Ha, I wish it was that easy!

 

The Soil and the Seed.  

Death.  

The Tension.  

God Gets His Way <– Click here to skip past the ruminations of my mind and get straight to the point.

 

      The call to do something a radical as leave your “life” behind is anything but easy to discern, and sometimes I still wonder if I have my head on straight. I’m not sure when the seed for missions was planted, but I think it found soil in the desire I had to live a straight-up, no-compromises Christian life. What does that look like? Let me give you an example:

 

 

      About two years ago I bought a four-foot by eight-foot dry erase board and mounted it on a wall in my room. I wanted a place where I could write my long math equations, keep a to-do list, and keep a list of scriptures that stuck out to me as I read the bible, and I wanted these things to be prominently displayed in my room so that they’d always be at the forefront of my mind. One day I read Matthew 25:31-46. It’s the parable of the sheep and the goats, concerning the day of judgment. 

 

‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
I was a stranger and you invited me in,
I needed clothes and you clothed me,
I was sick and you looked after me,
I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

 

      During that period of my Christian growth I had developed an urgent desire to act out faith, asking, “What is it that God wants me to do?” And I think a lot of people ask themselves that. “God what is my purpose?” And there are varying degrees of God’s purpose for us which I hope to touch on in later blogs. But at the time I read that passage, those verses which I have center-aligned really stuck out to me and wanted to capitalize on each one of them so much so that I wrote in big words on my white board:

 

“What if I spent a whole day feeding the hungry?
What if I spend a whole day giving drink to the thirsty?
What if I spent a whole day providing shelter for the homeless?
What if I spent a whole day clothing those in rags?
What if I spent a whole day comforting and caring for the sick?

      And I would think about these things. “What if I devoted every aspect of my life to service in the name of Christ for the glory of His Kingdom?” There were six days in a week excluding the Sabbath, and there were six ways I could serve. HMM! Did I actually spend a whole day doing anything? No, but had been active in a weekly local soup kitchen, and did get started with Habitat for Humanity for a few weekends.

 

 

Eventually my desires forced me to confront my life paths, the
most obvious being a career path. I was in the middle of a master’s
degree in mathematics and dating the most wonderful, big-hearted,
beautiful and selfless girl I had ever known. Naturally, the next step, as dictated by
American society, was to graduate, get a job, get married, buy house,
have 2.5 kids and live happily ever after…

 

 

      Death, the Great Leveler of Mankind. No matter how rich or poor, dumb or educated, popular or rejected, healthy or sick, famous or unknown, accomplished or unskilled, generous or miserly, naked or clothed, comfortable or tortured a man is in this life, we all end up in the same place: six feet under in a box, if we’re lucky.

 

      In death a man loses everything he has worked for under the sun. The best we can hope for is to leave something behind for our fellow man, but even then we have no control over what they do with it, whether good or evil, our will or not. Besides, whether we leave them a fortune or leave them rags, it won’t matter because in the end they’ll die too and everything we left for them in life will come to nothing. Harsh? Yes. Truth? Yes.

 

      A doctor may help save a person from death once, or twice, or even three times, but in the end it’s all for nothing, because that person will die anyways, and no one can save him from it.

 

      No matter what we do, all we can do is hope to leave something behind to the benefit of the next generation. But even that is a risky proposition. A man may save all he has, the fortune of his entire life’s work, to leave for his children when he dies, and in an instant lose it all.

      Don’t believe me? It happened to millions of people in the economic downturn of 2009, you probably know one. It happened to thousands of people in the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. It happened in Hurricanes Katrina, Andrew, Ike and Wilma. It happened in Haiti this January 2010, in South Asia in 2004, in Krakatoa in 1883, and in Pompeii in 79. It happened in Medieval Europe with the Black Plague and in the 1918 Flu Pandemic. It happened in World War I and World War II, and it’ll happen in World War III. It happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in New York in 2001 and in Oklahoma City in 1995. It happened last night to someone who was killed by a drunk driver.

    Indeed, one day it will happen to all the earth— remember the dinosaurs?

    The scientists say it’ll come from space, the conspiratists: from World War 3, the environmentalists: from climate change and a runaway greenhouse effect, and the religious: from heaven. But no matter where the end of the world comes from one thing is certain: the end of the world will be within the next century. Yes, by 2110, even if the world prospers, you and I and everyone who is now alive, being born, or being conceived will be dead, and for us the world will have come to an end. Everything under the sun which we have worked for and are now working for and will later work for will have slipped out of our hands, and we shall never know of those things again.

     We come into this world with a body and we don’t even leave with that. If we measure ourselves by any standard of success in this world we fail; we may as well never have been born, because in the end all we have is loss. One who was never conceived never had anything to lose, and anyone who lives loses everything, even his body will be food for the worms.

       Such is death, the Great Leveler of Mankind.

 

       Sad? Yes. Pessimistic? Yes. Harsh? Yes. True? Yes.

       Will you walk away in 10 minutes, forget your ultimate fate here on earth and continue living under the happy illusion that you’re actually gaining something from all your diligent labor and toil? Probably. Such is the deceitfulness of wealth:

 

You. Never. Really. Have. Anything.

 

     But if you have an eternal life after death, then maybe you can have something there. But how?

 

     (The world in its present form is dying, passing away. You know it, I know it, and God knows it. Why then is there such a prevailing arrogance in our culture that so many people rail at God and consider themselves above death? It’s God who has promised to give eternal life after death if only we will trust Him when He says He will raise us up! But alas, that’s a different blog, so I digress!)

       Needless to say, the totality and finality of the ramifications of death gripped my mind for quite some time as my ruminations took a turn for the ecclesiastical and eschatological. (I never knew I had such a large vocabulary!) Suddenly I was faced with the question, “God has me here for a reason, what is he wants me to do?”

       Taking into consideration those facts of death I looked again at what I would like to do for a career, first taking the path of: “Hey, if I’m going to die anyways, I may as well spend 40 hours a week for the rest of life doing something that makes me happy instead of rich. I’d rather die happy with little than die miserable with much, but if I get rich doing what I love then fine.”

 

     I asked myself a lot of questions and looked into a lot of different careers. I found that I love to be outdoors and I love to exercise and be physically active. I also found that I love to think and solve problems, and I enjoy being philosophical in nature. I found that I also like to help people, although I often feel out of place in social situations.

 

     However, as I searched more and more deeply for a career in which I would be more easily happified, from within grew a voice louder and louder saying that I was again chasing empty shadows: Circumstances change and career opportunities come and go; the job market is always in a state of flux and what I have today I may not have tomorrow. To seek situational happiness was a fleeting shadow and shifting sand, and I would be wise not to seek happiness from my external circumstance. And again, once I die, all my happiness comes to nothing; I’m no different than someone who lived in sadness. Besides, I wanted to do more than just live happy, and I wanted to live a life of crazy sacrifice for the sake of the Lord by serving Him through serving others, storing up treasure for my eternal life.

 

     So, I would serve others. That’s what I would do! I was engaged to a precious young woman. “Forget doing what makes me happy, I’m going to serve the Lord by getting a career and raising up a Godly family and loving my wife, serving others out of the abundance of my income.” Hmph, That settles it! I would pursue a career and obtain wealth so that I could give more to my family and more to my community and that is how I was going to live a life of service pleasing to the Lord. But did that settle it? No.

    

     A voice again rose up from within. My focus was all wrong. I felt like I couldn’t honestly pursue worldly wealth without setting it up as an idol before the Lord. I’m not saying I think that wealth is bad or sinful, I’m just saying that I wasn’t mature enough in my faith to keep one foot in the pursuit of worldly things and still pursue God in a no-compromises, undivided sort of way, even if I was going to use wealth to serve others.

 

     Some Christians can do it; they can be 100% living alongside the rest of the world, and wealthy, without becoming part of it. They can spend 40 hours a week working on something that in the end is really nothing because in their hearts they have a peace that they are serving God where they are. But if I didn’t have a peace about serving God in that capacity, how much more so would I have been divided if I was actually living it? If I was going to spend 40 hours a week working for something, I wanted to be investing in eternal life, and I didn’t have a peace about the way I was about to do it. It was almost like God was saying, “Your focus is on yourself and what you can do, not on who I am and what I’m doing. Don’t worry about what you’re going to do for me, just focus on me and seek me.”

 

 “How, oh Lord, how do I seek you?”

 

     I wanted to spring forth into action, but I didn’t know what to do.

 

     For a long time I was unsettled and languished because I felt God was calling me to something radically different than the life I had known, the paths I was looking down, and the lives of the people around me. With introspection I suspected that it was something missions-related. Indeed: outdoors, physical activity, theological/philosophical discussions, helping people… missions would involve a dedicated sacrifice of materialism and creature comforts while abandoning the pursuit of wealth for the pursuit of God and treasure in heaven. Now that sounded like a fit. But I had no idea how to even begin to embark on such a life. Short-term missions, a week or month long at most, were the only kind of missions I knew of, and I also knew that they were not representative of the life which many missionaries actually lead.

    

      I was itching to get my feet wet, though, so I would often run Google searches with phrases such as “world missions,” “missionary life,” “mission trips,” etc. One night I found (Yep, you guessed it!) The World Race.

 

      Instantly I was hooked. I remember staring at the computer with my mouth open and my eyes welling up as I watched the videos and read the blogs.

That’s what I see as “The Call.”

 

       Nevertheless, soon I began to consider it a fancy and fought against it. I was engaged and getting set to start a new family and a new life! No, I couldn’t do this. I would have to hurt too many people and give up too many things. Taking a year out of my career-life would present serious hardships if I tried to jump back in after wards. No, it was too risky, I wouldn’t do it. I had a beautiful fiancŽe whose heart was intimately wrapped with mine and she would either come with me or not, or I would stay and not go. No, I couldn’t hurt her, I’d stay and not go. I knew if I did this that it would be a driving wedge between us: we simply had different views on living a missionary life. I remember praying, “God there is no way I’m going to bring all this to a painful halt and there is no way I’m calling off this wedding. If this is something you want for me then you do something.”

 

 But God Gets His Way.

 

      I interviewed with Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and I sent out many applications to colleges and universities seeking employment as a mathematics professor. Nothing came of any of it. I didn’t have any control over that, though. God closed those doors. My heart wasn’t in it anyways, my heart wanted to be on the mission field. Sometimes an opportunity presented itself, and I honestly could not in good conscience commit to it. I felt like I’d be neutering myself if I did, cutting off the chance I had at pursuing missions before I got entrenched in everything it means to work and live and have a family in this culture.

 

      Naturally, a tension arose in our engagement, and we had many long discussions relating our aspirations for the future to each other. I didn’t lie, I told her I felt a pull towards missions. She didn’t lie, she was ready to start a family. Neither of us wanted to call it off, so we often left our discussions unresolved, but the urgency to take action started becoming more and more powerful, as apparent by the increasing frequency and intensity of our “life talks.” Finally, two days before the wedding, I was so troubled in heart that when we talked that day I decided, with her support, to call of the wedding. That was a door that I apparently had to close for myself. I moved back to Lubbock (we had already set up an apartment in Dallas, Texas) and let things settle for a few months. I wanted to make sure I was called to missions and didn’t just want to get out of a wedding!

 

      Yes, no matter what I did or how hard I tried to do something else I could not get this thing out of my mind and I know now that it doesn’t matter what I do I won’t be able to get this thing out of my head until I do it. I don’t care what the ramifications are for my career, I’ll work through it; it’s all going to pass away anyways. I’ll probably have to sell a few treasured possessions to pay for this trip. Fine. I don’t care because in the end I don’t keep them anyways. And if for some reason I die on this trip, fine! (Sorry to bring that up, Mom and Dad!) I’m going to die some day anyways so I may as well die doing something that I can say about wholeheartedly, “I’m doing what I best know to be following my God!”

Grr! Just Get Me Out On That Field!