Before we launched, Jenn and I were in pre-engagement counseling and we took a stress test as a way to gauge different stressors and how we responded to them. Our counselor came back and said, “Steven, you scored the lowest stress we’ve ever seen on this test. You have like no stress at all.”

I semi-pridefully, semi-jokingly responded, “I guess it’s just trusting in Jesus!”

My 23-year-old self had yet to be introduced to the pressure cooker of cross-cultural life, ministry, and leadership. Man, I want to go back and slap that 23-year-old version of myself.

When we’re in our home countries, we perhaps unconsciously and easily move towards the things that keep our stress low and keep our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health high. There’s an abundance of resources to help you thrive and the added bonus that they are all in your own language. Pastors, small groups, counseling centers, local churches, friend groups, classes, workout groups, sports teams, etc.

Moving overseas, most of these are wiped away overnight.

In the chaos of transition, language learning, pioneering ministry, and team conflict, we can take for granted that all the ways we are used to pursuing health and thriving in our lives are no longer there. Additionally, the stressors in our lives spike to levels we’ve never experienced before: change in culture, climate, job, community, proximity to family, access to hobbies and other supports.

The Holmes-Rahe stress inventory gives a score for different stressful events that might happen in your life, like changing your job, death of a family member, or changing residences. Score over 200, and you had a 50% chance to have a major health breakdown within 2 years. Over 300, and that percentage would shoot to 80%. Dr. Lois Dodds of Heartstream Resources did some analysis of first year missionaries’ stress levels according to the Holmes-Rahe stress inventory. They found that first term missionaries peaked at 900 and even veteran missionaries averaged about 600!

Yikes.

As we’ve repeatedly said before, much of what is posted on this blog are lessons from how NOT to do it. Jenn and I completely disregarded any thought of health and powered through new marriage, transitions, team leadership, language school, and pioneering ministry without a thought of how to manage our stress, much less be aware of how we were doing.

In month 6 on the field, we noted that I had been sick almost every month upon landing on the field when I barely got sick once a year in the States. At a team meeting in our second year, out of curiosity I asked the team to raise their hands if they had experienced the following “minor”  health issues: regular migraines/headaches, panic / anxiety attacks, eye twitching, vertigo, stomach issues (both directions), increase in colds/sickness, weight gain, difficulty sleeping, random muscle pains, and hives. As I went through the list, at least half to ⅔ of the team raised their hands. Except the stomach issues one. That one was 100%.

Even on our own team, we didn’t know that we were all experiencing these issues.

Before you launch to the field you hear of the extreme stories of missionaries thrown into jail or maybe even those that have seizures and find out they have brain cancer. But what’s often not mentioned is the ongoing, dangerously high levels of stress that we experience at a regular level.

There’s also an underlying, unmentioned belief among goers that the more you suffer, the holier you are. And it’s true that Romans 5 tells us that suffering produces perseverance, which produces character. But I think holiness and character are produced from how we respond to suffering, not just whether we have it. There’s nothing particularly holy about disregarding your own health or your family’s or team’s out of ignorance. How can goers persevere amidst all of this?

After 10 years of living on the field, our first answer is still abiding in Jesus through our union with Christ. Realizing when you’re anxious or stressed, surrendering control, and receiving what you need from the vine.

Secondly, setting rhythms and boundaries for health is critical for sustained thriving on the field.

At the end of 2022 as we were about to head back to Thailand after Jenn’s cancer treatment, our counselor asked us how we were going to pursue healthy rhythms after returning. I told her I wasn’t sure, and she asked, “When was a season in Thailand when you felt you were healthy?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a season in Thailand when I was healthy.”

She gave us the following tool to complete before returning: Red-Yellow-Green Health Markers.

Red-Yellow-Green Health Markers

Summary: With culture stress, ministry challenges, and life transitions, life on the field as a cross-cultural worker can quickly cause areas of physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual health to suffer. This tool is meant to help workers self-evaluate what their markers of health are, and establish rhythms to help them maintain thriving.

Red: markers that indicate you are outside a window of tolerance, need to take a hard stop and make changes.

Yellow: markers that indicate you need to take caution, slow down, and go back to green. Warning signs to pay attention to.

Green: markers that indicate that you are healthy and thriving when these are in place.

Below is an example table of what indicators and rhythms you could add. These can span physical, mental, emotional, relational (e.g. marriage/singleness, team, ministry partners, friendships, spiritual community), and spiritual areas of life. You can take the template and fill in your own health markers. Feel free to add any categories that might have a significant impact on your health, including travel, schedule, personal development, or anything else that is helpful.

After each filling this out, Jenn and I have tried to adhere to these rhythms as best we can for the past 2 years. We had our counselor check in and help us honestly evaluate how we were doing for the first two quarters. For the most part, we’ve been in and out of the yellow-green areas, which has been way better than our first 8 years on the field. And when we have weeks where we dip into the red markers, we’re both much more aware of it and quick to enact some changes.

Our encouragement for those that are on the field is to take a day of prayer and evaluate your health indicators and rhythms. Share your markers with a supervisor, leader, or member care friend and ask them to check you on it monthly or quarterly.

We want to persevere until the vision that God has given is accomplished! Constantly redlining into burnout and unhealth is a sure way to leave the field or be forced out before that vision is realized. More than that, the promises of Jesus are for abundant life (John 10:10), for a light burden and easy yoke and rest for our souls (Matthew 11:28-30), for an overflowing cup and refreshment for our souls (Psalm 23). The lie of our flesh or pride is that goers must only suffer and not thrive. And while seasons of suffering are almost guaranteed for the goer, it is to release us into more thriving! May we be an example of overflowing, abiding fruitfulness that multiplies into those we lead and into new disciples among the nations.

Union with Christ and Resurrection Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret

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

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

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

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

This is not to even speak of —

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

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

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

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

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

Galatians 2:20

More posts on Union with Christ and Resurrection Life:

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

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God’s Faithfulness, Provision, Protection, and Presence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Paton writes, 

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

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

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

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

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

_______

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

Main Resource:

Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness by Andrew Murray, a missionary to South Africa in the 1840s, is highly recommended reading for anyone who joins our team. Murray’s writings challenge and focus our hearts to love Jesus through deeper abiding that starts with a humble and surrendered heart. It is only out of this constant dying to self are we able to access the power and presence of God for our ministry.

Quotes:

Here are a couple excerpts that we consistently return to.

When people are frustrating:

Accept every humiliation, look upon every fellow-man who tries or vexes you, as a means of grace to humble you. Use every opportunity of humbling yourself before your fellow-man as a help to remain humble before God. It is by the mighty strengthening of His Holy Spirit that God reveals Christ fully in you.

When life feels out of control:

Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.

When feeling powerless:

Here is the path to the higher life: down, lower down! Just as water always seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds men abased and empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless.

This has been one of the most impactful books on our walks with God and we highly recommend it to you!

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?

My Story

Learning about Union with Christ was critical in sustaining us through our first years of life and ministry in Thailand. But through this past year, God has been teaching me a precious but difficult lesson – that there is MORE to receive in our abiding and in union.

But my pride and my flesh keep me from truly surrendering to him. And this limits how abundantly I can receive from him.

Over a year ago in March 2021, when we were on a trip to train Thai church planters in Northeastern Thailand, Steven and I were resting in a hotel when suddenly Steven noticed I had begun to mutter. He couldn’t understand what I was saying and called my name several times when suddenly I stood up.

Steven reached me right in time to catch me as I collapsed and suffered multiple grand mal seizures. 

Six hours later, I woke up in the ICU, intubated and with no memory of how I had gotten there. I panicked and my first instinct was to reach up and pull the tube out of my mouth, only for me to realize that I had been tied down to the bed. Thankfully, Steven was there to explain to me what had happened. He was very calm, despite the fact that he had just watched me seize and pass out without any guarantee that I would wake up. 

He very gently explained that I was in a hospital and that while I was unconscious, a CT scan had revealed a 5 centimeter brain tumor in my right forebrain. We needed to go back to America as soon as possible for medical treatment. I’d have to get surgery, and who knows what else and for how long. We needed to leave Thailand and entrust our team and our ministry to God. 

Deep within me, I felt the Spirit and my flesh at war. In my flesh, I was terrified and so anxious – What is happening? Am I going to die? Will I be permanently affected or disabled? Will Steven be OK? What’s going to happen to our teams and our Thai friends? 

A kind nurse had given me a pad of paper to write on. With tears in my eyes, I wrote, “I’m scared.”

But even as I wrote those words, I felt the Holy Spirit come alive within me. In my deepest fear and hopelessness, his love was nearer to me than I had ever experienced, and he put a promise in my mind that has served as my theme for this whole last year. It comes from Philippians 3.

Paul says:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection that I may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I might attain the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:10

Over the course of the year, I have been learning what God meant for me in that verse. That to receive more of Christ, to truly have continuous deep intimacy with him, I must fully surrender and die to myself – even if suffering is the means to do so. 

The Breaking Point

We came back to the States in April 2021, and God provided for us in so many ways. I had an amazing medical team, the surgery went really well, and they got the whole tumor removed. But after the surgery, my doctor called and told me that I would need to stay longer than expected because pathology results showed that this tumor was high-grade and cancerous. I would need further treatment of radiation and chemotherapy. And we would not be going back to Thailand. 

All of a sudden, our lives and ministries were forced to take an indefinite pause as we focused all our efforts toward fighting brain cancer. And although God was with us in so many ways, inside me I still felt so much turmoil and pain. 

I vividly remember one day where I was trying to pray. I was recovering from a surprise case of extremely painful shingles, a side effect of my medication.

I had never felt more alone.

As much as they tried, my friends and family could never truly understand what I was going through. I became resentful toward them and started isolating myself.

I felt helpless, and I couldn’t even trust my own mind, because the cancer was in my own brain.

I was trying to surrender and muster up faith for the medical journey to come. But instead, I devolved into rage. I was so angry with God and unleashed all my frustration and doubt and pain and sorrow at him. 

“ME!? Why ME? I do so much for you. I’ve given everything to serve you! And still you take! All you do is take!”

Jesus’ answer came almost immediately:

“I want to go deeper with you. I want all of you. I love you.” 

And my anger disappeared and my pride deflated like a balloon. Jesus wasn’t taking from me – he was trying to show me how much more of his love he wanted me to experience! But it was only after he brought me to the end of myself that God was able to show me where my heart was not yielded. And he wanted those things out so that he could fill those places with himself.

I had nothing to offer him but brain cancer. 

But these are the lengths of suffering that our loving Father was willing to bring me through to obtain true surrender and intimacy with him.

Suffering Leads to Surrender

Lilias Trotter, one of the first women goers to North Africa, wrote this prayer in her book, Parables of the Cross:

“May God show us every withholding thread of self that needs breaking still.”

Lilias Trotter, Parables of the Cross

God used this past season of suffering and cancer to bring me to a level of surrender that I didn’t even think was possible. It wasn’t enough that I had quit my job, moved to Thailand, and lived the goer life overseas. Deep in my heart, there were still huge parts of myself that God needed to break. 

As cancer brought me low, I learned how weak I really am. How nothing was actually ever in my power or control. I had been taking for granted the gifts that God had given me and was calling them mine. My life, my timeline, my giftings, my ministry. And in weakness and suffering, God was telling me, “Those things are mine to carry. Just give them to me.”

Even though I always knew the “right answer” was that God is in control of my life and of every part of ministry, deep down there were still parts of me that believed I was the answer, that I was in control, and that results happened because of my ability. That if I just set agendas and expectations, then more or less, my plans would come to fruition. One specific way that this came to the surface was the importance I imagined I had in leading our team. As new 25-year-old team leaders, we jumped head first into every problem, conflict, and issue that came up on our team. I would think to myself, ‘if I don’t fix this, it’s going to be catastrophe for everyone.’ In some ways, my intentions were good. I wanted to be a good leader and to make sure the team didn’t struggle. But over time, that desire warped into, ‘only I can solve these issues. These people and this work need me.’ I was putting myself into a position that God alone should occupy.

But cancer suddenly and painfully removed me from ‘being the answer’ for our team. Unable to communicate with teammates or lead in ministry, I was left with no other option but to surrender our team, our work, and more specifically, my self-importance as a leader, to Jesus. Through my helplessness in cancer, he was asking me: ‘Do you trust that the team and ministry belong to me, and that I will direct and guide them in the best way – even without you?’

In having my role ripped away, God was revealing deep roots of pride. Acts 17 says:

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

Acts 17:24-25

God himself gives life and breath. My so-called abilities and leadership that I was so proud of, at the end of the day, still depended on whether or not it pleased God to give me breath and health to even operate. With that perspective, things that used to consume my thoughts and energy like people’s opinions of me or always making the right decisions, just stopped mattering as much.

Absolute surrender means that what I do, how I do it, and the outcome and timing is completely dependent on what God has for me, not what I think is best or what I desire to do. It means, realizing truly that God actually is who he says he is, eternal and powerful and responsible for the work of bringing his own glory to the nations. My role is not to be necessary or to fix all the problems, but to simply be his child and follow where He tells me.

Through cancer, He caused me to surrender these things and be free of the burden and weightiness they bring. But to get to this point, I needed the suffering to strip everything away in order to begin to see how much better and how much worthier Jesus was in comparison. 

In her book, A Path Through Suffering, which we read through daily in the weeks leading up to my surgery, Elisabeth Elliot defines suffering very simply:

Suffering is having what you don’t want, and wanting what you don’t have.

Elisabeth Elliot

While your suffering may not look like mine in the form of cancer, I can guarantee that at some point, you will have something you don’t want, or want something you don’t have. These suffering moments, both “big” and “small”, are when we most realize our limits. They give us a lens to understand that our ways and our abilities are never enough in comparison to Jesus. That we must die to ourselves completely. 

It is a merciful Father who strips us when we need to be stripped…He is not finished with us yet, whatever the loss we suffer, for as we lose our hold on visible things, the invisible becomes more precious – where our treasure is, there will our hearts be.

Elisabeth Elliot

Suffering leads us to surrender.

Surrender Prepares Us To Receive From God

And surrender prepares us to receive from God. Paul shows us this in Philippians 3: 

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection that I may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I might attain the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:10

According to Paul, suffering leads us to surrender to the point of death, like Jesus. Only then are we prepared to receive resurrection life.

Death to self is nothing less than what Jesus himself did. With total submission to the Father, His death was death on a cross for our sins. We can trust him with our surrender, because he did the same for us.

And out of that death, he received resurrection life. Surrender prepares us to receive from God.

Here is what Andrew Murray says about the link between surrender and receiving:

“…Here is the path to the higher life: down, lower down! Just as water always seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds men abased and empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless.”

– Andrew Murray, Humility

When Jesus told me, “I want to go deeper with you,” on the day of my breakdown, he was actually saying he had so much more blessing for me. More power and more glory! But for me to receive, I needed to surrender all. 

When I went in for brain surgery, the doctors told me their goal was to aggressively cut out every tumor cell that was trying to kill me. In the same way, God was performing a spiritual surgery. Cutting out idols of ministry success, control, and expectations of long life with Steven.

With those out, I could then receive his unconditional love for me, security in His will, and gratitude for each new breath that I have.

Trust him with your full surrender.

Because the other side of surrender is true abiding. 

The other side of surrender is intimacy with Christ. 

The other side of surrender is resurrection life and power! 
Absolute surrender prepares us to receive all from God. When we are surrendered, we are finally low enough and emptied enough to even begin to receive all that God desires to give us.

How Do You Surrender?

In order to fully abide, you must surrender all. You must learn that the gateway into abiding starts by telling God the dreaded words, “I give up. I can’t do it. So you must.” 

As a military term, to surrender means to yield yourself to the possession or power of another. Surrendering in these situations means giving up control and entrusting your fate to another, likely an enemy. But thankfully in our case, we are not yielding to an enemy. We yield to our best friend who knows us, who loves us, and who never withholds. 

I have experienced firsthand how difficult and painful surrender can be. But your good Father is waiting on the other side. He is poised and ready to bless you! And as you practice surrendering, here are some things to consider. 

1. Learn The Lesson in Suffering

A friend previously shared with me that it seemed like her friends in full-time ministry seemed to experience suffering more painfully and more often than others. Because of this, she was afraid to surrender more to Jesus because of the suffering that might follow. Even though this may be true, this statement makes me so sad. Jesus is better than any suffering we might endure. May we rejoice when we are counted worthy to suffer for his name. 

In the gospels, Jesus guarantees to his disciples that, “in this world, you will have troubles. But take heart, I have overcome the world!” Suffering is guaranteed for the life of a disciple. It’s not something we are actively looking for. But when you encounter pain and suffering, my encouragement for you is that you would not waste those opportunities. And these opportunities come each and every day for us. 

As you go through it, as much as you can, try to learn the lessons in suffering that God gives, to surrender and receive from him. Surrender your pain, your timeline, your expectations, your results. And wait and see what the Lord does.

2. Make weakness your aim. 

Elizabeth Elliot says, “the experience of weakness puts us in the position of seeking another’s strength.”

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I have a harder time accepting the fact that I am weak and unable, more than I do the idea that I will need to suffer. There is something in us that cannot accept uncertainty, failure, or powerlessness. But apart from Christ, that IS our constant state. Much like in suffering, God uses weakness to drive us toward humility and dependence on him. 

Don’t run away from situations you can’t control. Don’t grit your way through difficult circumstances. Embrace situations where you can be weak. These are opportunities to learn greater surrender and to call upon God to be your strength! It is okay to be weak because Christ is strong.

We often quote Hudson Taylor as a good example of someone who lived out of union life. But even Hudson Taylor would still struggle with weakness – but instead of trying to will his way out of hard situations, he would realize those were times to draw near to and draw from God. Whenever he felt himself weak or overwhelmed, he would very simply pray, “God, I thirst.” 

Sometimes, he would pray this 20 times a day! “God, I thirst.” And by acknowledging his thirst, his weakness, Hudson Taylor was able to experience deep comfort from God.

Paths of Righteousness

I want to conclude with an encouragement from Psalm 23. This is a popular one, full of the promises of God. The Lord is our shepherd, he will lead us to green pastures, and he will make us lie beside still waters. But there is a disturbing verse right in the middle: 

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. 

Psalm 23:4

Why are we talking about death in the middle of one of the most uplifting Psalms? A teammate pointed out to me that perhaps it is actually connected with the previous verse – “He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” 

After this past year, I am convinced that the good shepherd’s path of righteousness includes the valley of the shadow of death. 

And yet even there, we do not fear evil because he is with us the entire way.

The end of Psalm 23 is beautiful. David starts the Psalm speaking about God in the third person – He makes me lie down, he leads me, he restores. But in and after the valley of the shadow of death, David changes his language and speaks to God directly. You are with me. Your rod and staff comfort me. You prepare a table for me. 

David’s language changes from the distant ‘he’ to the personal you, because David has walked through death and seen his good shepherd with him the whole way. This is why David has the confidence to say, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. Before the valley, David said he shall not want…but after the valley, his cup overflows. These promises are ours to receive, if we would walk with him through every path of righteousness, even the ones that feel like death. 

As you pursue deeper abiding through surrender, I hope that this Psalm is a comfort for you. That in suffering, in exhaustion, in the deepest valleys, in the lowest points of surrender, your good shepherd Jesus is with you. And even the valley of the shadow of death is his to use as he guides you on the path of righteousness.

Don’t fear suffering. Don’t fear surrender. He is with you, and he desires to go deeper in abiding with you until your cup overflows.

Questions For Reflection

If you feel the Spirit pushing at you in any way, my encouragement with you is to stop and listen. Listen to his voice. Tell him that you desire deeper abiding. Examine yourself and the places where you are not surrendered. Here are some questions that you might bring to him:

• Where have I been self reliant or prideful? 
• Where am I afraid to suffer or to be weak?
• What situations am I going through that make me anxious, afraid, or angry? 
• Where have I let ministry come between me and God?
• Where have I not forgiven? 

If you’re walking through a season of difficulty or suffering, we’d love to hear from you, encourage you, and pray for you. Please reach out at contact@missionsleaders.com.

In the next post, Steven will share about what is received out of absolute surrender – receiving resurrection life and power.

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.

We’re starting this blog out with what we believe is the most important lesson we’ve ever learned apart from the gospel: union with Christ. In terms of significance and impact on our lives, it’s union with Christ – #1, and everything else – #2.

If God had not taught us the lesson of union with Christ, we’re not confident we would have made it past our first term on the field, or how we would have made it through this past season of cancer. It is foundational to how we understand and access the power to live out 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.”

Are we Abiding?

In recent years, the language and emphasis on John 15 and abiding in Christ has come increasingly to the forefront. Before we jump into what union with Christ is, just a few questions first to establish a baseline about abiding.

a. What does it mean to abide?

b. How do you abide practically?

c. What is the goal of your abiding?

d. Do you feel like you experience the abiding that Jesus talks about in John 15?

If we were answering these questions before we learned about union, we would have to admit that we saw abiding as just a glorified quiet time. Another discipline for the believer. There wasn’t really any power or experience, it was just something that we did. There is so much more available to us than this!

The Problem

Before we launched to Thailand, we felt nervous but excited. It had already been a 5 year journey of discerning our calling, going through training, making disciples with international students, forming our team, and preparing to go. Our team was made up of our closest friends, and we were filled with vision and zeal to see Thailand reached with the gospel.

But when we arrived in Thailand, six months newly married, we were immediately crushed by the difficult realities of cross-cultural transition. Being overseas, everything we ever depended on for comfort and every support structure was immediately ripped away. We had no language, no friends, no safety nets, no hobbies, and we were constantly sweating and exhausted with culture stress, which in turn caused frequent sickness. Of course, our first apartment was also infested by roaches. (Having a roach fall on your face in the middle of the night will cause some trauma!) 

Instead, for the first 9 months, we fought nearly every day, often over nothing but a desire to lash out and pull each other down in our culture shock. Our teammates were also drowning in cultural stress. They were looking to us to be the team leaders that had everything together and knew all the right answers.

And without realizing, self-reliance and self-protection rose to the surface. Many days, it was hard to get out of bed without dreading what we had to face that day. And somewhere in the midst of this, we began to justify the stress and striving as a type of “holy suffering” that we were enduring as goers and followers of Jesus. Like, the more stressed out we were and the harder it was, the more we were suffering and sacrificing for Jesus, right? It meant we were doing a good job.

The Breaking Point

It was almost a year in when God revealed to us through his Word that we were living in sin, trusting our own abilities instead of trusting God. Did you know there are over 400 verses in the Bible commanding the believer to not worry or fear?

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on… And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”

Matthew 6:25, 27

God struck our hearts like a ton of bricks. Do not worry, do not be anxious – this is a command that God intends for us to obey, yet we were living in constant anxiety and treating this command as optional. We were refusing to believe the promises of God to give peace that transcends all understanding (Phil 4:7) and of a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light (Matthew 11:28-30).

At that point, the people on our team were continually feeling like they weren’t doing enough or weren’t busy enough, completely exhausted and stressed themselves. And to our great sorrow, this was because we had established and modeled a culture based on our own patterns of sin and striving, and the team that God entrusted to us to shepherd and care for fell right in with our sin patterns. 

Of course it’s not wrong to experience stress and trials, but our response to it was anxiety, complaining, judging others, relying on ourselves, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and just working harder. So we came before our team and confessed to them that we were leading them towards sin through our striving and anxiety. 

This was one of the hardest moments in our early leadership.

Discovering the Secret

Now we were perplexed. We are commanded to not worry and not strive, and yet there was work to be done and difficulty and culture stress abounded. We believed the promises of God for joy, strength, blessing, and peace were true, but all the time we felt lacking in wisdom and energy and everything. How were we supposed to just “give it all to Jesus” and just… stop worrying? Paul talks about this exact situation in Philippians 4. 

“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret.” 

And we saw this peace and contentedness and abiding in missionary biographies, or the example of other people we knew who seemed to be living in fullness of faith. We just knew there was something missing in our lives in terms of power, or enjoying God’s promises fully. We thought it had something to do with John 15 abiding, but how were we to get it?

One day, we randomly decided to listen to a John Piper talk about Hudson Taylor’s life. Every biography about Hudson Taylor mentions his “spiritual secret” or “exchanged life.” It sounds like Paul’s “secret” in Philippians 4 right?

God used this talk to completely change our lives, as it set us on a path toward understanding Hudson Taylor’s secret, union with Christ.

More in Part 2.