This past month, I have been blown away by the amount of people that have signed up to support me monthly as financial partners, sending me to India as a long term missionary. In fact, I am now just over 50% funded for my mission in monthly pledges! Praise The Lord!….(meaning while I don’t have all the money in the account, I have about 16 people/families who have committed to give a certain amount every month that together, will sustain almost half the amount needed for my monthly expenses in India). While, there is still quite a ways to go, I am so thankful that the Lord has once again reminded me of his faithfulness by sending his children to surround me in this calling and send me out. I see tangibly, that I am not alone in this!! So, from the bottom of my heart…Thank You!
When I share my vision for being a church planter with other sisters and brothers in Christ, the response I get usually falls under one of two categories.
1. “Wow, that’s amazing that God has given you a heart for India….I want to send you out as an extension of my heart for the unreached so I will join your prayer/support/etc team”
OR 2. “Hmmm.. why don’t you just do what you want to do overseas, here in America? I would support you but I just wouldn’t feel right about sending you to such an unsafe place where you could get hurt or die. We need you here, there are plenty of lost people here that you can reach.”
While the second response is much less common, it is still a very real response given to me by true believers, that have known the Lord for years and enjoy a personal relationship with him. So what’s the disconnect? How can I be getting such very different responses for the same calling from the same body of Christ?
It would be easy for me to think “well, those people just don’t support missions around the world or don’t believe in the great commision” but that would not be true. You see, these same people that refuse to send me, send missionaries overseas all the time! They tithe, they give financially to unknown missionaries in unknown locations and they pray for the unknown persecuted. But when it comes to sending a friend, a neighbor, a sister, a grandchild or church member….all the sudden this “unknown” missionary has a face…they have a story and a future. In my opinion, their fear kicks in and they don’t want to be held accountable for sending this loved one to a place where they could get hurt, see hard things, live uncomfortably or lose their earthly life. The saddest part is that through having these conversations, I’ve seen that this voice of fear becomes more powerful than even the voice of God.
So why is it that I HAVE to go to India?
Why CANT I just make disciples here in the US?
These are valid questions.
My next blog will be a statistical approach to this, outlying the absolutely need that exists in the world for evangelical christians to actually make the move to the unreached but for now I will only try to explain what God has done in my own heart in leading me to this decision.
I I hope that if you are reading this, I have in someway impacted your life and you can trust me when I say that God has given me an insane love for the Indian people. He hasn’t told me to go back via lightning strike or spelling out “GO TO INDIA” in my alphabet soup. Scripture already told me that I need to go, Matthew 28:19 “Go Therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
During the 5th month of my journey across the world this last year, the Lord reminded me that the great commission was not a suggestion, it was a command…to send, be sent or receive those who are sent. At the time of this revelation, I was throwing myself a little pity party, praying for God to get me out of India because I was hot, tired, sick blah blah blah basically i was just being a baby and complaining a lot…he told me that I was finally among the unreached and was wasting this incredible opportunity to love them. I was convicted, I prayed and repented. Then overnight my heart (which was previously hardened by the curry, the constant smell of defecation and insane heat) was turned 180 degrees. He didn’t change India, he changed me. And when he changes your heart towards something that you had no care for the day before, it’s hard to ignore that calling. I knew I didn’t have the ability to financially send or receive others but I do have the ability to go, love people, disciple them and walk with them as they discover a relationship with the Lord for themselves.
Through the grace of God, the word of God and the encouragement of my prayer warriors who were praying/fasting for me back home I was able to realize before I even left that month, that India became Home. It was almost exactly a year ago that I first facetimed my Mom in an Indian Chai Shop and told her about this heart change, and that I was 100% certain I was coming back to live in India. WEIRD, RIGHT?
How often do you think that happens? How often do you meet someone that wants to leave a country as wonderful as America not because they think it’s what they should do but because this new place, new people group that God has introduced them to is so much a part of them that doing anything outside of moving back would be going against everything that God has created them to be?
I’d venture to say that it happens to more people than we think, but because we chose not to act on that desire and instead settle into the “next best thing”, our generation just doesn’t see this fulfillment of Jesus’ last words to his disciples (Matthew 28:19-20) as the “normal” thing to do. If we are to reach ALL the remaining unreached people groups left in the world, I think this mentality desperately needs to be changed. We must be willing to ALLOW for God to change our hearts, give us a vision for HIS dream and not default back to the American Dream when things start to get difficult.
Now. I’m not naive. I know there is safety risk in going back. warning…i’m about to get a little dramatic, but truly if I land in India January 19th 2016 and am killed the next day like Jim Elliot (one of my all time heroes) was when he ventured to Ecuador to reach a tribe of the unreached, so be it. My time in India, even just for a day, would totally still be worth it because I would know that I went where God directed me to go and could trust that somehow my life brought someone closer to realizing that they have worth and are created by a God that loves them deeply. My time on earth would end, but my ETERNITY in heaven would only just begin, and THAT is something to be celebrated!
The greater safety risk in my eyes would be to stand against the calling God has placed on my life for this season and refuse to be sent. I believe there was a man in the bible, named Jonah, who did that. And from what I remember of that story, God got him to go to Nineveh in the end, right? Given the choice between walking away from God, hoping to wait out his calling by hiding and filling my life with commitments to prolong the inevitable just doesn’t seem like anyway to live. Instead, I want to be in the middle of God’s presence. I want to be the one God speaks through, heals through, and raises the dead through. NOW THAT SOUNDS LIKE A LIFE WORTH LIVING!
To those who are uncertain if this is “safe”. Let me assure you, it’s not safe. I think sometimes I try to please people by telling them all the facts about how India is safer than America for this reason and that reason and for that I apologize. Although I do believe that where I am living in India is a generally safe place, that’s not for you or me to worry about. Here are some scriptures that have given me this realization and continue to give me peace as I prepare for this next season.
1 Tim 1:7 “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and sound mind.”
Philippians 4:6 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2-3).
This last verse specifically has resonated with me a lot this week and i’ve had to look twice at the way I react to “trials” in my own life. How often do I count them as “pure joy”? My conclusion has been that I should be looking to that as my standard rather than the exception, especially with this next season just 2 months away.
Thankfully I have people in my life that are modeling this for me, and pushing me into this challenge.
As some of you may have heard through my prayer group updates, this past week my friend and coworker Matt was attacked by three “men” with a machete while he was with a team doing ministry in Zambia, if you want to be inspired today you can read his blog here. Another friend this past month, alongside his team, cast out 30 demons in a single night that were literally ruling the bodies of the people they were preaching to (you can watch their video here). Another friend is in Greece, watching refugee after refugee die of starvation and infection, working 14 hour days and ending the night exhausted and defeated knowing that most of the children she meets will never see their parents, siblings or friends back in Syria again. I could go on and on with story after story of the trials my friends are going through…but like the book of James suggests, and what my friends are demonstrating in real time we are not to shrink back in fear because of these trials but instead persevere and PRESS INTO them….when we count them as joy, we become dangerous to the enemy and valuable vessels for the advancement of God’s kingdom!
My challenge to you (and something I am doing as well this week) is to ask yourself “Do I let fear keep me from making the commitments God is calling me to make?” if that is the case, what are some steps that we can take to demolish this fear and replace it with radical, bold obedience?
Let me know how these conversations with the Lord, go! I will definitely keep you informed about what I hear from him and how he continues to grow me in this area…be blessed friends!
