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

From time to time, we’ll update some about our personal lives and ministry here in Thailand. This past weekend, we had the opportunity to travel through the mountains to meet up with one of our closest Thai partners, Talia (name changed for security purposes).

We’re planning to post about our past season of cancer treatment, how we experienced Jesus in that, and the difficult lessons God was giving throughout all of it. Just 12 months ago, while Jenn was in the middle of cancer treatment, I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to continue in the ministry, return to Thailand, or what in the world God had in store for us. We were burnt out, battered, discouraged, lost at sea with no port to return to.

As we were taking the 3-hour drive through the mountains, it hit me that the last time I was taking this kind of drive was the day of Jenn’s seizures that revealed her brain tumor – March 19, 2021.

625 days.

625 days after the scariest day of our lives, He allowed us another opportunity to continue in what He has called us to.

625 days might not seem like a long time for some people, as it’s about 3 months shy of 2 years. And I’m sure it has been a long 2 years for many others. But it was the longest and most difficult 625 days that we’ve ever experienced, and we’re immensely grateful and humbled to be able to continue serving in the ministry we love, in the country we love, with the people we love.

We had such a great two days catching up with Talia! After 1.5 years apart, we got to share in beautiful mountain views, good coffee, and delicious Thai food. But more importantly, we shared with each other similar lessons that God had been teaching all of us through the past season of sickness and suffering.

Talia has an amazing story: after coming to faith, she was passionate about serving God and immediately participated in a church plant. After she got married to her husband John, they moved and eventually joined a church that ended up being a Christian cult. The pastor told them that they could not teach from the Bible, serve in the church, or generally do anything other than show up on Sundays if they were not ‘anointed,’ and the only people who were anointed were those that he picked who had given enough money to the ‘church’ (meaning: to him directly). After a few years trying to endure and acquiesce with the leader’s demands, Talia and her husband realized that what the pastor was saying didn’t line up with what the Bible was saying, and decided to leave that church. They left discouraged and worn out after struggling in that church for 3-4 years.

As they looked around online for another church, they got connected with one of the church planting leaders from the church network that we partner with, who invited Talia and John to one of our quarterly CPM trainings.

When Jenn and I met them, we didn’t know their backstory at all. They actually seemed quite skeptical, asking a lot of questions about obedience to the Word and who has authority in the church. Eventually, they invited me and Jenn to train them and a few other believers in their province, so we went to visit and train them about a month later.

Their demeanor towards us was totally different than the first time – and Talia especially seemed filled with passion and excitement. Our very first vision casting and training is from the Great Commission – that there are 4 commands (go, make disciples, baptize, teach them to obey), and 2 promises (Jesus has all authority, and he will be with us always). For me, I tend to receive the promise that Jesus will be with me as an encouragement. But with our Thai church planters, the promise they cling to is that Jesus has all authority. For Talia, hearing that Jesus has all authority and gives her the command to make disciples was like releasing a river that had been stopped up by a dam for 4 years. She was ready to GO.

Reports began coming in from their area of healings, demons being cast out, new believers coming to faith, new groups of believers formed. Talia was texting us with ministry reports from different areas all around her province and beyond. The next quarterly training we had, she brought along a team of 6 other people to join along.

At one point, Talia and John and their disciples were baptizing several new believers, and some of the members from the previous cult came to harass them. They said, ‘You’re not anointed! You’re not a pastor! Who says that you have the authority to baptize? This isn’t a real baptism.’

And Talia, who I imagine and believe was filled by the Holy Spirit with boldness, replied: ‘The Bible says that Jesus has all authority and that he has given us authority to make disciples and to baptize them in his name!’ And they continued with the baptism.

All seemed to be going well, but we weren’t able to visit Talia’s province for several months as it was one of the hardest hit by Covid restrictions in Thailand. When we reconnected with her at the end of 2020, we heard about multiple areas and multiple generations of churches being planted! But we also heard why we weren’t able to get in touch with her.

5 months before, she was diagnosed with cancer. She was given months to live by the doctor. She said she couldn’t even look at her two young children without breaking down, overwhelmed by the thought of leaving them without a mother and her husband without a wife. At one point, she told us that she had thought, “It’d be better for everyone if I just died. Then my family will get the life insurance money and I won’t have to deal with the suffering.” She said the only thing that kept her going during this time was that there were new believers coming to faith every week through her disciples.

As she hit her breaking point, she asked John to take care of the kids for a few days and locked herself in her office. And she described the experience of that 3 days as ‘the closest to heaven that I’ve ever been.’ She simply worshipped, read the Word, and prayed with Jesus – and surrendered the outcome of her health, life, family, and ministry to him.

3 weeks later, Talia’s sister, who is a nurse in Bangkok, asked her to come get checked up at one of the best hospitals in the country. And when they did the scans – the cancer was gone.

God had healed her.

As we listened to her story in that coffee shop, we rejoiced with her over the new brothers and sisters that had come to faith, cried together over the suffering she had been through, and planned together towards how to help the new streams of churches continue in health and fruitfulness.

But we didn’t get to follow through with any of those plans. A few months later in April 2021, we were being repatriated on a plane back to the States for surgery, radiation, and chemo. And Talia continued to struggle with debilitating health issues over the next year as the hardest spike of Covid closed down any ability to do ministry in person in Thailand for over a year. But as Talia and Jenn went through over a year of medical treatments, they were both texting and praying for each other and mutually encouraging through the lessons God was teaching them about surrendering in suffering.

None of us can guess at the timing of significant health problems hitting at the same time as Covid lockdown, effectively stunting an emerging work of multiplication. To be honest, the person I was 625 days ago might have worried about that. But experiencing a new freedom, a new humility, a newness of resurrection life from the breaking down of this past season has just given me gratitude that we get to be back in Thailand, serving God and pursuing the Great Commission with our Thai friends. And seeing Talia renewed with passion, faith, vision makes me confident that a powerful work of God is around the corner for Thailand.

When we saw Talia this past weekend, she said this: ‘Jenn – I believe that we were sick together, to encourage each other and understand each other, and now to be healed together. But now is a time for us to เริ่มต้นใหม่ – a time to start anew.’

625 days is just shy of two years for most people. But for Talia, Jenn, and myself, it’s a new start; God giving back to us our lives and the opportunity to do ministry.

Please continue to pray for Talia as she has lingering effects from the medical issues of the past season and will need to get a corrective surgery in about 3 months. Pray also for her disciples and churches in 5 different areas as they continue to move forward in a vision for multiplication!

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.

Philippians 1:21-26