A Call to Die

Let's start at the beginning: When I was....about 16 years old, I became a disciple of Jesus Christ. I had been a believer for a while, but it wasn't until I was 16 that I truly began to seek hard after the heart and the will and the glory of the Lord. At this time in my life, the Lord began to impress on me the bigness of the world. That there were floating villages in Peru, skyscrapers in China, secret coves in places I can't even pronounce, places and people and lives all happening simultaneously with mine, and the Lord knew every bit of it. I fell in love with the idea of travel, something that up until that point in my life had been something I never would have dreamed of doing. At this point in my life, it became a very distinct yearning to go and to see all of these places to find myself in a land completely foreign to myself and everything I had ever known. This surely was nothing short of romantic fantasy, a longing for adventure and danger, at this point I simply desired to be well traveled and well cultured. Shortly hereafter though, the Lord gave me an image in my mind of the world as a dark place. Where His children were gathered was bright with the Light of His Presence, for instance a church gathering or a worship service would be positively luminescent with all of the little lights shining brightly all together. At the same time, however, He showed me that with all of these little lights together, one tiny light wasn't going to make all that much difference. Like if you were to take one grain of sand from the beach, one wouldn't even notice it was gone. If you put that same grain of sand in someone's eye however, they will take note. In the same way, the Lord told me that a little light could make a world of difference to a very dark place. He called me to take the light of His gospel to the darkest places I could find. This floored me, I had never even considered the possibility of myself as a missionary. I just wanted to be the normal Christian, ministering to the people I worked with, raising a family, and going to church twice a week. "Missionary" was a foreign word to me and at first, I didn't even want to claim it. I decided that United Market Street (where I worked at the time) was the darkest place around and I was just supposed to share His light there (come to find out, while I was supposed to be faithful in this way and the Lord did want me to share Him with those around me, United Market Street is rather alight with people who call on the Name of the Lord). So, I struggled greatly with this call for awhile, not really being sure of what it meant. The Lord was so gracious to put around me the best possible influences: my two best friends, Katie Bobbitt and my now husband Brandon who had both received similar callings. Together we searched the scriptures, prayed earnestly, and tried to live in a missional way that was pleasing to the Lord in the meantime. My friend Katie got her answer in the form of a call to serve in Uganda. Brandon and I at this point decided that maybe we were supposed to serve in Africa as well as his best friend Warren had also been called to Uganda. Wherever we were supposed to go, the Lord never let us doubt that we were to go. During this time, the Lord called me yet again to a life of not-normalness. It was literally a violent ripping away of myself and my heart from the world and it's offerings: I had to chose between a life of reckless abandon to my Royal Husband, or a boy who claimed he loved me. After struggling for months over this decision, in a heartbeat, I was won over by the call on my life. I remember telling my mom the night I broke up with this kid "I can't live in a nice house with a minivan and a white picket fence and a little dog and five kids. I wasn't made for that". The Lord called me away from normalcy. I later married my best friend Brandon, which I never would have done had we not shared the same call and the same passion for Jesus. At the time our hearts were very hard, we stubbornly told the Lord we would go anywhere as long as He didn't tell us to stay in Amarillo. This showed our hearts and He really had to break us down on this point. It had become less about glorifying the Lord and more about leaving our po-dunk town behind and living an adventure, we were behaving much in the same way as I had when the Lord showed me the bigness of the world. We wanted to go for going's sake, not for the Lord's or the gospel's. Recently, (praise Him!) He has broken us, transformed our minds, and caused so great a surrender in our hearts and minds that we both were brought to a place where if we were called to serve in Amarillo for the rest of our lives, we would do it with a love for the gospel on our tongues and a song in our heart, praising the Lord and serving Him wholeheartedly. At the same time, through studying the gospels, the book of Acts and 1 Corinthians together, we began to feel a burden for the unreached. Those 6,000 or so people groups that are perishing daily without ever having heard the name of Jesus Christ and His gospel. Brandon and I have loved Asia for a long time. If I could go anywhere in the world right now, it would be China. I LOVE China! I was fortunate enough to go there a couple of years ago and have since become slightly obsessed with the Chinese underground church. They have experienced the biggest church growth in history-I find this fascinating, but am assured that China needs no help from foreign missionaries. Someone once asked "Why should anyone hear the gospel twice when there are those who have not heard it once?" The other night the Lord showed us that He wants us to shed our blood for the gospel in Asia. I know there are people like K.P. Yohannan who claim that foreign missionaries are not needed in Asia, and I think he has a great point. There are places in Asia where foreign missionaries simply are not allowed to go, at which point national missionaries and evangelists are necessary. However, Romans asks the question "How then can they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?" Romans 10:14-15. The fact is that two out of every three people alive on earth lives in Asia. There are 100,000 missionaries in the world, and only 2% work among people groups classified as "unreached". 70% of Asians have never even heard the name of my sweet savior. The harvest is ready, but the workers are few. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission once said "The Great Commission is not a possibility to be considered, it is a command to be obeyed." As disciples of Christ who have been called to go into the darkest corners of this earth with the Light of Christ, we find that the darkest corners exist in the House of Buddha and the House of Mohamed among the Asian nations. In some of these places, evangelism is completely outlawed. In Tibet for example, the Buddhists who are typified as being peaceful and accepting have a past soaked in the blood of martyrs who gave their lives to see their killers saved. If I have to die, I would die a martyr, but that is not why we go. We pray that the Lord's Spirit would be poured out on us that we may witness boldly to the Truth and that we may give a courageous testimony as we seek to know only Christ and Him crucified. Please pray with us for the Lord to lead us and for us to know Him more. May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward for His suffering!!!