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Have you heard the expression “Boots on the Ground?” Well our Live Dead Missionaries are the boots on the Silk Road. Here we’d like to take a moment and allow one of them to share a snapshot of their life with you. Some names and details have been changed, but this is a true story from this colorful, vibrant, and sometimes surprising region.

I remember the Lord beginning the tug on my heart when I was 16.

At the time, I had no idea what to expect. In my teen mind, I tried to put overseas work into a context I could understand. I loved kids and thought I would work at an orphanage or a school. As I completed college and moved toward a life overseas, the Lord began crafting some plans for me.

I finished out my student teaching at an MK school on the Silk Road, and while there God redirected my plans. After college I worked to return, and soon went back.

God opened my heart to His beautiful people on the Silk Road, and my love grew. My desire to bring Him to this area, in a way that it could not remain the same, blossomed. As days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, and months turned to years, my love still burned but my confidence waned. As I lived here on the Silk Road, this love that the Lord placed in my heart did not seem to be doing what I thought it would. I was not accomplishing anything that I wanted to accomplish. I prayed with fervor. I cried.

The Unexpected

Then in an instant, problems arose and not only had I not accomplished anything, but the Lord was asking me to move. To change locations. To leave this dream to pursue a new one. With nothing to show for hours upon hours of language learning and cultural acquisition. In the midst of this transition, the Lord brought me to a passage in Isaiah.

Chapter 49 starts like this:

“Listen to me, you distant islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth He has made mention of my name. He made my mouth like a sharpened sward, in the shadow of His hand He hid me; He made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in His quiver. He said to me, “You are my servant Israel in whom I will display my splendor.” But I said, “I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing. Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand and my reward is with my God.”

Time and again the Lord has brought me to this passage as my confidence has waned. The beginning verses give confidence. A verbal pumping up that says, “Yes, you were made for this.” Verse 4 though says, “I have labored to no purpose, I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.”

This utterance is often the epitome of what life feels like on the Silk Road. That my best efforts result in nothing.

I am learning though that “What is due me is in the Lord’s hand and my reward is with my God.” I am learning that even in the tough, even in the barren, the truth remains that, “before I was born the Lord called me”.

I am learning how to put my confidence in God alone even when my strength is spent.

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