I didn't mean to do it. I didn't even know I was doing it. But I allowed my marriage idol to slowly kill me - to distract me from the life that God was calling me to.
As I shared in Burn My Bridges Down, I hit a breaking point about 2 years ago. I didn't want to live that way anymore. So I made a decision to repent. And to keep repenting every day. At first it didn't seem like it was working. But months later, I looked back and realized I was somewhere else entirely. I was at the end of the tunnel.
That's what drove me to go on a missions trip. I decided to stop reserving my summers for getting married and decided to start making actual plans. It had been years since I had gone on a foreign missions trip, and so I wanted to get outside my American bubble and see what was happening in the rest of the world. Little did I know what I was getting myself into…
To prepare for the trip, our leader asked us to listen to several sermons, one of which was called Doing Missions When Dying is Gain. I wish you could listen to it. Please do. But the part that really resonated with me was when he was explaining Colossians 1:24. Here's what he said about it:
Paul’s self understanding of his mission is that there is one thing lacking in the sufferings of Jesus. The love offering of Christ is to be presented in person through missionaries to the peoples for whom he died. And Paul says, “I do this in my sufferings. In my sufferings I complete what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.” Which means that Christ intends for the Great Commission to be a presentation to the nations of the sufferings of his cross through the sufferings of his people. That’s the way it will be finished. If you sign up for the Great Commission, that’s what you sign up for.
In other words, when Christians suffer for the sake of - or even at the hand of - those who don't yet know Him, that is part of how those people can actually see and begin to comprehend what Christ did for them. What a beautiful thing! Through their suffering even unto death, Christians are actually given the privilege of displaying a picture of who Jesus is to people who have never heard of Him!
As I began to realize these magnificent truths, I was simultaneously moved by the beauty of sacrificial love and by the sadness of my failure to live up to such a glorious calling. I had signed up for the Great Commission, but I had not yet truly signed up to die for those for whom Christ died. Getting married and doing ministry in America was my idea of the Great Commission. It wasn't wrong to desire those things, but I had never even considered going into a dangerous place to bring the gospel to those who had never heard. I rarely even thought about the fact that anyone was taking the gospel into truly hostile territory.
Though it wasn't intentional, through my idolatry of marriage and the Christian version of the American dream, I had been ignoring billions of people who still had no access to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ - people who were living and dying, never even knowing that God sent His Son to die so that they could be adopted into His family.
And if Christ had died for me, so that I could have a new life in Him, then I couldn't continue to ignore these people. I needed to at least consider how the Lord might be calling me to follow Him into His death - death to myself and the American dream, or even physically - so that these people might see a picture of how much God has displayed His love for them through Christ, through me.
I needed to continue to repent. And my repentance called for action.
At first I wasn't sure what to do. But I knew I needed to do something and began to wonder if my response might involve music. I started by writing a song that I hoped would help draw attention to those I had so easily ignored - the unreached. And I wanted to show real faces to go with the startling statistics of the billions of people who still have no way to hear about Christ. So during the missions trip, we took footage of the people and places our team visited during our time in Colombia. And with a lot of help from friends to record the song and edit the footage, we finally have our finished product!
My hope is to have the opportunity to share the video with as many people as possible that it might propel others to take action to reach the unreached. The song is also available on Noisetrade for a free download. I also want to provide the opportunity to respond immediately through giving toward reaching these unreached people, and that's why I've committed to give all the money that is donated through my Noisetrade page toward reaching the unreached.
My goal is to get 2016 views of the video and raise $2016 towards reaching the unreached by the time we ring in 2016 - that those who dwell in darkness might see the great light of Christ.
Will you help me meet this goal? You can start by sharing this video on social media and by donating through my Noisetrade page.
Will you help me meet this goal? You can start by sharing this video on social media and by donating through my Noisetrade page.
The need is so big, and individually we're so small, but together, we're the body of Christ, and that means we can accomplish so much more for the sake of His Kingdom than we ever could apart!
Jesus is the one who died for us and for people of every tribe, tongue, and nation.
That's why Loving Him is Red -
and so much more than any earthly marriage.
and so much more than any earthly marriage.
Are there ways that you're tempted to abandon the call to reach the world for the sake of pursuing the perfect wedding and marriage?
What can you do right now to help reach the nations for Christ?
In addition to John Piper, I seriously benefited from:
David Platt - God's Sovereignty: The Fuel of Death Defying Missions, Undaunted by Resistance: Sustaining Missionary Zeal for the Sake of the Nations, Radical
Donald Miller - A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
Paul Miller - A Praying Life Seminar
Matt Perman - What's Best Next
Bob Kauflin - The Gathering Conference
Scott Belsky - Making Ideas Happen
