Rachel

One of my jobs at St Barnabas is to co-ordinate support for our missionaries overseas. This September I got to go and visit some of them, in Cambodia and Thailand. While I was away I asked God to speak to me and tell me what he wanted me to learn from the experience.

As I began to live day in, day out with the missionaries and saw their lives, it struck me how much they had given up for God and how serious they are about their faith. They believe it’s so important that the Thai and Cambodian people have the opportunity to hear about Jesus, they are willing to give up everything and spend the only life they have telling them. I cannot tell you how much that impacted me.

So let me tell you about the houses these missionaries live in. Imagine a house made of wood, with a roof that lets the rain in. Imagine bare stone floors, very minimal furniture, and curtains that you have made yourself because you don’t have any excess money. Imagine a squat toilet which has no flush - you have to use a bucket. At the missionary’s house I visited in Cambodia, there was no shower or hot water…. you shower by pouring a bucket over your head. Imagine ants getting into all your food, and snakes coming in when it’s wet. Imagine your kitchen flooding in the rainy season. You are completely at the mercy of the rain; if it continued your whole house could flood. And then when you want to wash clothes, there’s nowhere to dry them so everything goes mouldy and starts to smell and there’s nothing you can do about it. Imagine in the summer when temperatures can reach 90 degrees - you only have a fan to cool you down, no air conditioning, and sometimes you can’t sleep because it’s too hot.

Now let me tell you about a missionary’s day. Imagine getting up at 6am every morning and after you’ve prayed and worshipped, your whole day is spent trying to tell people about Christ. You might go out from door to door, or you might load up a truck and drive to a market, then give an energetic performance of sketches one after another after another for five hours or so in the heat. Imagine people being suspicious of you and trying to avoid you. Then, at the end of a long day there’s no digital TV to watch, or cinema to go to or restaurant to go out to, or other people from your own culture to socialise with. If you’re in the Cambodian village I saw, the electricity in the whole village goes off at 9;30pm, so you have to be in bed by then or use candle light. Imagine that there is no fancy supermarket to buy nice food, no shopping mall to buy nice clothes.

Imagine church on a Sunday, in a small hut or someone’s living room. Imagine that you are leading the church - it is up to you to run the service, preach the sermon, lead the worship, disciple new believers, and run the Sunday school. And imagine when you have one of those days when you just want to go to church and receive, you can’t because you are the church, and you constantly have to give.

And finally, imagine that on top of all of that, everyone is always watching you as you to try to model Christ to a people who have no idea who he is.

That is the life that they are living, and seeing it left me so utterly humbled like I have never been before, because I saw that they were truly living lives of sacrifice. As I lived with them and experienced a small part of their lives, it hit home to me that they had actually chosen to be there, with all their problems and difficulties; no-one had forced them. They had come because they believed that somebody seeing and hearing the gospel was more important than their own comfort.

I felt God say to me: Rachel, what value do you place on mankind? How much is one person’s life worth to you? Is it worth you giving up your comfort, your time, your money, your possessions, the things you hold dear? Is one person’s salvation worth your sacrifice and commitment? I wondered how comfortable we are in the West, especially in our churches. Has the church become a nice cosy club for some of us, and as long as we remain comfortable and we maintain our own walk with God, we feel happy? Do we sacrifice anything so that others will come to know Jesus? As I was thinking about this I turned to the Bible and read what Jesus had to say about this.

Luke 9: 23
If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for me will save it.

I was struck by the fact that following Jesus requires sacrifice, there is no two ways about it, and that if I’m not making significant sacrifices in my life so that others hear about Jesus, then something is wrong. And so I asked God, what does he want me to sacrifice in my life…what can I do right now?

I really felt God say to me that you can begin by striving to die to yourself and to live a radical life of holiness. I realised that the world is watching to see how we live, whether we’re in Thailand or here. The first step to sacrifice is striving to be different, by laying down our own selfish desires in order to show a lost world the truth. The world is moved and drawn by sacrifice, because it goes against our culture of selfishness. It shows the power of Jesus at work in our lives.

Ghandi said, ‘Christianity is a great religion, if only its followers followed it.’

What value do I place on someone’s soul... is another’s salvation worth my strenuous efforts to model Christ? Am I making sacrifices in the area of personal holiness? Do I REALLY love my neighbour as myself? Would I really give someone my favourite dress if they stole my coat? (see Matthew 5!) Do I genuinely forgive those who hurt me? Would I actually give up my time to pray with someone at the end of a busy day? How often do I stop for a homeless person - or do I think someone else will do it? How often do I give generously to others around me? How often do I pray for those who hate me? Do I really keep a check on what I say about others, or am I the first to dive in and gossip about people?

The problem is that all of this requires effort, and it undoubtedly hurts…to place others above ourselves, to give up our comforts, our money, our time, our rights. But since seeing those missionaries’ lives, I feel that God has shown me that to be a Christian means our life is no longer about ourselves. We give up our rights, and we start to live for others.