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.

“It’s impossible to reach the unreached. It cannot be done.”

“What?” My friend asked in surprise. Another young woman who wants to be a missionary and work among unreached peoples, she looked confused and disheartened as she tried to process my statement.

It’s the truth. Reaching unreached people is an impossible task. They sit entrenched in years of tradition and spiritual darkness. For someone to come in and present a whole new way life, a whole new process of thinking about the world, and then convince them to buy into it and be part of it, would be superhuman. It cannot be done.

I’m a pretty smart person. I have the credentials to prove it, but I am not smart enough for this task.

I’m pretty talented. I can do a lot of things, and do them pretty well, but I am not talented enough to do this.

I’m pretty persuasive. I’ve talked a lot of people into a lot of different things, but I know I am not persuasive enough to talk someone into laying down everything to follow someone who lived two thousand years ago.

I live in a country where almost no one knows the most important person in my life. In my city, most of the people live without any opportunity to ever hear the name of Christ.

I don’t even have the power to tell them.

I just moved here, and I can barely ask people how they are, much less lay out the gospel for them. I sit in my room and I beg God to do something because I can do nothing. The faces of my new acquaintances from around my neighborhood hang in my mind, and I want so badly to share God’s love with them. All I can do is ask the Holy Spirit to move.

I’ve only committed to be here for a couple years. The work we are doing is very new. That fact that I may never attain the linguistic or relational vantage from which I could introduce Christ looms before me. I may never see a single person turn to Him.

It’s out of my depth. It’s beyond my abilities. It’s overwhelming, but I hope that overwhelming feeling doesn’t drive me to desert this place. I hope it keeps driving me to my knees, begging for the souls of my neighbors and countless others I will never meet.

Because there is One who is not powerless in the face of this task.

There is One who has found glory throughout history by accomplishing the impossible. He reversed death and overpowered darkness.

I know He has not forgotten the Silk Road because He brought me here. Why He would bring someone so utterly unable to do anything I can barely fathom, except that I know He confounds the wise by working through the weak.

I do not know what I can do here. I do know that I heard the call of my Father and I followed it.

I long to see the Church grow wildly through the communities around me. I long for the day when the spirit of darkness that dwells here is lifted and instead the freedom of Jesus reigns in the streets. I dream of walking through my neighborhood and knowing those I see are truly my brothers and sisters, children of God united in His family.

It pains me to see His body abandon those who are inconvenient to reach. Only God can achieve this task, but currently on our planet there are BILLIONS who have no one available to even explain the gospel to them. They could have open hearts and willing spirits but no one is there to give them the word of God or tell them of the crazy miracle of the incarnation.

There are places riddled with spiritual darkness, where demons reign unchecked because generations have invited them in. Witch doctors, sorcerers, drug dealers and religious leaders have made space for the kingdom of darkness that holds entire peoples in its grasp. The battle that must be done in the spiritual realm is intense, yet we neglect to lift these places up in prayer.

As God has given us the authority to bind the powers of hell, could the words we speak on our knees be the shafts of light that break into the strongholds of darkness?

As I sit in my quiet times and try to find my foundation amidst culture shock, language learning, loneliness, fatigue, and my natural bent to ruminate about the meaning of life, two songs keep coming back to my heart and my lips.

I may be weak, but Your spirit’s strong in me, God

My flesh may fail, but my God You never will

–

You are good, You are good, You are good

And Your mercy is forever

God’s mercy for the Silk Road has not run out. God’s strength for me will continue to flow, no matter how many times I fail.

There is so little I can do, but you know what’s great about that? You can do about as much as I can. Would you please join me in doing it?

Would you please pray?

Not just for the lost of the Silk Road, but for the Spirit of God to rain down upon all the earth.

Pray for the atheist young professional and the trafficked prostitute of Europe.

Pray for those who live under corrupt governments and amidst gang violence in Latin America.

Pray for the mother in Africa who cries over her dead babies because of something as simple and solvable as diarrhea.

Pray for the exploited worker and the self-sufficient businessman in East Asia.

Pray for the disillusioned of North America who have seen our quarreling instead of God’s love, our concessions instead of God’s righteousness.

Then pray that God would start the revival inside of you. Look at the world and ask God where He wants to lead you. I don’t know where that will be, but if we want the lost people of our world to know Christ, it is time to face the impossible.

With God, it could very well be achieved.