This is a tough and scary blog post to write.
It all started about a week ago when I had one of the most disturbing and terrifying dreams I have ever had. I usually don’t remember my dreams but this one was memorable. I dreamed our entire squad had reached our first country in Colombia. We had gone to preach the gospel to a tribe deep in the remote jungle in Colombia. I don’t remember much from the dream, however, I remember Michael, my squad leader was preaching to these people and all of a sudden they all turned on us. They quickly seized Michael and began seizing all of my squad mates one by one. My heart jumped and panicked and I began to run for my life. I am not quite sure how this happened, but shortly after I started running I looked up and saw some of my squad mates hanging on crosses the tribe members had built. They had beaten them to within an inch of their lives and were about to die. I kept running, however, everywhere I looked all I saw where more of my squad mates and then I realized I was trapped and I surrendered. My dream never got to the point of me getting crucified because I woke up before they began. Needless to say, this dream unsettled me and led me to question myself, “What have I gotten myself into?” and “What does this dream mean?”. I signed up to go on the World Race with full expectation that I would live to tell the tale. But what if that wasn’t what God had in mind? Would I be totally ok with that? I know what some of you are thinking at this point. John, you are scaring me. Stop talking about dying. I forbid you from going. Don’t die. I promise this blog post will lighten up. But first it actually will get darker.
A day after I had this dream, a coworker told me that a missionary by the name of John Allen Chau went to preach the gospel to a tribe on an island of the coast of India notorious for killing any and all outsiders who enter the vicinity of the Island. He was shot many times by arrows and killed. He was telling me what a fool he was for going to this Island knowing full well that these people would kill him. Of course my atheist coworker overheard and had his two cents to contribute. Where was God when the guy who went to preach his gospel, was getting shot by arrows? I honestly had nothing to say at this point. I couldn’t answer where God was and whether or not this guy was actually doing God’s will because why would God allow such a seemingly fruitless loss of life? However, it got me thinking and I remembered the story of Jim Elliot and his missionary friends who went to preach the gospel to a tribe in the heart of the amazon in Ecuador and were killed in a similar fashion. I actually told my other coworker who started the conversation this story and how the missionaries’ wives all went back to that same tribe and preached the gospel of forgiveness and redemption to this tribe and many of them came to know Christ. The tribe turned from its ways of violence and turned to Jesus. I had the privilege of visiting the home base where these missionaries lived when they left to preach the gospel to this tribe in a small town called Shell, Ecuador. I am sure that everyone was saying the same things about him and those missionaries 50 + years ago. What a fool!!! But Jim Elliot had a famous saying, “He is no Fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
I am not sure what fruit will come from John Allen Chau’s loss of life, however here is what I do know. God calls all of us to Die! He says whoever does not pick up his cross daily cannot be his disciple. When you become a follower of Christ, your life is no longer your own, but it belongs to God. A great exchange takes place. It is like a man who finds a treasure in a field and sells all of his possession to purchase the field for this treasure because it is worth much more than all of his possessions combined. God is offering us eternal life, but requires that we give him our lives now. Paul compares us to the temple of God and tells us we are not our own for we were bought with a price, the life of his Son. Two days ago during work, I was considering the question my coworker had asked me, where was God when John Allen Chau was being killed? And I thought of a better question. Where was God when his own Son was being beaten, spat on and hung on a cross? Where was he when Jesus cried out Father, why have you forsaken me? The answer is he was everywhere. He sustained the breathe of the Roman guards as they whipped his son. He was there holding back his wrath as his perfect Son was being mocked and ridiculed by the Sanhedrin. But, Ultimately, he was there to crush his own Son under the weight of his Wrath in order that we might have eternal life. Isaiah 55 says it pleased the Lord to crush him. How does the most Heinous crime ever performed in this world glorify God? By demonstrating his perfect love and perfect justice as our very lives and our sin is hung up on that cross with our beloved savior Jesus Christ and he was forsaken by his own father. He was forsaken, so that we would never be forsaken, he was crushed so we would never be crushed, and he was killed so that our souls would be with him for ever and that we would have eternal life. If God can orchestrate for his glory something so evil as the murder of a perfect innocent Son, he can orchestrate John Allen Chau’s death for his glory. The truth is we are all going to die. What difference does it make if it is because of old age or because you had the boldness to step out in faith and do what God called you to do in the first place. How would you rather die? A lot of our lives are lived as a way of avoiding suffering. We try to get as comfortable as possible and start complaining when that comfort is lost. The a/c doesn’t work, our phones are out of battery, we have to sleep on the floor, we need to take a cold shower, we are going to be persecuted…etc. We spend too much of our lives avoiding suffering when scripture promises Romans 8, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.” It promises that we will share in Christ’s glory as Heirs and Children of God if we suffer as he did for his names sake. It is a pretty great trade.
When you realize your life is not your own and it belongs to God, nothing can touch you. Not death, not fear, not imprisonment, nothing. Paul put it this way in Romans 8 “ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” See when you choose to live in Christ’s love, you already have eternal life and death is just a transition in which your flesh dies but your spirit which is alive in Christ gets to see the Lord.
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