return to this part of my story in a moment.
But let me rewind one week. Just prior to leaving for Turkey, I felt God telling me to re-listen to a CD called “Doing Missions When Dying is Gain” by John Piper. We were given this CD during our training, but by the time that we were ready to leave, a few months had passed since I had listened to it. There was a heavy burden on my heart to listen to it once more before I left for Turkey, but I was too busy and it sat unplayed in my CD player.
If I had played the CD, what I heard would have prepared my heart for the experience that I was about to have. John Piper says, “It seems to be woven into the very fabric of our consumer culture that we move toward comfort, toward security, toward ease, toward safety, away from stress, away from trouble, away from danger, and it ought to be exactly the opposite. ‘He who comes after Me must take up his cross and die.’ Whoever said we would be safe in the call of God?”
As I thought about that exhortation in light of feeling that I was not saved, I realized that the problem was not that I was not a Christian, but that I had fallen prey to a life of comfort and security and ease and safety. And while those things were allowing me to thrive physically and emotionally, they were killing me spiritually. I’m convinced that God does not call us to a life of safety and comfort, but a life of adventure in which we can engage His very heart.
Erwin McManus, author of The Barbarian Way, writes, “You are not intended to be a spiritual zoo where people can look at God in you from a safe distance. You are a jungle where the Spirit roams wild and free in your life! You are the recipient of the God who cannot be tamed and of a faith that must not be tamed. You are no longer a prisoner of time and space, but a citizen of the Kingdom of God—a resident of the barbarian tribe. God is not a sedative that keeps you calm and under control by dulling your senses. He does quite the opposite. He awakens your spirit to be truly alive…you are most fully alive when you’re on an adventure with God!.”
One week into our mission trip, God awakened my spirit in a rather odd way. This awakening did not come through ease and comfort, but through deep pain. One week into our trip, my dad and I stood over my mom in the emergency room of the hospital as she grew increasingly delirious until slipping into a coma, and we prepared ourselves for her death. God led me to the jungle where the Spirit can roam wild and free, because in a moment of deep pain and fear, God told me to stop praying for my mom and her safety and health—the creature comforts of a consumer culture that He was calling me loosen my tight grasp upon—and to start praising Him for His immense glory and goodness and grace. I had to declare with the Psalmist that, “The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life!”
As I sat in the hospital waiting room in Turkey for eight hours every day, I had nothing to turn to but God. God took away all distractions. There was no television to watch, no magazines to read, no music playing in the background, no gift shop to peruse. I couldn’t even build community with the other people in the waiting room since I don’t know Turkish. All I had was my Bible, and so I opened it and absorbed the words before me like a dry sponge. And God spoke to me through His Word like never before—simply because I had ears to hear it for the first time. No longer was I reading into the text, but my mouth was shut and God was speaking to me and comforting me and reminding me of who He is and the hope that I have in Him.
The greatest lesson that I took away from Turkey is that the only way I can live this Barbaric faith that is wild and untamed is if I sever all of the ties to the distractions that I have around me that are vying for my attention and fling them to the foot of the cross, trading them for the indescribable joy of being in the presence of God. When I felt that I was not near God at the beginning of our trip, it was not because God had removed His presence from me, but that I had filled my life with so many distractions that I drowned out His still small voice. God invites us to embark on the greatest adventure of all time. Ask yourself what is in your way and I’ll ask myself what is in my way that keeps us from accepting that invitation to journey with Him. What is it that keeps us from going to the ends of the earth and not resting until every tongue and nation and people and tribe have been introduced to the King of the Nations?
The difficult part to hear is that the only way that this can take place is through our suffering. In Colossians 1:24, Paul writes, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body in filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.” John Piper comments on this verse: “We proclaim Christ’s sufferings by our own suffering. Christ intends for the Great Commission to be a presentation to the nations of the sufferings of His cross in the sufferings of His people. That’s the way the commission will be finished. If you sign up for missions, that’s what you sign up for. That’s the way it will get done.”
For me, the most difficult and yet beautiful part of the trip was sitting by my mom’s bedside as she cried out in pain and agony day after day. Even as infection attacked the fluid around her brain, she scribbled the words on a piece of paper that “it was all worth it” to enter into the sufferings of Jesus Christ so that the world might know Him. We sang hymns in the ICU ward and our sacrifice of praise not only filled the room, but soared to heaven to land at the feet of Jesus. I have never felt closer to Christ then I did in the moments I spent in that hospital, where God spoke to me and held me and comforted me and reminded me that I am His child and that He loves me unconditionally—where He whispered in my ear the invitation once more to embark with Him on this adventure that we call faith without sight—and where He eagerly and patiently awaited for my reply.
John Piper said, “If our children are going to walk away from Christ, we need to raise them in such a way that they understand that to walk away from Jesus is to walk away from a life of faith, risk, and adventure, and to choose a life that is boring, mundane and ordinary.” I walk with Christ because my parents, and my Turkey team, and my church, have all proven that it is a life of faith and risk and adventure. I don’t want to live a boring, mundane, and ordinary life. And this is the heart of missions! Erwin McManus writes, “A world without God cannot wait for us to choose the safe path. If we wait for someone else to take the risk, we risk that no one will ever act and that nothing will ever be accomplished.” And in His holy Word, God tells us “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor death, nor anything in all creation can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” If this is true, and I believe with all my heart that it is, then nothing ultimate can harm me.
So I end by reiterating the invitation that God has already extended to you to journey with Him down a path that is full or risk and adventure. It may take you to the least evangelized nation of the world, or it may give you the courage to have that conversation with the unbelieving neighbor next door. But wherever it takes you, let it usher you into the very presence of our glorious God. There is no more exciting or beautiful life to live.
But let me rewind one week. Just prior to leaving for Turkey, I felt God telling me to re-listen to a CD called “Doing Missions When Dying is Gain” by John Piper. We were given this CD during our training, but by the time that we were ready to leave, a few months had passed since I had listened to it. There was a heavy burden on my heart to listen to it once more before I left for Turkey, but I was too busy and it sat unplayed in my CD player.
If I had played the CD, what I heard would have prepared my heart for the experience that I was about to have. John Piper says, “It seems to be woven into the very fabric of our consumer culture that we move toward comfort, toward security, toward ease, toward safety, away from stress, away from trouble, away from danger, and it ought to be exactly the opposite. ‘He who comes after Me must take up his cross and die.’ Whoever said we would be safe in the call of God?”
As I thought about that exhortation in light of feeling that I was not saved, I realized that the problem was not that I was not a Christian, but that I had fallen prey to a life of comfort and security and ease and safety. And while those things were allowing me to thrive physically and emotionally, they were killing me spiritually. I’m convinced that God does not call us to a life of safety and comfort, but a life of adventure in which we can engage His very heart.
Erwin McManus, author of The Barbarian Way, writes, “You are not intended to be a spiritual zoo where people can look at God in you from a safe distance. You are a jungle where the Spirit roams wild and free in your life! You are the recipient of the God who cannot be tamed and of a faith that must not be tamed. You are no longer a prisoner of time and space, but a citizen of the Kingdom of God—a resident of the barbarian tribe. God is not a sedative that keeps you calm and under control by dulling your senses. He does quite the opposite. He awakens your spirit to be truly alive…you are most fully alive when you’re on an adventure with God!.”
One week into our mission trip, God awakened my spirit in a rather odd way. This awakening did not come through ease and comfort, but through deep pain. One week into our trip, my dad and I stood over my mom in the emergency room of the hospital as she grew increasingly delirious until slipping into a coma, and we prepared ourselves for her death. God led me to the jungle where the Spirit can roam wild and free, because in a moment of deep pain and fear, God told me to stop praying for my mom and her safety and health—the creature comforts of a consumer culture that He was calling me loosen my tight grasp upon—and to start praising Him for His immense glory and goodness and grace. I had to declare with the Psalmist that, “The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life!”
As I sat in the hospital waiting room in Turkey for eight hours every day, I had nothing to turn to but God. God took away all distractions. There was no television to watch, no magazines to read, no music playing in the background, no gift shop to peruse. I couldn’t even build community with the other people in the waiting room since I don’t know Turkish. All I had was my Bible, and so I opened it and absorbed the words before me like a dry sponge. And God spoke to me through His Word like never before—simply because I had ears to hear it for the first time. No longer was I reading into the text, but my mouth was shut and God was speaking to me and comforting me and reminding me of who He is and the hope that I have in Him.
The greatest lesson that I took away from Turkey is that the only way I can live this Barbaric faith that is wild and untamed is if I sever all of the ties to the distractions that I have around me that are vying for my attention and fling them to the foot of the cross, trading them for the indescribable joy of being in the presence of God. When I felt that I was not near God at the beginning of our trip, it was not because God had removed His presence from me, but that I had filled my life with so many distractions that I drowned out His still small voice. God invites us to embark on the greatest adventure of all time. Ask yourself what is in your way and I’ll ask myself what is in my way that keeps us from accepting that invitation to journey with Him. What is it that keeps us from going to the ends of the earth and not resting until every tongue and nation and people and tribe have been introduced to the King of the Nations?
The difficult part to hear is that the only way that this can take place is through our suffering. In Colossians 1:24, Paul writes, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body in filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.” John Piper comments on this verse: “We proclaim Christ’s sufferings by our own suffering. Christ intends for the Great Commission to be a presentation to the nations of the sufferings of His cross in the sufferings of His people. That’s the way the commission will be finished. If you sign up for missions, that’s what you sign up for. That’s the way it will get done.”
For me, the most difficult and yet beautiful part of the trip was sitting by my mom’s bedside as she cried out in pain and agony day after day. Even as infection attacked the fluid around her brain, she scribbled the words on a piece of paper that “it was all worth it” to enter into the sufferings of Jesus Christ so that the world might know Him. We sang hymns in the ICU ward and our sacrifice of praise not only filled the room, but soared to heaven to land at the feet of Jesus. I have never felt closer to Christ then I did in the moments I spent in that hospital, where God spoke to me and held me and comforted me and reminded me that I am His child and that He loves me unconditionally—where He whispered in my ear the invitation once more to embark with Him on this adventure that we call faith without sight—and where He eagerly and patiently awaited for my reply.
John Piper said, “If our children are going to walk away from Christ, we need to raise them in such a way that they understand that to walk away from Jesus is to walk away from a life of faith, risk, and adventure, and to choose a life that is boring, mundane and ordinary.” I walk with Christ because my parents, and my Turkey team, and my church, have all proven that it is a life of faith and risk and adventure. I don’t want to live a boring, mundane, and ordinary life. And this is the heart of missions! Erwin McManus writes, “A world without God cannot wait for us to choose the safe path. If we wait for someone else to take the risk, we risk that no one will ever act and that nothing will ever be accomplished.” And in His holy Word, God tells us “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor death, nor anything in all creation can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” If this is true, and I believe with all my heart that it is, then nothing ultimate can harm me.
So I end by reiterating the invitation that God has already extended to you to journey with Him down a path that is full or risk and adventure. It may take you to the least evangelized nation of the world, or it may give you the courage to have that conversation with the unbelieving neighbor next door. But wherever it takes you, let it usher you into the very presence of our glorious God. There is no more exciting or beautiful life to live.
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