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

_________

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.

_______

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.”

_______

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

Filter Selectively

Even though we cast vision to anyone that will listen, team leaders should filter who actually joins their team very selectively. There are a few different things you can do to find out if a recruit is the type of person you truly want for your team. This requires asking many questions to understand them more, probing into things like motivation and passion. If you’re curious or unsure, don’t be afraid to ask – it’s always better to hear a potential recruit’s response over guessing or assuming.

Prioritize character over gifting. All goers have to hit a minimum standard for spiritual maturity and character, or they will be difficult to lead in the stress of a cross-cultural field context. Do they have a rich and abiding relationship with the Lord? Do they have any spiritual bondages that they haven’t seen consistent victory over yet (generally, the minimum is 6 months of sobriety or freedom over a sin addiction before launching to the field)? Is there anything significantly lacking in their character or in bearing fruit of the Spirit? Look especially for humility, patience, perseverance, flexibility, and faith, as these are critically important on the field. Many times, agencies will have a clear standard for who to deploy, and evaluations to help determine a goer’s readiness. It’s a good idea to take their list and even add more of your own values from your own team. If your agency does not have a list like this, you can use the personal evaluation we developed as a baseline. 

Consider their experience and track record. Can they do the job or role you’re inviting them to do on your team? Ask questions looking for demonstrated competency. Anyone can answer that they are ‘passionate’ about something, but see if they have at least some proven experience in doing the main activities in your ministry (e.g. training, evangelism, disciple making, etc.).

Check their references. A potential recruit will always put their best foot forward when going through the recruiting process, not unlike the first few dates with a new person! Ask them for references – their peers, their leaders, people they’ve led – and ask thorough and direct questions about the areas that you need to check them on like character, calling, strengths, and weaknesses.

Don’t be afraid to say “No” or “Not yet.” If you’re hearing from God that they won’t be a good fit for your team, don’t be afraid to tell them that. Sometimes as leaders we feel bad about influencing such a significant decision in a recruit’s lives and then closing the door. But ultimately, it’ll be better for them and for the team to not continue on in the process if they aren’t a good fit. This can happen at any point in the process. It can sometimes be helpful to provide gentle but clear feedback about why they might not be a good fit for your team, and propose areas of development. However, once you say no or not yet to joining the team, don’t be the one to take responsibility for their development. This can cause you unnecessary burden when team leaders already have so much they need to focus on. Let them have the opportunity to work on their own development in their home context, as this is a good indicator of their humility and initiative. We’d also heavily caution you to not just take whoever your mission agency proposes – each team is different and you should do your own homework about whether the potential recruit is a good fit and has acceptable character and calling to persevere on your team. Take the agency’s recommendation as one proof point and continue to discern and filter yourself.

Discern Their Fit

Along with evaluating their character and competency, you’ll be simultaneously getting to know their giftings, strengths, and personality to see if they’ll be a good fit with your leadership, your team, and your ministry.

Role, Strengths, Weaknesses: Get to know a recruit’s strengths and weaknesses and think through what potential role they play on your team or ministry. Find giftings that are generally complementary to your leadership and your team. For example, if you have no administratively gifted people on your team and need that help, try to find those that might have that gifting. Other than just asking questions, helpful tools to discern giftings and aptitudes include spiritual gifts inventories (like this one from Robert Clinton), Clifton Strengths, enneagram, etc. in order to get a generalized view into what their strengths and weaknesses might be. As weaknesses surface, also factor them into your team makeup to see if there’s any glaring deficiencies on your team as a whole.

Responsive to your leadership: See if the potential recruit is a person who is responsive to your style of leadership. For example, if you are a hands off type of leader that expects a lot of self initiative and the recruit is a person that needs more directive and detailed leadership, that is an aspect to consider. Or, a family might have reservations being led by a single person. Perhaps another person on your team could help provide some more leadership, but ultimately you want to make sure they are willing to submit to your leadership decisions and work with your style.

Look for diversity / variety on your team: Although you’re looking for the potential recruit to be responsive to your leadership, you also want to value and look for diversity and variety on your team. Recruiting a team that all thinks and acts like you means that you will lack perspectives and giftings that could help your team to thrive or be effective on the field.

General chemistry: How is the general chemistry between this person and you and your team? Learn about their hobbies, values, family of origin, lifestyle, etc. These might not be make or break issues but it’s good to be aware of where there might be friction points. 

Let teammates or others you trust interact with them: Lastly, let your teammates or those you trust interact with the potential recruits! As the TL, you’ll likely drive the process of getting to know them, but try and set up times for teammates to get to know their potential future teammates and solicit feedback from them about the recruit. Your experience may vary, but because adding a new teammate is such an impactful event, we ask that all of our current teammates have consensus with adding them before we make a formal invite. Adding a new teammate at the disapproval of a current teammate is like one step forward and five steps back.

Pray, fast, and ask the Lord: Selection is a critical component of discipleship, as we see from Robert Coleman’s Master Plan of Evangelism. And a huge aspect of selection is hearing from the Lord. We can see Jesus model this for us in the choosing of the 12:

In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles. (Luke 6:12-13)

We set time aside to pray and fast all throughout the process of considering a recruit, and ask the recruit and our current teammates to do so as well. Don’t skip this step! There are few decisions as impactful on a team as who you recruit, so spend the necessary time to bring recruits through the process and have clarity from the Lord.

Provide Clear Next Steps and Process Overview

At each point of the process, you want to provide clear expectations and next steps as much as possible to the recruit. A next step could include praying and processing what they’ve learned, talking to a teammate, taking a vision trip, or inviting them to a ministry or team event. Remember that this is a weighty decision for their lives and calling, so clarity is kindness.

If you’re serious about having them enter the recruiting process to potentially join your team, give them a clear expectation of the process and timeline. A simple one-page document outlining this can be very helpful. Also make it clear to them that you’re inviting them to start the recruiting process, which is different from an invitation to join the team!

Work together with your sending agency in terms of assessments and other logistical aspects. As the TL you will probably drive more of the personal connection and discernment parts, as well as connecting them to the right people in your agency.

Once you’ve had the initial conversations and done the relevant assessments and evaluations, we’d strongly recommend that the recruit comes on a vision trip for at least a week if possible. Interacting with them in-person and with the team is completely different than on Zoom calls. And allowing them to engage with the culture, people, and environment of your field is a critical piece of the discernment process, for both you them. Some recruits that we thought were slam-dunks came on vision trips and felt strongly from the Lord or personally that Thailand wasn’t a good fit – which is way better to know before they join the team than after!

Make A Compelling Ask

Lastly, after you’ve gotten to know them, gone through all the necessary assessments and meetings, discussed with your team, and prayed and listened to the Lord, if you still feel that they are a good fit for your team, make a clear and compelling ask! “We feel like you could be a great fit on our team and we’d love for you to join us. We’d like to invite you to join our team! Take some time to pray and consult others and let us know in the next 1-2 weeks.” If possible, try to make the occasion special through a nice meal or a gift! In all likelihood, unless they are also looking at other teams, by the time you’re ready to make an ask they are probably ready and expectant to join.

Conclusion

Recruiting is much more of an art of discernment than a scientific process, but hopefully the guidelines above give you a grid of what to think and work through in recruiting someone to your team. As a TL, there will be different seasons where recruiting may take up a lot of your time versus other seasons when it’s quieter. As you pray and plan for the future of your team, consider the resources you have – your people! – and whether you need to add more. The onramp for a recruit from when you get to know them to when they are on your team, through language and culture, and contributing as a teammate is VERY long, potentially multiple months or years depending on language learning. Even if you don’t think you need a teammate today, be open to casting vision broadly and seeing who God might bring in front of you! Remember, recruiting leaders will almost always help to multiply your team, ministry, and impact.

To bring the soup terrine story to its conclusion, this couple that first gifted us the soup terrine now leads one of the new teams in Thailand after our team expansion in 2020, and are some of our closest friends in the world. The night of Jenn’s seizure, when they heard what was happening, they immediately booked flights to be with us in the hospital without even asking me first. After 10 years on the field, our relationship with them has gone far beyond ministry teammates.

Our prayer is that the Lord would provide teammates, partners, and friends of this quality on your teams!

Questions for Reflection

• How much do you prioritize recruiting and casting vision as a key responsibility for a leader and why? How high of a priority should recruiting be for you in this next season?
• What areas of the recruiting process do you feel confident in? What areas do you feel less confident in? What can you do to improve in those areas or invite others to help?
• Do you have other potential leaders on your team that you can develop or rely on?
• Are there any specific roles or giftings that you feel that your team has a need for?
• Do you have networks of potential goers that you can recruit from? Is there someone you know from your home context that can advocate for your team and need, and find potential leads for you?
• How many leaders and teams could potentially be needed to fulfill the vision God has called you to?

One of the responsibilities of a Team Leader is to recruit the right teammates onto your team. We’re often asked many questions around the area of recruiting, including:

“How do I know if someone’s right for my team?”
“How do I cast compelling vision for someone to join?”
“Should I prioritize role fit, gifting, or character?”

We hope to answer these questions and more to help you figure out the process of recruiting and building a thriving team overseas! In part 1, we’ll address the overall process of recruiting, and more of the front end activities to find potential recruits. In part 2, we’ll talk about how to filter for the right teammates and discern their fit on your team, as well as how to close the deal and invite them to your team!

The Legendary Soup Terrine

When we first were preparing to launch, Jenn and I [Steven] were the team leaders and about to get married but everyone else on our team was single at the time. We knew for our relational thriving that it’d be important to recruit another married couple on the team. We also needed some teammates that were administratively gifted to help us navigate all the needs on the field.

One couple in particular seemed to fit the bill. The wife had been in a year-long development cohort at our church with Jenn and had developed a good friendship with her. This couple were looking to launch overseas but had several other invites from way more established and impressive team leaders than our extremely inexperienced selves.

We invited them to start the process, shared our vision with them, and even brought them on a vision trip to Thailand (one month before our wedding – much to Jenn’s displeasure as she tried to plan our wedding). And then we formally invited them to join our team, asking that they would give us a response in two weeks.

After two weeks, they asked us to come over to their apartment to talk about their decision. By then, they had already gone on another vision trip to visit another team and had three other very good options on the table. As we pulled into the parking lot, Jenn and I were sure that we were going into a breakup conversation and that they would tell us they were joining another shinier, more impressive team. “Sorry, it’s not you, it’s me!”

We trudged up to their apartment and had an hour and a half of small talk and catching up. Inside, I thought, “Just rip the bandaid off already and tell us you’re not joining!”

Finally, they said, “we have an early wedding present for you!” And brought out an enormous cardboard box that could have fit a person inside of it. As we tentatively opened it, there were more boxes and more newspaper wrapping. Finally, we opened the last box, and inside was a large soup terrine like the one in the picture below.

As I opened the soup terrine, there was a small folded up piece of paper with the text “เราอยู่ข้างใน” – of course I had no idea what this meant. And in 4 point size font in the bottom corner, the translation: _{(we’re in!!!!!!)}

Jenn immediately burst into tears as I gave a huge sigh of relief. We had new teammates! 

Funny enough, three years later, we found out the Thai was completely wrong, and translated more to something like “we’re inside [the box]” but that just makes it funnier. As we recruited more teammates or current teammates got married, the soup terrine was gifted to 5 more couples over the next 10 years! And of course, no one has any use for it and it refuses to fit in any normal cabinet. It’s simultaneously an annoyance and a heart-warming reminder of how God has blessed our team not only with great teammates, but life-long friends.

Recruiting is (kind of) Like Dating

When you’re looking for a new job in the for-profit world, many times there’s an application and one or two interviews before you start at a new job. That’s not very much to figure out if someone is a good fit at a new job. But there’s always the option of firing them if they don’t fit!

Recruiting someone to an overseas missions team is very different from hiring for a job. In many ways, it’s more akin to dating than hiring! Unlike marriage, being a part of a missions team isn’t “until death do us part.” But it takes a lot of momentum and cost for a new teammate to go through a process of preparing, selling everything, saying goodbyes, and transitioning to the field. And it takes the team leader and the team a lot of energy to welcome a new teammate and go through another round of Team Formation (forming-storming-norming-performing) with every new teammate. Just one teammate that is not well prepared, relationally difficult, or a bad fit can cause a ton of sideways energy on an otherwise healthy and effective team, or in the worst-case scenario, cause enough carnage to send the whole team home. We unfortunately know more than a few stories of friends that were on teams like these.

At the same time, it’s critical that a team leader knows how to identify, discern, and compellingly invite new teammates to the field. For one, there’s so much turnover and attrition on missions teams for various reasons like unstable visas, health emergencies, or unavoidable circumstances – though hopefully not for team conflict or character reasons if a team leader does a good job recruiting the right people. Secondly, the vision that God has given you should outpace your own ability to see it to completion! That requires recruiting leaders and teammates to either add to your team, or to help expand and multiply to start new teams that own a piece of that vision.

For those of you that are married or who have friends that are married, how many dates did it take to pop the question? Obviously, a recruiting process can’t be that robust. But we’d encourage team leaders to take recruiting as a process, and not just a one-and-done event.

In our time as team leaders, we’ve onboarded 20 new teammates, had 30+ go through our recruiting process, and had initial vision casting conversations with 75+ people. Below are some of the guidelines and lessons we’ve learned in the process of recruiting new teammates to overseas work.

Recruiting Guidelines

Always have a mindset of recruiting leaders.

If it wasn’t clear, this is a blog about leaders. In our experience, the greatest bottleneck of seeing expansion and health in your team and ministry is a lack of leaders. Our recommendation would be that every TL have someone on the team that they are developing to either replace themselves or to expand to a new team. Part of that is redundancy if you have to leave the field, but it is also the potential to grow into new opportunities that the Lord provides. Even if you feel that your team is “full,” always be willing and open to receive more leader-type people.

Connect with networks to recruit from.

In order to even begin recruiting and casting vision, you need a pool of potential goers to recruit from. Many times, being a part of a missions agency will provide that pool. Find local churches that are passionate about deploying goers, or keep an eye out for other missions-related networks like conferences or prayer groups. Having a home-side advocate keep an eye out for potential recruits can be a huge help.

Cast vision broadly and specifically.

Cast vision broadly to anyone who will hear, but also cast vision specifically to the audience you’re speaking to. When you meet potential goers that could join your team, cast vision broadly! As a leader, you should always be casting compelling vision for the need and opportunity in your ministry to anyone who will listen – they may end up being interested as a teammate, or a supporter or advocate.

Sometimes casting vision will be to a group of people, and other times it will be 1-on-1. Try to shape your vision casting to your audience. You want to be a “sniper” not a “shotgun” in your vision casting; cast vision to the desire you hear in them when they share (e.g. impact, purpose, community, etc.). What does the person you’re talking to value in a team or ministry opportunity?

In order to cast vision specifically, listen well and ask good questions:

• How did you come to start following Jesus?
• How did you get involved or feel a call to missions?
• Where have you felt God has been leading you recently?
• What types of spiritual gifts or strengths do you have?
• How has your experience been in preparing to go overseas?
• What passions do you feel like God has given you? (What makes you “pound the table?”)

Listen well to how they answer these types of questions, and craft your vision casting to their passions and values. Listening to what they value also helps you to discern their fit on your team.

Ways to Cast Vision

How do you cast vision? Here are a couple of methods:

From the Word.

It’s always good to have a few verses that are your key convictions for the vision God has given you for your ministry. Many times, these Scriptural convictions could be shared by the other person. Some of our go-to verses are Matthew 28:18-20, Revelation 7:9-10, Matthew 24:14, Acts 19:10, Psalm 2, and Isaiah 45 among many others.

Sharing About the Need of the People and Place.

Hudson Taylor would constantly write and speak about the need among China’s 350 million people without the gospel. In his 54 years of ministry in China, he ended up mobilizing nearly 800 long-term workers to China’s Millions and influencing countless others to go. Is recruiting important? Hudson Taylor seemed to think so. In that 54 years, he took 10 round trips from the West to China and back, totaling 11 years(!) on a ship, with his 11th and final trip at age 73, which ended up as a one-way trip as he died in China in 1905. 

For your ministry vision, how many people don’t have access to the gospel? What are the spiritual needs among your people (addiction, spiritual bondage, social issues)?

What is God doing among this people and place? Tell stories of God answering prayers, people coming to faith, critical events that open doors to the gospel.

Describing the Role You Envision Them Playing.

Many people can get easily excited about the need and opportunity in most places among the unreached, but what they really want to know is – what’s my role in it? How can I make an impact in that? Cast vision about the role you could see them playing on the team and in the ministry – how do their gifts and values align with what your team is doing and what God is doing? Again, this requires listening to them well first.

Lastly, let your own passion and conviction come out when you cast vision. God has called you to give your life to see the gospel go forward among the unreached. Whether it’s a verse, or a story, or an experience that moved your heart to say yes to God, let that come out! People are drawn to the passion and emotion that a leader expresses when sharing about their vision.

Now that you have a decent pool of potential recruits that are interested in your team, it’s time to focus on making sure they’re the right quality and fit for your team. More in part 2!

In this final post, we’ll talk about what resurrection life and power are, and what happens when we receive it.

Receive Resurrection Life

As I was reflecting on what God was trying to teach us through this past season in surrender and suffering, the terms ‘resurrection life’ and ‘fullness of union life’ kept coming up in the things we were reading and reflecting on. That experience of the intensity of his love on that Grade 3 day, the joy of his presence, the security and protection in him that not even cancer in my wife could touch – I started to think: what if we could experience that fullness all the time?

Andrew Murray says:

‘I come to you with God’s message that you can have no conception of what your life would be in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is too high and too blessed and too wonderful, but I bring you the message that the Holy Spirit can come into your heart with His divine power, and He may sanctify you and enable you to do God’s blessed will, and fill your heart with joy and with strength.’

Andrew Murray, Absolute Surrender

Think of a time when you felt the nearest to Jesus in your abiding. What did that feel like? What came out of it? How were your thoughts and feelings and even your will changed?

What if you could have that 10 times, 100 times more intensely and have it in every area of your life and ministry and all the time? This is the description of Hudson Taylor late in his life, after living out this union with Christ for decades of ministry in China.

Dwelling in Christ, he drew upon His very being and resources, in the midst of and concerning the matters in question. And this he did by an attitude of faith as simple as it was continuous. Yet he was delightfully free and natural. I can find no words to describe it save the Scriptural expression “in God.” He was in God all the time and God in him. It was that true “abiding” of John fifteen.

Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, emphasis added

What is meant by resurrection life? It is where believers live in the present reality of the resurrection; where the identity and benefits of restoration and redemption in Jesus are experienced by the believer. To me, it means that all the promises of Scripture are true, available, and fully experienced in my daily life and ministry, and not just nice ideas that will come in some distant and abstract future.

Wayne Grudem says, ‘Union with Christ is a phrase used to summarize several different relationships between believers and Christ, through which Christians receive every benefit of salvation.”

All throughout the writings from and about Hudson Taylor, you can see the marks of a person who lived as if Christ really purchased resurrection life for us. The New Testament is overflowing with verses about this type of life in Christ and the outcomes of it. Many times we can’t even imagine how these promises could exist in our own lives, or we are just completely unable to receive them until He brings us to the end of ourselves. Surrender the self to the point of death, in order to receive the fullness of these promises!

Below are just a fraction of the verses in the New Testament that talk about putting on Christ and Christ living through us as our new resurrection identity:

• Galatians 2:20 – 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.
• Colossians 3:12-15 – Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.
• Romans 13:14 – But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
• 2 Corinthians 5:14, 17 – For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died… Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
• John 15:4 – Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.
• Philippians 3:8-9 – Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

And for those that put on Christ in faith, who surrender their selves to the point of death and receive identification with Christ fully, the outcome of resurrection life is richer and more fruitful than we can even imagine:

• John 15:1-17 – Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing…If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you...As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love….These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
• John 16:33 – I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.
• 2 Corinthians 9:8 – And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.
• Philippians 4:11-13 – Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
• Ephesians 3:19-21 – To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

I wanted to put all these verses here for us to read and reflect on, in order to let Scripture explain resurrection life. Reading these verses brings these questions for us:

• Do we believe that Christ has purchased for us a new identity in him and that the promises related to this new identity are true?
• Do we experience these benefits of resurrection life on a daily basis without limit?

I know that I am not yet at the place where I’m experiencing his fullness at every moment of every day. When we recognize that we aren’t abiding, it’s an opportunity to surrender to Jesus in humility before we can receive these benefits.

But moments of this resurrection life are starting to emerge, more consistently and more powerfully than I’ve ever experienced before this past season of surrender.

I mentioned in the previous post that since the grieving retreat, there has been a lightness and freedom that has persisted since that time. Even through major crises and conflicts in the past season – a major shakeup on our team, the death of other goers with cancer, and painful conflicts – I have seen this freedom that comes with surrender guard my heart from anxiety and fear.

One of the starkest experiences of being literally compelled by Christ was in a difficult conflict. We were in a messy situation, and as with many messy situations, there was a misunderstanding and another worker accused me of doing something that I didn’t do, specifically attacking my character.

I remember sitting on the stairs in my apartment, about to take a phone call with this person, heart rate up and ready to defend myself since I “knew” myself to be right in this situation. I was ready to unleash all the ways this person had been difficult and divisive and let them know how they were wrong. In my heart, I knew that it was probably my pride and anger getting the best of me, but I felt justified to shoot back after being falsely accused.

As I picked up the phone, a strange thing happened. As I started talking to this person, the words and sentences that I was saying were not the ones I had planned to say. And the emotions I was feeling were not of defensiveness and anger, but of compassion, patience, and even love. It was so starkly different from what I was planning to say and what I had previously been thinking and feeling that it was almost like an out-of-body experience, watching someone that wasn’t me on the stairs having this phone call in the opposite way that I was intending to.

It was the first time that I think I’d ever felt what 2 Corinthians 5:14 describes – ‘for the love of Christ controls us, compels us.’ The Spirit decided to take matters into his own hands and change my words, thoughts, and even my emotions. Jenn was sitting in the next room and after the call, asked with surprise, “What happened?!” since what she heard me saying on the phone was so different from what I told her I was about to say.

And I told her, “I think the Holy Spirit just changed what I was going to say.” It wasn’t even that I sensed the Holy Spirit saying, “hey, you shouldn’t say this,” and that I made a decision to obey – he just straight up decided to intervene.

I was so filled with gratitude and so humbled, even surprised, that he was willing to do that. It was such a clear experience of the peace of Christ ruling, the love of Christ controlling, the Spirit of God living in and through me – the promises of resurrection life going from promise to reality in a situation that I could not handle in my flesh.

Through surrendering and receiving, through oneness with Christ, we receive not just the benefits of Jesus like love, joy, and peace, but the person and presence of Jesus himself! As he says in John 15, ‘abide in me, and I in you’ – so that his words, his thoughts, his will, and even his emotions will abide in us in the place of our own.

When we are surrendered to the point of death, then we can receive every benefit of resurrection life – including the presence of Jesus fully living in and through us.

Receive Resurrection Power

Lastly, in surrender he not only gives us the fullness of resurrection life, but the fullness of resurrection POWER for the sake of the Great Commission.

In 2 Corinthians 12, the thorn is so painful that Paul pleads with Jesus three times to take it away. But he doesn’t. Just like the Father did not take the cup from Jesus in the Garden when he pleaded three times. Instead, this is Jesus’ response:

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:9

‘My grace is sufficient for you.’ This would be enough, wouldn’t it? He will give us sufficient grace to deal with the suffering, with the thorn, with the trial.

But there’s a second part: ‘for my power is made perfect in weakness.’

I had always understood this verse as comfort for suffering. But the verse doesn’t make sense if it’s just about Jesus’ comfort in our suffering. Why is power made perfect in weakness? Why is power given in weakness and not comfort, or peace, or hope?

It’s because the purpose of the thorn and of the weakness is to cause surrender that results in receiving resurrection POWER in order to move forward in the ministry that God has given to us. Throughout the rest of 2nd Corinthians, Paul boasts in his weakness because it’s in the weakness of suffering that the power of Jesus is manifested for Paul to pursue the calling and ministry he’s been given. ‘For when I am weak, then I am strong.‘

We need to reframe our perspectives from trying to control situations around us through our self, to receiving His power that comes in our weakness. We are so tied to our control and self and our ideas that we don’t even know what living in power looks like.

In ministry and leadership in Thailand, I have experienced a constant lack of power. I feel lack in so many situations – wisdom for the right decision, courage to enter into hard conversations, physical energy to do ministry, focus to pray as I know I need to, or even power to change someone’s heart to obey Jesus.. All of this lack is because I am the one trying to control and achieve these things.

We cannot do the work of God without the power of God!

Do you need wisdom? Surrender and receive. You can actually receive the right answer from the Spirit and have the confidence that He has given it to you.

Are you lacking in patience and love for a difficult person? Surrender and receive. He can give you his own patience and love towards that person, giving you even his own emotions and thoughts and will towards them that overrides what you might feel or think!

Do you need strength to sustain you? Surrender and receive. His yoke is easy and his burden is light, and we can actually receive physical strengthening in our bodies and feel tiredness and burden melt away and be replaced with lightness and energy!

Do you lack power to fight sin and live in holiness? Surrender and receive. Receive a changed heart from Jesus that doesn’t even desire to sin, where temptation has no pull because of an intense satisfaction and fulfillment from being one with him.

In Acts 1:8, Jesus gave the disciples the task of reaching the whole world, but said WAIT – the Spirit of power will come. Surrender your control, and in weakness, receive his power!

The Spirit of power lives in you. He waits for your yielding, waits to pour out one hundred fold more power than you’ve ever experienced. The power that came at Pentecost that sparked the movement of the Global Church for 2000 years is waiting to be released from within you. If we will ever have a hope to complete this Great Commission, to see 3.3 billion unreached peoples have access to the gospel, we can have nothing less than this power of the resurrection that that Paul had, that Hudson Taylor had. It’s available. Surrender your control and receive his power.  

Suffering will come, whether big or small, for all of us. But for goers and missions leaders in particular on the front lines of opposition to the enemy – it will come for sure. We were at a gathering for returned goers in the States, and the first few people we met had experienced uncommon suffering: one person had a stroke right before they launched, another had a virus on the field that left them with facial paralysis, another had been kicked out of their country 2 weeks before, and way too many people in their 30s had cancer, cancer, and cancer.

For all believers, and particularly those on the mission field, we need to understand that there is a lesson in suffering – God is bringing you to a place of surrender. And in that place, your abiding and fruitfulness will multiply.

Those that are sure to encounter this suffering and need to access this abiding and power are the national believers that pursue multiplication among the unreached. One of our most fruitful Thai partners is Talia, but in the midst of her ministry beginning to multiply, she found out she had cancer. You can read more about Talia’s story, here.

God had similar lessons to teach Talia in the midst of her suffering. This past year, even though she’s been healed from cancer, Talia has still been given a thorn – struggling with thyroid issues and needing to take treatment that has basically kept her at home most of the year. Jenn and Talia were texting frequently, encouraging each other in the things that God was teaching them, and it has brought us so much closer to her and her family.

We asked Talia, ‘What has God been showing you through this season of sickness?’

She said, one night, God woke her up in the middle of the night and said – ‘write this one word down.’

ยอม

ยอม in Thai means – surrender. The one lesson that God wanted to teach her was surrender.

She said, “I have to trust the timing of God. I can’t control anything – my health, ministry, covid – I can only pray and trust that God is in control of everything. But I’ve experienced the presence of God constantly and in a new way. I feel him most closely during the most difficult and painful times with the medicine.

“I know that God wants me to use the testimony of my life to lead others to him. He will use my weakness and help me to obey him, to serve him with fullness.”

‘But I believe God is preparing us for fruitfulness to come. This season has shown us we need to be committed to movements 100%. And I am waiting for the timing of God for us to be together – Covid will be cleared, we will be healed, and we will celebrate the goodness of God together.”

Do you desire a deeper abiding? Do you desire to see resurrection life and power flow in and through you? The one word is surrender.

What could God do with a group of people who are absolutely surrendered to him, and who are receiving his resurrection life and power? Could a people filled with the Spirit of Resurrection Power complete the Great Commission in our lifetime?

Our hope for these posts is that the Spirit would point you towards a greater reality and desire for abiding from some of the lessons we’ve learned this past year. If we had to answer the question – why did God have us go through cancer? Our answer would be that He wanted us to learn this lesson, and He wanted us to share this lesson with others.

We’ll list at the end a few of the books and Scriptures that were critical in guiding us towards these lessons, but if I were to recommend just one, it’d be Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray. It’s a short read and probably the most impactful book I’ve ever read about life in Christ. And these posts are largely built on the foundations of learning about Union with Christ.

Surrender the Self

Jenn’s main point from the first post is that in order to abide more deeply in Jesus, we have to come to a place of surrender. Sometimes, he uses suffering to bring us to surrender. 

What do we need to surrender? Jesus calls us to surrender the ‘self.’ He says in Luke 9, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’ Deny your SELF, and follow him.

To abide, we must first surrender the self. Self-will, self-reliance, self-comfort, self-confidence.

And when we surrender our selves, we can then receive resurrection life and resurrection power in Jesus that is more amazing and glorious and rich than we could have ever imagined.

God brought us to the book of 2nd Corinthians to learn the lessons that He had for us in this season. It’s what I read through in the hospital when Jenn was in her 8 hour brain surgery. The ESV commentary describes the theme of 2nd Corinthians as ‘the relationship between suffering and the power of the Spirit in Paul’s apostolic life, ministry, and message.’

“So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

2 Corinthians 12:7-10

Most of us know this as the passage about Paul’s thorn. Throughout 2 Corinthians, Paul is making an argument about the legitimacy of his apostleship and ministry. His opponents argued that Paul had suffered too much to be a legitimate apostle. But Paul says that his suffering is the very means of identification with Christ and the way that resurrection power comes through his life.

In the first part of chapter 12, Paul’s talking about these revelations he had 14 years before where he was literally exposed to paradise, to the direct presence of God, hearing such amazing things that he can’t even repeat them. That sounds awesome.

But then here comes the self. From those visions, there was the temptation to become conceited. ‘I must be special, or better than others, because of these revelations that God gave me.’

Pride is at the heart of every sin of self. It’s a belief that we did something or deserve something apart from God. Andrew Murray says, ‘Religious self-effort always ends in sinful flesh.’

And some of these insidious thoughts of pride creep in, even in and especially concerning the things that we do for God:

‘My team is doing really well because I’m a gifted leader.’
‘My family is really healthy because I’m such a good parent and spouse.’
‘I’m a better Christian than those people because I don’t struggle with these sins.’
‘God needs me to uphold this ministry, and we’re seeing success because of my gifts and hard work.’

We would never say these things out loud. We might not even actively think them. But if we’re being honest, our self and our pride believes that we accomplished things apart from God.

There was so much pride and self effort that I didn’t even know I had, so much sin that was embedded with how I thought and operated that I didn’t even know I needed to repent of it. Cancer brought all of these things to the top. 

Overnight, we went from leading a thriving, multiplying team and ministry to not being able to do anything apart from Him at all. No amount of self-effort would heal my wife’s cancer. We were taken out from our ability to do ministry, to lead. Our capacity and strength and emotions and giftings all completely failed in the face of death. I foolishly found myself asking the question, “Why did God take us out from our team and ministry when we are the ones holding all of this up?” I didn’t even realize I was believing this lie of pride and self until we were forcibly removed, with no power to change any of it.

Like Paul, suffering brought us to a point of weakness. It was that weakness that revealed this conceitedness and entitlement that we had. We had pride that we’re good leaders, or that we’re seeing fruit in Thailand, or that we run hard in ministry. That our giftings and efforts made those things happen.

Weakness shows you who you really are. 

Surrender through Grief

Jenn and I had been meeting with our counselor regularly to help us process the things we were going through in this season. She recommended some exercises to help us grieve the things we’ve lost from this cancer season and even the last 7 years on the field, and to offer them to the Lord. I thought I could knock it out in 3-4 hours. 

It took me 3 days.

The beginning of the process was to protest: all the things that were wrong and all the emotions that I felt. I was angry – so angry – and disappointed and anguished, and I unloaded everything at God.

The pain of cancer, 
the fear of Jenn dying, 
the loss of teammates leaving the field, 
the disappointment at disunity in our team and organization, 
the rage at racism and hypocrisy in the church, 
the loneliness and burden of 7 years of leadership on the field, 
the lament that our Thai friends endured such hardship and trial, 
and most of all, how far I still felt from holiness and complete abiding.

Physically, mentally, emotionally, I tried to release these things to Jesus – but I couldn’t bring myself to surrender this massive well of pain, anger, and loss.

All I could do was just write the words down:
‘God, I repent of the pride I have in my ministry.’ 
‘God, I surrender the complete helplessness I feel with Jenn’s cancer.’

And as I wrote, I felt the gentle presence of the Spirit. Tears began to flow down and drop onto the paper where I was writing.

And he brought me to repentance, forgiveness, and surrender. 

It took unloading all the pain and grief and burden and helplessness that came from going through cancer and 7 years of leadership on the field for me to realize – I have not surrendered the self. My pride and desire to control continually got in the way of truly surrendering the self and receiving from Jesus all that I needed.

I had no power and no control over cancer or ministry, no way to live or serve without my pride and self getting in the way. The only answer was completely surrendering to Him. We had to put everything on the table. Being in Thailand, our roles, our leadership, our lives, how long Jenn and I would get to have together, all of it.

“God, I surrender all of these things and all of my self to you. Show me what you want me to receive and where you want me to follow you, and we will do only that.”

After 3 days of this, I was completely exhausted. But I began to feel a new freedom and lightness that has persisted since that time. All this pride and sin and self was blocking my intimacy with him, blocking my abiding. He began to remind us of who we are in him, not what other people say we are, not what cancer prognoses say we are. He was showing us that there is much, much more life and power in Jesus that he wants us to receive.

This pride of self is what Jesus wants to release you from. And he’ll even bring a thorn to bring you to the end of yourself, to remind you of your weakness and your need for him. He wants you to surrender your whole self to him.

In Absolute Surrender, Andrew Murray asks: 

How do we trust Him perfectly? How do you abide?

By the death of self. The great hindrance to trust is self effort. So long as you have got your own wisdom and thoughts and strength, you cannot fully trust God. But when God breaks you down, when everything begins to grow dim before your eyes, and you see that you understand nothing, then God is coming near, and if you will bow down in nothingness and wait upon God, He will become all.

Surrender to the Point of Death

Why does Jesus go so far to bring us to weakness and surrender?

We see why in 2 Corinthians 4:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

2 Corinthians 4:8-11

The thorn, the afflictions, the weakness are there to bring us to surrender our selves to the point of death. So that the life of Jesus may be manifested in us. So that we could experience the fullness of resurrection life and union with Christ right now. 

And He will let nothing get in the way of bringing us to this point of surrender.

One of the hardest days of this past season for me was near the beginning. We were still reeling from everything that had happened and had just arrived in the States and were getting ready for Jenn’s surgery. 

We were trying to believe the promises, trying to prepare our hearts for what was coming. I actually felt like I was in a pretty peaceful and surrendered place.

Then, one afternoon, we got the call from our neurosurgeon that the scans were showing that there were some Grade 3 cells in Jenn’s tumor. 

It felt like the bottom fell out.

I remember being on the phone trying to hold it together, but felt my heart sink into my stomach.

The average survival rate for people with a Grade 3 oligodendroglioma is 3.5 years.

I was overcome with numbness because of the significance of the fear that I felt about losing my wife in less than 5 years.

I don’t remember most of the rest of that day. I tried to pray and surrender and just couldn’t. Jenn had a phone call with her sister at night and I remember the only option I had was to turn on some worship music.

That night was the most intense and intimate time of worship and abiding with Jesus that I’ve ever experienced in my life. I was just sitting in his presence, weeping, and singing hymns of Jesus’ victory over death and the love of the Father in the midst of suffering. The hymn that was a continual comfort was ‘Abide with Me.’

Abide with me
Fast falls the eventide
The darkness deepens
Lord with me abide
When other helpers fail
And comforts flee
Help of the helpless abide with me

I fear no foe
With Thee at hand to bless
Ills have no weight
Tears lose their bitterness
Where is thy sting death
Where grave thy victory
I triumph still abide with me

And as I was sitting in the intensity of his love, I started to realize that if Jesus would meet me with the nearest intimacy I have ever felt through the reality of my worst fear – the loss of my wife – then what else could affect me? No matter what happens, I am secure because I have Jesus.

Even if he takes Jenn away, even if our ministry in Thailand gets crushed, even if my own personal health is affected – whatever my greatest fear, Jesus is enough. Jesus is better than all of it. 

In the face of death, in the worst possible scenario, when the most important thing in your life is about to be taken away – he meets us with his presence. And his presence is our joy, and it is so rich and intense that you truly feel that you don’t need anything else.

When you are faced with that moment of death to self, and you are able to surrender and trust him completely – it unlocks the ability to surrender everything else in your life. There is no suffering, or failure, or betrayal, or conflict, or sickness, or opposition that has victory over us when we have surrendered to the point of death. Death was destroyed on the Cross, and Jesus will come again to destroy it completely at his return.

Surrendering the self to the point of death unlocks resurrection life and power in Jesus.

Hudson Taylor, in 1870, lost his wife to sickness just a year after he learned about the experience of union with Christ in 1869. He says this in a letter following her death:

“No language can express what [Christ] has been and is to me. Never does he leave me; constantly does he cheer me with his love. 

Often I find myself wondering whether it is possible for her, who is taken, to have more joy in his presence than he has given me.”

That is the type of resurrection life and abiding that I want, and it is available for all of us.

But surrender, dying to self has to happen first. Death always precedes resurrection life.

In the last post, we’ll talk about the result of surrendering the self to the point of death – receiving resurrection life and power in Christ.

Questions for Reflection

1. Where do you have pride of self in your life or ministry? (You can use Tim Keller’s questions for identifying idols from Counterfeit Gods – what does your imagination, money, disappointment, and emotion center around?)
2. What is your greatest fear? Have you surrendered even that fear to Jesus? Are you able to say, like Job, ‘Though he slay me, yet I will trust him’ (Job 13:15)?
3. What burdens, losses, and pain have you left unresolved and unprocessed? Where do you need to grieve, lament, and release these things to God?

For our second post in the Leadership Foundations series, we felt the need to address this question – why are leaders needed?

From our Overview post, we defined leadership as this: a leader is a man or woman who receives vision from God to influence the people of God towards the purposes of God.

A disclaimer to begin: this blog, this post, and really anything we write about leaders and leadership is not meant to devalue ‘non-leaders.’ Like we said in the overview post, leadership is a role not a value, and Kingdom leaders are servants. There’s also different types of leaders over different scopes of influence, from a couple of people to thousands or even millions. It all depends on what God chooses to do in and through your life – and it’s up to us to be surrendered and content with our Kingdom assignment.

But we started this blog because the work of pioneering among the unreached is exceedingly difficult, and for those called to help lead a team of people in that work, the resources and training are slim to none. Because of that, there is a massive lack of well-prepared, well-coached team leaders on the missions field, leading to significant carnage in people’s lives that is largely preventable, and lack of effectiveness in the Great Commission. Here are 4 reasons why more and better leaders are needed on the missions field.

1. Because God’s pattern in the Bible is using leaders.

We mentioned this in the Foundations post as well, but God’s clear pattern throughout Scripture is in choosing, communicating, and working through a leader or leaders in order to lead the people of God. The majority of the books of the Bible are named after, or at least follow the life and actions of, the leaders of God’s people. Ultimately, every single leader in Scripture and in our lives is meant to be a dim representation of our one true and better leader, Jesus. In the one person of Jesus, we see all the facets of godly leadership together: prophet, priest, and king, servant, conqueror, shepherd, teacher, healer, everything.

And this pattern of leaders who imitate Christ that we are to imitate and follow (1 Cor. 11:1) is continued by Paul’s establishment of elders over the church in the New Testament. There are leaders for the shepherding of the flock where the church is established, and also leaders to pioneer the work where the church is not yet present. More on that later.

2. Because leaders are the bottleneck.

What we mean by this is that without leaders, the effectiveness and thriving of missions teams is greatly slowed or halted. If God’s pattern for helping His people thrive and multiply His glory among the nations is through godly leadership, it also means that where there is a lack of godly leaders, God’s people are slowed in moving towards His purposes. Examples abound in Scripture of unrighteous leaders leading their people towards ruin (10 spies, Saul, Judges, etc.), and godly leaders helping to make God’s name great and His people flourish.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Ephesians 4:11-16

In Ephesians 4, Paul speaks of how Christ has given a variety of leaders with different giftings (apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers – commonly known as the five-fold giftings) to the church. But for what reason? To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.

Leaders are given to equip the people of God for the ministry of God – not simply to do the ministry themselves. And when the saints are equipped and ministering, the body of Christ is built up and the believers move towards maturity.

The same is true on the missions field. Leaders are greatly needed to provide equipping, development, shepherding, and vision for those called to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. It is arguably the most difficult category of calling that can be given to a believer – pioneering the gospel in a radically different culture that has been resistant to the gospel message and messengers for potentially hundreds of years. Yet there is a surprising lack of resources, development, and coaching for goers, and even less for team leaders on the missions field.

When we launched to the field as 25 year-old team leaders, we had already gone through a 9-month training program for cross-cultural workers, and worked in ministry for another 1.5 years to develop in leadership. That preparation helped greatly – and it was still maybe 10-20% of what we needed to be successful as team leaders. Most days, we had no idea what we were doing. As we reflect on our early years especially, it’s clear that without the Father holding and persevering us and our team to stay on the field, if we had gone just 5% more in the wrong direction, our entire team could easily have been sent home.

In our past 8 years on the field, we have seen many friends that were clearly called to the nations, passionate about the glory of God, fully committed to give their lives to the Great Commission, have to leave the field. In the ReMAP II study over missionary retention, they conclude that over 50% of people that leave the field, leave for preventable reasons like team conflict, lack of clarity, unmet expectations, and lack of effective leadership.

For me, much of this stems from the lack of well-prepared and well-coached team leaders on the field. Much of the mindset of the missions environment is a ‘next man up’ approach to leadership – someone needs to be a team leader if there are goers on the field, whether or not they are called or prepared or even want to be one. There are plenty of leaders that find themselves in a leadership role and want to do a good job, but just aren’t supported or equipped in order to do so. The weightiness of needing to be at least competent in a multitude of areas like shepherding, management, vision-casting, administration, communication, language learning, cross-cultural interactions, security, and not to mention pioneering the gospel among the unreached, can be crushing for almost anyone. And that’s just for those that even desire to be good leaders. I wish I was joking when we say that we know of multiple friends who moved overseas only to find their team leader had moved to a different location and abdicated their leadership responsibility without telling anyone.

3. Because the Great Commission is unfinished.

In Romans 15, Paul gives some insight into his driving motivation for his life and ministry: “and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, ‘Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.’”

This Romans 15 type of ambition is what Floyd McClung called ‘Apostolic passion’ – people with a passion for God’s glory among the unreached who are willing to abandon their lives for this purpose. Many people, whether goers, senders, or mobilizers, have this apostolic passion.

But I believe it is leaders with apostolic passion that are needed to pioneer out into those 7000+ remaining unreached people groups, and to equip and influence the people of God who might have this same apostolic passion towards their most effective role in the Great Commission. Leaders are the ones that are willing to go forward and go first, ones that see the need and fulfill it, ones that can create the solutions and opportunities for others to join in.

If God’s pattern in Scripture is using leaders to move His people, and a lack of leaders is the bottleneck for effective ministry, then the Great Commission remains unfinished because there are not enough godly, effective leaders with this Romans 15 apostolic passion. 

Hudson Taylor was a leader with this apostolic passion; he said, “If I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! Not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for Him? Can we do enough for such a precious Saviour?”

Jim Elliot said, “‘He makes His ministers a flame of fire.’ Am I ignitable? God deliver me from the dread asbestos of ‘other things.’ Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be a flame. But flame is transient, often short-lived. Canst thou bear this, my soul – short life? In me there dwells the Spirit of the Great Short-Lived, whose zeal for God’s house consumed Him. ‘Make me Thy Fuel, Flame of God.’”

Lillias Trotter said, “Oh to learn how to fight through the battle in the heavenly places till the day comes. To attempt the impossible & expect the impossible – it comes back to that again.”

C.T. Studd said, “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”

Has God given you this burning desire in your heart to see those without the gospel worship Jesus? Has he gifted you with a mindset or willingness to push forward when you see a need or a gap? More of these leaders are needed to see the Great Commission finished and to hasten the day of Jesus’ return.

4. Because it might be the role God has called you to play.

The first 3 reasons were abstract, high-level reasons why leaders are needed. But for the person reading this post, it comes down to what role God has called you to play. If you’ve read this far, it may be something that God has for you.

Like I (Steven) mentioned in the first post, I reluctantly entered into a role of team leadership. It was weird to lead my friends, I didn’t feel ready, and I had never really thought of myself as a leader. But I remember praying and asking the Lord, talking with mentors, having honest conversations with the friends I was going to be leading, and felt like the answer was yes. It was a role that God was asking me to take.

It has been the most difficult, frustrating, lonely, insane thing that Jenn and I have done. And it has been the most rewarding, worthwhile, humbling season that drew us closer in identification with Jesus than we could’ve imagined.

Leading a team took a lot of tears, long conversations, conflicts, hours in the hospital with teammates, hard decisions. But God brought us through all that and provided what we needed, mainly through teaching us Union with Christ. In 2019, when we expanded to 3 teams, we realized that our original team was ending. So we did a little exercise and asked – think of 3 words that describe yourself and 3 words that described this team when you first joined, and pick 3 words that describe yourself and the team now. And these are the words they chose.

From selfish, proud, naive, insecure, broken, superficial, strangers – to joyful, rooted in Christ, safe, knitted together, abiding, thriving, tested, humbled, fruitful, impactful family. It’s such an unbelievable thing that God did in such a short amount of time. By God’s grace, we are coaching dozens of Thai church planting teams that have seen some unbelievable fruit in the last few years. And that is so awesome. But if you ask us what might be the most rewarding thing from these last 8 years, it would be this list and our people. To see people freed from sin, grow into their own giftings, to see our team go from this mishmash of strangers into a legit family – it’s been one of the greatest privileges and joys to be a part of what God was doing with these people. If you would consider playing this role on a team as a leader – I guarantee it’ll be one of the most difficult things you’ve ever done, and probably the most worthwhile.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with an exhortation: Don’t disqualify yourself! So many times with leadership, including in me and Jenn’s story, we get in the way of what God is trying to do in and through us. We might think – my character isn’t godly enough, my motivations aren’t pure enough, my experience isn’t good enough, my giftings aren’t impressive enough – whatever it is, and we think, ‘maybe I shouldn’t be a leader.’ Many of you guys may have heard this quote – ‘God does not call the qualified, He qualifies the called.’ Moses, David, Abraham – all of them were not ready for the leadership role that God prepared for them when He called them to it, but for all of them, He prepared them to be leaders over His people in the right role and the right timing.

There is so much joy in stepping into what God has prepared! Like the parable of the talents, it doesn’t matter if you’re given 2, 5, or 10 talents – if you’re faithful with it, you join in the pleasure of our good Master. But if we reject or bury it, His response is rebuke. Be obedient to what He calls you to – whether it’s a role of leadership, or whether it’s something else.

In our next post, we’ll try to answer the question – How do I discern if I’m a leader?

Hello from Amazing Thailand! After 1.5 years in the States for Jenn’s medical treatment, we’ve finally been able to return to the country and people that we love. There’s been many lessons learned from God through costly and painful experiences in the last season that we hope to write about soon. For now, we’ll try to get settled, reconnect with team and Thai partners, and look forward to 2023 and continuing to help serve missions leaders like yourself!

Quote:

“Depend on it. God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply. He is too wise a God to frustrate His purposes for lack of funds, and He can just as easily supply them ahead of time as afterwards, and He much prefers doing so.”

Hudson Taylor

Comic:

Main Resource:

GoerFI

There are an insane amount of responsibilities for a Team Leader launching to a new place. We can talk about shepherding, strategy, vision casting, team development, culture setting, and many other things – but one critical part is often left behind: administration. For leaders that don’t have administration as a strength, those menial tasks can feel boring and distracting. But without some attention, either from yourself or hopefully from an administratively gifted person that you recruit to your team, administrative aspects like visas, insurance, finances, and even the minutiae like transportation, areas to live, and how to set up your SIM card will continue to drain a TL’s time and mental energy the longer you go without addressing them.

One of the most confusing aspects of life overseas can be the financial aspect – taxes, insurance, savings, retirement. To that end, one of our friends created GoerFI, which stands for Goer Financial Independence. There’s a lot of great info on this website that will hopefully be a blessing to your team and save you time as a TL to focus on other aspects of leadership. (Disclaimer that you should seek guidance from a licensed financial professional regarding personal finances – GoerFI is for informational and educational purposes and is not financial advice!)

From the GoerFI website: “This guide is designed to help you get informed and take charge of your personal finances. Christian non-profit expat workers, or goers, live in unique circumstances: you live overseas most of the time, work for a non-profit, and raise your own support. When you encounter information or advice on handling personal finances, it’s hard not to wonder, “does this even apply to my situation?” This guide was written for goers like you! It’s your tailor-made starting point for taking charge of your personal finances and pursuing Financial Independence (FI). This is goerFI.”

In Part 1, we highlighted how the stress and anxiety of our first year on the field as team leaders brought us to a breaking point. And in that trial, God revealed to us our sin and gave us a desire to find Paul’s secret to being content in every situation from Philippians 4.

The first revelation of this secret came from a John Piper talk on Hudson Taylor’s life.

Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret

We want you to hear from Hudson Taylor’s words about his discovery of this spiritual secret. We’ll look at three different letters: the first from before he discovers this spiritual secret, the second from 30 years after of someone observing this secret’s effects on Taylor’s life, and the last one where Taylor describes his experience of this discovery.

The first letter is from 1869, the year before he had the discovery of this secret. He is writing to his mother – because your mom is the one who is willing to listen to you complain – about his struggles and trials in China.

“[The need for your prayer] has never been greater than at present. Envied by some, despised by many, hated by others, often blamed for things I never heard of or had nothing to do with, an innovator on what have become established rules of missionary practice, an opponent of mighty systems of heathen error and superstition, working without precedent in many respects and with few experienced helpers, often sick in body as well as perplexed in mind and embarrassed by circumstances—had not the Lord been specially gracious to me, had not my mind been sustained by the conviction that the work is His and that He is with me, . . . I must have fainted or broken down. But the battle is the Lord’s, and He will conquer.

We may fail — do fail continually — but He never fails. . . . I have continually to mourn that I follow at such a distance and learn so slowly to imitate my precious Master. I can not tell you how I am buffeted sometimes by temptation. I never knew how bad a heart I have. Yet I do know that I love God and love His work, and desire to serve Him only and in all things. And I value above all else that precious Saviour in whom alone I can be accepted. Often I am tempted to think that one so full of sin can not be a child of God at all. . . . May God help me to love Him more and serve Him better.”

You can hear the desperation and anguish in his voice. We resonated with the trials that Taylor described in this letter, even though our experiences were much less difficult than his. Every kind of struggle involved with a new and pioneering work, failing continually, following Jesus so slowly. We love God and want to serve Him but need so much help. 

If you are overseas or aspire to be and have not experienced these things, we can tell you that you will.

Soon after this letter, Taylor discovers this spiritual secret later in 1869. And just in time, because he has arguably his most difficult year of his life in 1870 – one of his young sons dies in January, and then in July both his wife and newborn child die of cholera. And he has this spiritual secret to sustain him through all this.

Taylor has 30 more years of extremely difficult ministry in China, living through shortage of funds, shortage of workers, personal sickness (at one point he is paralyzed and confined to his bed in England), and separation from his wife and children for long periods of time. He lives through conflicts in China including the Boxer Rebellion that was against foreigners where 58 adults and 21 children under his leadership are killed.

Nearly 30 years later, close to the end of Taylor’s life, there’s a testimony from a minister that Taylor is visiting in Australia who describes Hudson Taylor and how he practically lived out this union with Christ.

It impressed me profoundly. Here was a man almost sixty years of age, bearing tremendous burdens, yet absolutely calm and untroubled. Oh, the pile of letters! Any one of which might contain news of death, of lack of funds, of riots or serious trouble. Yet all were opened, read, and answered with the same tranquility – Christ his reason for peace, his power for calm. Dwelling in Christ, he drew upon His very being and resources, in the midst of and concerning the matters in question.

And this he did by an attitude of faith as simple as it was continuous. Yet he was delightfully free and natural. I can find no words to describe it save the Scriptural expression “in God.” He was in God all the time and God in him. It was that true “abiding” of John fifteen.

So, in his first letter, Taylor is struggling, striving, falling short. He discovers the secret, and for 30 years of more responsibility and burden than any of us will likely ever face, he is still a man marked by complete tranquility, peace, and true abiding. So what was his spiritual secret?

Hudson Taylor writes to his sister in 1869 about his experience where God opened his eyes to this spiritual secret.

“[My work] was never so plentiful, so responsible or so difficult, but the weight and strain are all gone. The last month or more has been, perhaps the happiest of my life, and I long to tell you a little of what the Lord has done for my soul. There is nothing new or strange or wonderful – and yet, all is new! Sometimes there were seasons not only of peace but of joy in the Lord; but they were transitory, and at best there was a sad lack of power. All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was – how to get it out.”

Don’t we feel this? At times we feel so close to Jesus and we’re filled with faith, but it fades. But how do we get from Christ all the things we need from him, the power and the promises, when we need it?!

“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.” 

Jesus is not only the vine and we are the branches, the vine includes the branches. We are a part of him, one with him – in the same plant, members of Christ’s body!

“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.”

The Secret – Union with Christ

This is the secret, as best as we can describe – you are ONE WITH CHRIST. You have UNION with Christ. We all know that Jesus is perfect and has everything we need; most people don’t struggle with that. What we struggle with is – will Jesus give me what I need? Or another way to say it is: how do I access all the resources that I need that are promised in Scripture? Because most times, it feels like I have anxiety and powerlessness more than I have every spiritual blessing!

Everything that you need is found in him, we know that, but this is the key: you already have everything in him because you are united with him! Can your right hand be rich and your left poor? You’re part of the same body. Can Christ be rich and we be poor? No, because we’re one together with him.

It doesn’t matter if you are conscious of it or feel it, union with Christ is true for every believer. Wayne Grudem defines it this way: “Union with Christ is used to summarize the relationship between believers and Christ, through which Christians receive every benefit of salvation.”

Any place in the New Testament where you see, we are in Christ, Christ is in us, and we are like Christ, and with Christ, these are all referring to union with Christ. Paul himself uses some form of ‘in Christ’ 88 times in the New Testament.

How to Abide – Surrender and Receive

Realizing our oneness with Jesus changed everything. It firmly and completely answered the question – ‘can we receive from Jesus what the promises of the Word say in our times of need and in our daily lives?’ – with a resounding YES. If we are one with Jesus, then he withholds no good thing from those that are connected to him in the vine by faith.

Now that we know about our union with Christ, how do we live this out? Through abiding in Christ. Abiding is not the same thing as your quiet time. It includes that, but it’s much more than that. Abiding is how we practically live out our oneness with Jesus. Hudson Taylor was marked by the “true abiding” of John 15. Understanding our union with Christ is the key to abiding in Christ.

“From the consciousness of union springs the power to abide.”

John Piper

The two primary components to abiding are surrendering and receiving. 

Surrender

Before we can surrender and receive, we must recognize when we aren’t abiding. The most obvious indicator is when sin rises up in response to a difficult circumstance or situation. For most of us, failing to abide is happening more on an hourly or daily basis than a weekly or monthly basis, so it’s important to check if you’re abiding frequently. Every person has their go-to sins or trigger responses to stress and trials – it could be running towards comfort or control, or feelings of anxiety, anger, self-doubt, or judgment. Take note of these responses when these situations happen, and recognize that you aren’t abiding. Galatians 5 gives a clear distinction between responses of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit.

Notice when you’re not abiding, and then come to Jesus in surrender. Taylor says this of abiding: 

“To let my loving Saviour work in me His will, my sanctification, is what I would live for by His grace. Abiding, not striving nor struggling; looking off unto Him; trusting Him for present power; resting in the love of an almighty Saviour.”

Surrender is a critical component to abiding. The Bible is filled with descriptions of what Hudson Taylor calls ‘the Exchanged Life,’ the result of a surrendered person living out of their union with Christ. But in order to receive the promises of this ‘union life,’ we must first surrender, yield, die to ourselves.

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Cor. 5:17)

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

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)

Everything about the abiding and receiving of John 15 is contrary to striving, is contrary to anxiety. You can do nothing by striving, can do nothing apart from abiding in him.

This is why dying to self is so important to experiencing a John 15 true abiding. We have to surrender everything to him – our way of doing things, our control, our preferences, our will, our thoughts, our plans, our loved ones, our lives, in order to receive from Jesus his blessings – peace, joy, strength, wisdom, but also Jesus’ will – his thoughts, desires, words, and actions.

And Receive

And after you’ve surrendered your control and the outcome of the situation to our trustworthy and faithful King, then receive what he has promised to you and let him live through you by faith!

Jesus says, ‘If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.’ Are we willing to trust him and take this promise literally? These promises are true and available for us right now through Jesus! When we know his will and promises through his words, and we’ve surrendered our will to his, why would he withhold any good thing from us? Just in John 15, the promises abound: ‘abide in my love’ (9), ‘my joy may be in you and your joy may be full’ (11), ‘go and bear fruit and your fruit will abide’ (16), ‘in me you may have peace’ (33).

We receive these promises and blessings by faith. But this faith is undergirded by the secret – the consciousness and confidence that we are one with Christ like the vine and the branches, and we will receive what he has promised. Because of our union with him, for Christ to reject you would be to reject himself, which is not possible!

What does surrender and receive practically look like? Once we realize that we’re in anxiety or whatever other sin or self-reliance response we might have, we come to Jesus with a simple prayer:

“Jesus, I surrender this situation to you. I surrender my control of it and any outcomes I expect. Help me to have your will and your thoughts, and obey your ways. I trust you for everything I need. I now abide in you, and receive your wisdom and peace for this situation.”

Surrender any aspects of the situation or any of the self-will or desires you have in it. Ask for, and receive by faith, anything you need.

Even in the times when we’re not feeling it or don’t even want to come to Jesus, we try to pray this prayer. Sometimes it takes multiple attempts to get to a point of real surrender, and sometimes it takes some listening to find out what we’re still holding onto or ways that we’re being disobedient. But he has met us every single time. Sometimes not immediately, many times not in the ways we would have expected, but he has met us – because he has said he will and we know we are one with him.

We are not saying that this means no difficult thing or no suffering will come to you ever again – far from it. In John 15, Jesus makes it very clear that the Father is the good vinedresser, who prunes, cuts away, even damages the fruitful branches so that they will bear more fruit. Suffering is God’s method of bringing us to surrender. But what the secret of union does bring is the rest, contentedness, and peace in every situation that Jesus will never leave me and will always resource me with what is needed to obey what he has assigned to me.

Experiencing Union

The first time I (Steven) began to experience this contentedness out of union was near the end of our first term, about 2 years after moving to Thailand. We had only begun our ministry of training and equipping Thai believers to multiply disciples a few months earlier, after 1.5 years of full time language learning. Through our early season of ministry, almost every ministry situation – training, coaching, sharing my faith, leading Bible studies – covered me in anxiety. Would I look stupid with my bad language? Would I mess this up? Would I lose my credibility as a leader? Will anyone respond or do anything?

Around that time is when we first began learning about union with Christ, and trying to abide through surrendering and receiving. An opportunity came up to train about 100 people at a large church in some of these disciple-making tools, by far the biggest group we had ever trained. We were up until 2am the night before still trying to translate the training into Thai, figure out what would work, and prepare. And it was then that I realized, “I am not feeling anxiety like I normally would. I’m filled with peace that Jesus will do what he intends, gratitude that I get to be used by him, and joy that he is meeting me!”

And increasingly, we saw Jesus respond in faithfulness every time we would come in humility with nothing to offer him but our surrender. And he would respond with exactly what we needed in that situation – energy and strength in the midst of exhaustion, peace in the midst of anxiety, joy in the midst of difficulty, power in the midst of weakness, wisdom in the midst of the unknown. The fruit of the Spirit was increasing in our lives, obviously not with perfection as we needed to consistently come and surrender our sinfulness and anxiety basically every day. And the fruit of our ministry began to grow, as we saw Thai believers lead new people to faith, heal the sick and cast out demons, baptize, and plant churches that planted churches.

We can confidently say that without union with Christ, we would not have persevered on the field or gotten to be a part of seeing God move in such powerful ways. Everything that we’ve gone through on the field has been worth it to learn this lesson, and it’s the most important lesson we have to give others.

“You were grafted in…”

There are so many practical implications once a person starts understanding and living out their union with Christ – the way we pray, the way we see suffering, the power we have for ministry, the boldness we have to take risks for God, and the very identity we have in Christ. We hope to dive further into union with Christ and some of these implications in future posts.

We want to leave you guys with one last illustration to help us understand union with Christ.

“You, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree.” -Romans 11:17

This idea of grafting helps us understand the vine and the branches in John 15 as well. This is a literally a quote from a gardening website:

“Grafting typically involves joining together parts of two plants to function as a single plant. One of the plants provides the lower trunk and root system. It’s called the stock or rootstock. The other plant provides the upper portion (stems, leaves, flowers and fruit) that has the desirable characteristics (beautiful flowers or delicious fruit) called the scion.”

In general, grafting requires that a wound or cut of some type is made on the stock plant (vine). The gardener, vinedresser, has to make a cut into the root stock that will cause it to bleed. It will literally bleed onto the ground for several days. A piece of the scion plant (branches) is then inserted into the wound.

The vinedresser also has to cut the branches out of the old tree. Then he has to graft them by tying them together in the middle and letting them grow into one plant. The vinedresser also has to cut out and prune all the old nature of the branches so that the new, better nature that comes from the root, can come through and grow.

The point at which the stock and scion join together is called the graft union.

Grafting helps fruit to propagate or multiply better, have superior quality, may gain characteristics from the rootstock like disease resistance, grow more vigorously, and receive better resources from the stock.

This is what Christ has done for us. The Father wounded Jesus on the Cross and made him bleed, to make it possible for us, the branches, to be grafted into the true vine and become one with him. We then receive his nature, his resources, and bear more and better fruit that we ever could have with our old natures. 

Jesus literally went to the Cross so that we could abide in him. The Father made us united with Christ, and we are now one with him in order to bear fruit and bring glory to the Father.

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”

It’s our prayer that you may receive the fullness of this spiritual secret, living out this Exchanged Life, for His glory and for your joy!

Reflection and Resources

We have a few questions for you to process how to practically apply union with Christ.

1. In light of this truth about union, what do you need to change about your abiding?
2. Where are you striving to do things for Jesus, instead of resting and receiving from Christ?
3. Where do you feel like you have anxiety in response to stress and hard circumstances in your life or ministry?
4. Where do you need to surrender your ways and self-reliance, and yield to God?
5. What does the Holy Spirit want for you to receive today?

We’ve also listed some helpful resources to learn more about union with Christ on our Resources page.