Daniel* and his family have spent 11 years serving with Global Partners in two different creative access countries**. But their family has discovered that saying “yes” to that calling comes with both joys and sorrows.
Daniel’s journey into global service was rooted in a sense of both God’s leading and years of preparation to serve internationally. This began and was nourished during his time in undergrad studies at Indiana Wesleyan University, Marion, Indiana, where he met his wife, Dinah*, who shared the call toward global ministry. When they dreamed about their future, they began imagining a life of long-term ministry in one place — learning the language, embedding in the culture and building relationships that would bear fruit over decades. “I had this picture of how it was supposed to go,” Daniel said. “I thought I knew what faithfulness would look like.”
But reality turned out quite differently. Instead of deep, decades-long ministry in one country, the family found themselves moving on much sooner than expected when shifty court proceedings in that creative-access country resulted in the deportation of several Christian workers based on trumped-up charges. This disruption of their ability to stay in their first placement required a refinement of what it meant to be faithful to God’s calling.
“It felt like failure,” he admitted. “We had invested months, built relationships and then suddenly, we had to go.” According to the court order, Daniel and his Christian co-laborers in that mission field were given just 10 days to leave the country.
Daniel and his family grappled with whether they’d misunderstood their calling or if the effort had been wasted. “It’s one thing to trust God when everything is moving forward according to plan,” he reflected. “It’s another to trust him when the plan falls apart.”
The family had faithfully followed the plan to see this ministry dream realized, but now the plan was seemingly dead, and their future felt uncertain. Following deportation, the family sought to figure out next steps, but hope didn’t quickly materialize in the form of a new plan replacing the old one. Instead, it came in a season of waiting and soul-searching and ultimately learning to see God’s presence in the in-between places.
“In the death of our dream, what we were really learning was to trust the dream-giver, not the dream itself,” Daniel reflected. “I had to ask myself: Do I trust that God is still at work, even when I can’t see how? Can I believe that he is using my obedience, even if it doesn’t look the way I expected?”
That question faces fresh relevance for the family, as they continue laboring in their second mission field where many Christian workers have recently faced deportation or persecution because of their association with Christian ministry. “We’ve sort of realized, as we read through the gospels and through Acts, that facing hardship in the work of the gospel isn’t special or unique; it seems like a pretty normal part of the experience of serving unreached peoples with the gospel,” Daniel reflected.
To keep their eyes on the person of Christ (even, maybe especially, when other plans fall apart), Daniel and Dinah have a phrase with which they remind each other: “Jesus is the journey and the destination.” That refrain has become an orienting belief in their house and a statement of purpose in difficulty.
Daniel shared that he has returned to 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 as a regular touchpoint of encouragement. Here’s how that passage reads:
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed
day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen
is eternal. (NIV)
This passage has been a reminder that “difficulties are transient, but ultimately, they can lead to a good in our lives that is more permanent. These difficulties, when we respond to them rightly, can help to root us in God’s love and who we are in him — not in another ‘identity’ such as that I’m a missionary, or that I have this ministry or role, or that I have somehow made a name for myself — but that I’m God’s child and his sheep.”
As Daniel and his family continue ministering, pray for continued inroads for the gospel in these hard places and for a consistent sense of God’s presence alongside their family and other Christian workers. Ask that Jesus would be the journey and destination — the treasure of all our hearts, as he himself is the hope that can never be taken away.
For more ideas about how to support God’s work alongside The Wesleyan Church worldwide, visit globalpartnersonline.org.
Rev. Ethan Linder is the pastor of discipleship at College Wesleyan Church in Marion, Indiana, and contributing editor at The Wesleyan Church’s Education and Clergy Development Division.
*Pseudonyms used for security reasons.
**Creative access countries are not generally open to Christian workers.
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
