Union with Christ and Resurrection Life

As we’ve mentioned in several other posts, the most significant lesson we’ve received from the Lord during our time on the field has been union with Christ. It has made such a radical difference in our practical experience of walking in the Spirit that it is the message that we most want to share with other leaders, goers, and believers.

The critical explanation of oneness with Jesus comes best from Hudson Taylor:

The Spirit of God revealed to me the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before.

How great seemed my mistake in wishing to get the sap, the fullness out of Him! I saw not only that Jesus will never leave me, but that I am a member of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. The vine is not the root merely, but all – root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit.

Think what it involves. Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and your left poor? Or your head be well fed while your body starves?

The sweetest part… is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize this; for He, I know, is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient. No fear that His resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me.

Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret

To us, learning about union with Christ unlocked the practical application of the promises of God in our lives. Those biblical promises for provision, joy, wisdom, power went from a distant and vague hope that they would happen to a daily, rich, and real experience in our lives and ministry. Without the secret of oneness with Jesus, we most likely would not have made it past our first term in Thailand.

And although we had been surrendering our control and receiving His promises throughout team leadership and growing ministry in Thailand, the shock and trial of cancer and burnout brought us deeper into the lessons of union. There was more surrender, more death to self that the Lord was bringing in order to receive the true goal of union with Christ: resurrection life and power.

We are continually learning and desiring to experience more intimacy, more of Jesus’ presence, more of our very lives, will, thoughts, words aligning with his. He continues to respond by giving more. 10 years into our time on the field, anxiety has gone from a near constant reality with no reprieve before learning about union, to something we had to actively surrender to receive peace from Jesus, and now to a rare occurrence that is honestly surprising when it pops up.

The circumstances of life and ministry on the field have not gotten much easier. But for thoughts of anxiety and the corresponding tension headaches, panic, desperation, escapism, and inevitable conflicts to go from 10 times a day to 10 times a year is a testimony of God’s power to transform our lives. 

This is not to even speak of —

• supernatural empowerment of strength and energy when my gas tank is completely empty,
• wisdom for decisions that I would never be able to make from my own knowledge, 
• joy in the midst of the lowest points in my life,
• favor and blessing in ministry with people that we did not earn,

and so many other miraculous and practical ways that Jesus has shown himself to be faithful.

His promises in Scripture are true. And they are available to us right now.

And there is so much more that he desires to give us than we can even imagine.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20

More posts on Union with Christ and Resurrection Life:

1. Union with Christ Part 1
2. Union with Christ Part 2
3. Resurrection Life Part 1
4. Resurrection Life Part 2
5. Resurrection Life Part 3

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God’s Faithfulness, Provision, Protection, and Presence

It feels a bit cliche to say that God’s faithfulness has been a theme of the past 10 years, but there’s a reason why Scripture so often speaks to this aspect of His character. Samuel Saldivar examines 1 New Testament and 4 Old Testament terms that highlight God’s faithfulness and counts up to 733 times these terms are used in the Bible.

In spite of whether I realized it or looked to Him for it, God has been faithful. He has been provider, protector, and Friend.

When our marriage struggled and we fought nearly every day for our first year on the field, He brought healing and unity between me and Jenn to turn a weakness into a joyful point of strength.

When we didn’t know what to do as leaders or how to make decisions for our team, His Spirit gave wisdom and discernment generously and protected our team from catastrophe.

When our team had conflict and disagreement and unhealth, He created unity and camaraderie for us as one body in Christ.

When we were physically exhausted, sick, and out of gas, He provided supernatural strength, energy, and healing.

When trying to pursue a vision for multiplication among 70 million people without the gospel and being told from numerous experienced workers that it couldn’t be done, He blessed us with cherished Thai partners that are bearing fruit beyond what we could dream.

When my wife was in the ICU after a seizure and I didn’t know if she would live or die, in the waiting room of the hospital at 2AM, I experienced His faithfulness and presence beyond any other moment I had before that.

Before you launch to the field, you hear testimonies from workers and read the words from missionary biographies like Adoniram Judson in the prison, Jim Elliot the night before they go to encounter the Huaorani and are martyred for their witness, and John Paton in the tree running for his life from savages. In those testimonies, they all talk about experiencing His promises for peace, joy, and trust, and about how Jesus had never been more present or nearer than in those moments of crisis.

John Paton writes, 

Yet I sat there among the branches, as safe as in the arms of Jesus. Never, in all my sorrows, did my Lord draw nearer to me, and speak more soothingly in my soul, than when the moonlight flickered among those chestnut leaves, and the night air played on my throbbing brow, as I told all my heart to Jesus. Alone, yet not alone! If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Savior’s spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship. If thus thrown back upon your own soul, alone, all alone, in the midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, have you a Friend that will not fail you then?

You read the word, you pray and plead, you hope within hope that when those moments of trial come, that He will give you faith to believe the promises. That your faith won’t fail. That He will be and do everything that He said he would.

Sitting in that waiting room, distressed and scared, I prayed the simplest prayer that I could muster: “God, I trust you. I believe that you are with me and that you are sovereign and that this will be for your glory and my good.”

The moment that I realized that I not only prayed but I believed those words, I was overwhelmed with gratitude and joy that He gave me faith to believe the promises. That He had not abandoned me but had drawn nearer than ever before. It felt like I had passed the test of faith, only because He allowed me to. I didn’t know what tomorrow would hold, but I knew that I was held by Him. My Friend that would not fail me in the very embrace of death itself.

God is faithful, even to give the faith to believe His promises.

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Joy in Fulfilling Calling

At one missions conference we went to, we heard a speaker say, “Many goers do not persevere long enough to see the vision that God has given them be fulfilled.” Obviously there are many uncontrollable reasons that people leave the field, but his exhortation to us was to continue persevering in the work even if it is slow or difficult or plodding.

Timelining out the significant events of the last 10 years was emotionally heavy. It took me 1-2 hours per year to look back, remember, and note the significant moments, and inevitably to feel and experience those things as well. Even with as many good moments as there were, much of what we experienced still feels weary, sad, and melancholic. In some seasons, even if there wasn’t a distinct negative event, it just felt like we were constantly plodding uphill in the mud and rain, two steps forward and three steps back. It’s hard to count how many moments we wanted to give up, to escape, to just pick an easier life. Difficult conversations, hospital visits, sin issues, burnout, and self-dependence tinged the timeline like stains on the page of a book. And this didn’t even count all the smaller burdens like missing home, lingering sicknesses, feeling strange and misunderstood in a foreign culture, and a continual underlying stress, anxiety, and loss of control.

I decided to mark the events with a green color for positive and a red color for negative. After tallying them up, there were 211 positive, joyful events and 56 negative, difficult events. For every difficult thing, there were nearly 4 joyful things.

Life on the field is low lows and high highs. There were 267 significant events in 10 years, about 2-3 per month. I doubt if I would’ve even had 1/10th of that had I stayed in the States. And it’s true, life would’ve probably been easier, safer, more stable. And I would’ve, for the most part, avoided most of these very difficult, heavy moments.

But I would’ve missed out on joy.

He had good works for us to walk in. And even in the difficulties and suffering, he was teaching us lessons of how to receive joy and peace and rest in Jesus.

Jenn shares that when we returned back to Thailand after cancer, it felt like her soul clicked back into place. There is a joy and a contentment in your inner being to be exactly where God wants you to be.

And there’s joy in seeing a vision begin to come to fruition. 

We came in response to a calling and a Commission towards a spiritual need for the gospel in Thailand. At first, though I might not have admitted it, I was seeking validation. I wanted to be validated that I wasn’t crazy for leaving a good job in the States to essentially start over in a foreign country. To be validated that I was a good leader. To be validated that we could see ministry fruit happen where others said it couldn’t happen.

When the first trials and challenges came, most of those inane desires went out the window as we were just trying to survive. Being humbled by the Lord quickly checked our motivations, and learning union with Christ made us realize that Jesus’ words in John 15 were painfully and wonderfully true – “apart from me you can do nothing.” We started to focus on abiding not so we could get what we needed to bear fruit, but simply so we could experience more of Jesus.

When the ministry started seeing fruit, no one was more surprised than we were because we knew how incompetent, stupid, and weak we were. It was clearly because of what God was doing through our Thai partners, not because of us.

But still we experienced joy. Not validation of ourselves, not affirmation of our strength, but that we had a front row seat in seeing God’s goodness in bringing the first new believers, the first new churches. We celebrated when reports of new believers and baptisms came in. We worshipped when the sick were healed or demons were cast out. We wept with gratitude when we saw obedience and transformation in people’s lives and families. We were in awe when we realized that God was doing a work much bigger than we had anticipated.

If we had given up when things felt impossible, or perhaps never even took the first steps of obedience towards this wildly insane calling, we would have missed out on all of the joy that God wanted us to experience.

“Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit… These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

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Conformed to the Image of Christ

Lastly, what stuck out to me in looking back on the timeline was how much I have been changed. In the timeline above, the red events were negative and the green were positive, and I marked the blue events and lessons as significant moments of change, growth, and development for me personally.

This can perhaps be said of any 25 year old, but the word that comes to mind in describing myself at 25 is “naive”. My reality for the first few years in Thailand was something in between “I don’t know” and “What the heck is going on?!” In regards to life overseas, marriage, team leadership, and suffering, I had no idea what I signed up for.

I have failed as a follower of Jesus, as a husband, as a friend, as a ministry worker, and as a leader miserably, spectacularly, and repeatedly over the past 10 years to the detriment of myself, my wife, our team, and our ministry. Those failures were painful and have left scars that we have had to surrender to Jesus for healing. The fact that we are still here 10 years later with several physical and emotional scars is a testimony to the Lord’s kindness in sustaining us.

Reading through Robert Clinton’s The Making of a Leader helped me to understand that every experience, every opportunity, and particularly every failure has been how God has been shaping me. Those scars are literal and figurative marks of the ways that He has developed us more into who He has intended for us to be.

What excites me for the next 10 years is not only how much more impact we will have armed with the valuable lessons He has given us from the past 10, but how much more the Spirit will change me, how much more He will help me to know and love and become more like Jesus.

With 10 years behind us and the next horizon in front of us, we can simply say – If God has been faithful through all of this, how much more faithful will He be going forward?

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

Hebrews 10:23

10 years on the field – in ministry leadership and through a pandemic, cancer, and role transitions – has felt like the equivalent of 20 years in comparison to what life was like back in the States before we launched. As many have said, life overseas consists of high-highs and low-lows. Those events and the ways we’ve been impacted by them have changed us significantly.

We had the privilege to take our first sabbatical this past year to reflect on the past 10 years and look forward to the next season. I ended up timelining personal, team, and ministry events over the past 10 years and drawing key themes and lessons from each year and each term.

In the last 10 years, we have…

Personal

• Moved to 8 different apartments
• Taken over 400 flights, traveling for 50%+ of the year for 4 of the 10 years
• Fought each other every day for our first year in Thailand
• Missed 20 weddings our first year in Thailand, including 3 weddings of our teammates
• Missed the births of nephews and nieces, and the funerals of grandparents
• Lived through a pandemic lockdown overseas (with Animal Crossing)
• Were repatriated for a medical emergency
• Endured 18 months of cancer treatment including surgery, radiation, and chemo
• Burned out and were ready to quit ministry
• Fostered 2 sassy bunnies
• Served for 6 years on our organization’s executive leadership team
• Transitioned out of our original sending organization to start our own new ministry
• Took 6 years to finish a 2 year seminary degree

Team

• Onboarded or helped our team leaders onboard 22 teammates (and counting!)
• Seen 8 teammates leave the field
• Expanded our original team to 3 new teams

Ministry

• Seen our teams train over 1000 Thai believers in disciple-making and church-planting
• Helped train and oversee 30+ Thai church planting teams throughout Thailand
• Seen God begin to multiply our Thai partners’ ministry in disciples and churches, including 1000+ professions of faith
• Developed, with teammates and Thai partners, a training handbook for planting multiplying churches in Thai

The category of items that were uncountable:

• Hours sitting in traffic
• Roaches and vermin killed or chased away (or that we ran away from)
• Hours waiting at immigration
• Intolerably spicy Thai meals, and related trips to the bathroom
• Misspelled and mispronounced Thai words
• Exhaustion naps
• Video calls around the world
• Team meetings, corporate prayer times, and worship sessions
• Times crying out to God in weakness and desperation
• Discernment, peace, blessing, and power given by the Holy Spirit in response
• Difficult conversations
• Hours spent walking with teammates through major health, sin, and life issues
• Minor and major health issues endured by us, our team, and our partners
• Stories of answered prayer, healings, deliverance, and salvation
• People around the world, especially and including teammates and Thai friends, who prayed for us, encouraged us, and supported us

I’ve looked over this list a few times, and even in bullet form, it is difficult not to feel the flood of emotions, the weightiness, the intensity of what this list represents. It has been a story of our weakness, self-dependence, and shortcomings coming to the surface in the midst of difficulties, challenges, and conflict, and the Lord meeting us in faithfulness, intimacy, and power. The last 10 years have been so much fuller, more joyful, and more rewarding than I could’ve ever thought possible. And it has been so much more difficult, painful, and crushing than I could’ve imagined before we launched.

For the sake of posterity, I’ll write down a favorite ministry memory and a favorite team memory. In another post, I’ll share a few of the lessons and themes that came out of my sabbatical reflection.

I thought about writing out some of the most difficult memories, including the day of Jenn’s seizure or finding out about a teammate’s moral failure, but it is heavy enough looking at that list above without going deep into the really tough stuff. And I’ll also save the numerous funny and outrageous ‘life in Thailand’ memories for another time, including the pregnant rat mother or the cheez-it dust story.

Favorite Ministry Memory

There’s probably two dozen that could go in this spot, including:

• Our very first training in Mint’s province where their family made Khao Laam for us afterwards, one of my favorite Thai foods – a coconut milk and sticky rice with red beans dessert stuffed into a piece of bamboo and roasted over an open fire. Or whenever Mint’s mom made us dinner!
• The first house church training we did with Mint’s new believers when we asked, what can we use for communion, and an old grandpa in the back said, ‘I brought ginger juice and sticky rice for my snack – can we use this?’ It felt like a 5 loaves and 2 fishes moment for our very first communion with a new house church that had come out of our ministry.
• One of the first house church gatherings we went to, when we sat in a circle with a room of mostly brand new believers and cried out in worship, “God heal our land that your name would endure forever!”

But the very favored one that comes to mind is at the end of 2020. After Covid lockdowns for 3 months, Thailand mostly reopened and our partners continued to push forward and see new believers and churches nearly every week. After 2 years of a crazy whiplash of travel and trainings and an explosion of new fruit, our partners coordinated a big celebration camp for all the church planters in the network, over 100 people from 30 teams in 20+ provinces in Thailand. We were big enough as a network to get shirts made! They chose สุดปลายแผนดิน to put on the shirt – “to the ends of the earth” from Acts 1:8.

After hearing countless stories of answered prayers, miraculous healing, deliverance, new believers, new churches, changed lives, sacrifice and suffering, trials and obstacles, and faithful obedience, our team prepared an activity to help each team receive vision from the Lord about where He was leading them to pioneer new churches. We grouped each of the 30 teams in 5 regions: North, Northeast, East, Central, And North-Central. We asked each team to listen to the Lord about 3 places they felt He was leading them to focus on in the next year. We told them that after 10 minutes of prayer and listening, to put a sticker dot on their province map on the wall of where they felt led to pioneer.

As these faithful church planters began putting stickers on maps, they looked like bright points of light against the background of the maps. Spiritual points of light in a land covered in darkness.

It was at that moment that I thought, “This work will continue through these people with or without us.” This was a prayer we had been asking for before we even launched, before we had even met these friends, before many of these people had ever started following Jesus.

And through this group, there was a legitimate chance that the promise of Habakkuk 2:14 could be fulfilled in Thailand – “that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

Overwhelmed and with tears flowing down my face, I had to go to a corner to sit down. After wiping my eyes, I looked over and saw my teammates similarly teary-eyed. And next to them were some of the regional leaders, those that we had trained the earliest like Mint and Talia, also crying. It was God showing all of us that the vision He had promised was beginning to be fulfilled.

Less than 6 months later, Jenn and I would be on a plane being repatriated back to the States for cancer treatment. We wouldn’t return for over 18 months, and the church planting network would encounter its most intense season of opposition, with Covid restrictions shutting down the country, Talia also being diagnosed with cancer, our network leadership team falling apart, and teammates coming off the field.

While we were gone, we weren’t sure how the ministry would go and had to release it to the Lord. Much of the work contracted during that time, but the thought I had during that 2020 celebration camp remained true – the work continued on even without us there. The past 2 years since coming back, we have had a season of ‘starting anew’ to help the network restart their momentum.

But just a week from now, we’ll have our first celebration camp with the whole network of church planters since 2020. Many of the people are different, and the people who remain like us, Mint, and Talia have been significantly changed.

Through trial and suffering and loss, the Lord has brought new life and new leaders and new believers and new churches in new areas that have never had the gospel. We continue to believe that this promise of Joshua 1 will be true for our Thai partners: “every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you,” until the gospel has gone to every people and place in Thailand.

Favorite Team Memory

There’s also way too many to count here, but I’ll bullet point a few favorites:

• Our pre-field team retreat where we tried to go through a desert survival scenario to figure out team dynamics and communication but we ended up all dying of thirst. Whoops.
• Our first team fellowship ever, where I told everyone to buy something on the street that looked interesting so we could potluck – 5 out of 7 people brought roast chicken because everything else looked weird!
• Late night McDonald’s as second dinner while watching Friends after 6 hours of meetings with our leadership team. This was a regular occurrence but some of my favorite times together with our leaders.
• Our sub-team getting together for a meeting during a heavy travel and training season where we all decided to put our heads down on the table for a power nap before starting our meeting because we’re all beyond exhausted.
• Thanksgivings and Christmases, including the Thanksgiving where I was super confused about why the turkey was so cold inside and burnt outside only to cut it open and find some mutant turkey breast that had a 3 inch layer of fat that wasn’t cooking – blegh.
• A family gathering in the States where we brought together all the parents on our original team to spend time together, celebrate, and honor our parents for their sacrifice and support in sending their children.
• A prayer activity with interactive stations at our team retreat in 2017 that Jenn and I frantically created 2 hours beforehand, but the Lord met us with intimacy and power. The last station was from Revelation 5:8, which references the “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” before the angels and elders proclaim Jesus’ worthiness among the nations. We had teammates write down prayers towards that final vision and put them in the bowls as an offering to the Lord.

The most impactful team memory however, is our last team celebration in 2019 as an original team before expanding into three teams in 2020. We deeply love and appreciate every teammate that has ever come through our teams in Thailand, but there was something special about our original team of 13. We were all so fresh faced, naive, earnest, and so-so-so not ready for what was about to happen. But we were together and we had each other in the midst of all that confusion and newness.

We had the vision to expand into multiple teams even before we launched, because of the uniqueness of the different contexts within Thailand (Buddhist/Muslim/Tribal) and because the Lord had blessed our team with multiple leaders. After 2 years of prayer, planning, and preparing the new team leaders, we had a final celebration as a team before we officially expanded.

We split into guys/gals time and the guys got to watch Muay Thai together. And we reflected on good and difficult times as a team. We worshipped and prayed together. And we celebrated all that God had done in and through us. Jenn and I prepared small gifts for each teammate as well.

We led a reflection exercise where we asked each teammate to think of 3 words that described them and described the team at the beginning and 3 words for themselves and the team now. Blue text is for personal words and black text is for team words.

Perhaps even more than the ministry fruit we got to celebrate together, this list of transformed lives and a transformed community is maybe one of my most cherished things from our time in Thailand.

From selfish, proud, naive, insecure, broken, superficial strangers to joyful, rooted in Christ, safe, abiding, thriving, tested, humbled, fruitful, impactful family. It’s such an unbelievable thing that God did in a short few years to knit us together.

At the end of the time, while crying the hardest I ever have in front of other people, I commissioned our teammates out to their new teams and fields of ministry in Thailand, and commended them to God as Paul does with the elders in Acts 20.

That time together marked a significant transition for us, as soon after we would be in different places, with different teammates added to the new teams, and Covid happening simultaneously with our team expansion. But wherever God will take us – to different cities, different organizations, or different countries – no matter what, that team will forever be family for us. And when those golden bowls of the prayers of the saints – including our prayers from that team retreat – get poured out at Jesus’ return, I’m sure that this family, clothed in white robes and together with those from Thailand we had the opportunity to impact, will save each other seats around the throne. Maybe afterwards we’ll have some McDonald’s.