Give Yourself for the Gospel

There was a time I would have given my left pinkie to leave this place. Eight years later, all fingers intact, and our departure date is just a few squares away on the calendar. Our family will leave one ministry location for another. My kids have constructed a paper chain countdown, and as it shortens, the list of things I’ll miss lengthens. I’m so ready, and at the same time, I’m attached to this place with a thousand strings. 

Mountains tower above our valley of rice paddies and ornery goats like a boundary line. I used to feel boxed in, stuck in an antiquated village of strangers. Now, I stare the giant rocks down, trying my best to cram their blue shades into long-term memory. The mountains no longer suffocate me, but stand as memorials of God’s help time and time again (Psalm 121:1-2). 

We’ve bumped up against this culture and language and people like grains of sand in a child’s hands at the beach, mashed and reshaped into castles and motes. We are different because of all our collisions, and so are they. Something magically adhesive happens when you bury your pet bunny in this earth and learn to love sour flavors that used to make you gag. Strangers become family when they’re the ones present for life’s tragedies and victories. 

What a fascinating design by God to send people to people. He doesn’t commission the gospel to go out via smart phone and dollar bills. His plan is highly personal and irregular. He picks flesh and blood to do the job. In giving the gospel to people from every nation, we automatically give ourselves in the process. It’s a package deal. Our vessels leak like the Niagara, so God uses everything– even our sins and missteps– to bring him praise.

We give ourselves like the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians, who swelling with affection, said, “…we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thess 2:8). We are not tract-dispensers, but embodied souls that laugh and cry and sweat and get sick and celebrate alongside others. 

Paul could only suffer and love like he did because the gospel first came to him in the person of Jesus Christ. The same is true for every global partner. We go and mingle with strangers far away because Jesus first spanned the distance to save us. He came as a person and touched our leperous skin. He took our diseases outside the camp, so we could come in and join the family (Heb 13:11-13). 

We give ourselves, but we get much more in return. All our lazy, misshapen edges are sharpened by God’s image here. The people we once thought poor and in need of our services often serve us in ways we hadn’t imagined. Our new friends crack open a window where our thinking is small and stuffy. When the persecuted and isolated saints we worship with pray and share testimonies, we pay attention. 

I don’t think it will work to memorize these mountains (and all who inhabit them) to a tee for my nursing home years. When the last paper chain is ripped, I’ll cry like a baby. Then we’ll move and meet new people, marveling at further gospel transformations. This is only possible because the best person gave us not only salvation, but himself: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14).