One of the joys of travelling overseas for me is seeing missionaries who are gladly doing the work that God has called them to do.  I talked to several of our own IMB missionaries while in Kiev.  They spoke of the struggles of living far away from home and family, and of the cross cultural concerns that can create confusion and conflict.  But those things are just minor issues and pale into oblivion in the face of the joy that has come to them as a result of being obedient to God.  Joel Ragains who had served for thirty-five years as a staff member of a local church would speak with enthusiastic delight about what he is involved in now.  It is not that he did not find fulfillment and meaning in those years as a staff member of a local church.  He did.  But he has found now by his own reckoning a fullness of joy that he did not know during those years.  I believe that there is a principle here that is profoundly biblical.  It would go something like this:  the depth of our joy in the Lord is directly proportionate to the extent to which we are obedient in going beyond what we can see ourselves doing.  In other words, who would read this and say, “I am willing to go and do whatever and wherever God calls me to go and do.”  And then when He calls you, you go and do.  That kind of person is in for an intensely joyful experience of God’s goodness and grace.

God has given me the privilege over the last twelve years now to travel to different countiries and relate to our IMB missionaries.  I have also had the privielge of being inolved with missionaries from other conservative evangelical denominations.  I always ask them two questions and the similarity of the responses is amazing.  The first question is, “when you come back to America, what shocks you that you did not see while you lived here full time?”  The second question is, “what is it that we as Christians in Americal do not see that we think we see but cannot see because we are so captured byour culture?”  This is what they say.  The responses seldom vary.  Their response to the first question is that they are shocked by the blatant materialism both in the culture and in the church.  We have an enormous addictioin to things.  Their response to the second question is that what we don’t see is that it really is about us even when we say that it is not about us.  One of the missionaries pointed out to me while I was in the Ukraine that we build building to accomodate the wants or “needs” of certain age groups all the while declaring that what we are doing is for the glory of God.  And the question begs to be asked, “how can it be both?”  And the answer ought to be clear.  But as he argued, and I think correctly; we have learned so how to blend the two that we can take actions that are all about us and our needs while verbalizing that we simply want to glorify God.

No missionary has ever volunteered this information to me.  And often when I ask them, they are at first hestitant to respond.  I think that a person has to live in another land or travel frequently to other lands to undestand the hestitancy.  It is the result of being somewhere long enough that a person sees some of the problems in the place from which they came but they have also been in the place in which they are serving to see that no place is immune from problems.  That is one of the things that God has taught me in recent years.  It is easy to go on a mission trip to some other land and idealize the setting of that place, return to this land we love and point fingers.  But live any place long enough and you will see that no place is immune to the results and ravages of sin.  And the two most obvious outcomes from a sinful people living in a sinful word are pride that causes us to focus on ourselves and greed that causes us to want more and more for ourselves.  That is not just a problem here in this land; it is a problem wherever sin is.

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