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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.

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

In these 11 words, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sums up what it means to follow Christ. In fact, he says that every command of Christ is a call to die. But I find that I must continually put my flesh to death if I am to faithfully follow Him.

When some of us think of the ultimate sacrifice of giving our lives for Christ, we may imagine whether we would have “what it takes” to die for the sake of Christ. But this is not what we mean when we say that we “Live Dead”.

Rather, Living Dead is the death I must go through on a daily basis. It is the kind of death that Jesus referred to when he told us to daily pick up our collective crosses and follow him. It is the death that says that my personal desires and self-gratification need to take a back seat to the needs of others. It is the kind of self-death that says that I should consider that perhaps the direction that I have chosen for my life is not the direction that God might choose for me. I may have set a course for my life that will lead to my comfort and ease, but God may be calling me to a life of discomfort for His sake. Like he did for us.

It’s a Process

When I was a younger man, I had a job in management at a major corporation. I was being groomed to replace my boss, a top level manager, when he retired in just a few years. But then God told me to quit my job and devote full time to shepherd a church that couldn’t afford to pay my salary.

A little bit later I was working in a different job and being paid better than I had ever been paid before. Once again, this was for a short time and after just 18 months the Lord gave me the green light to quit that job as well and head overseas to serve Him.

In each case, it was a hard decision. But leaving the first job was much harder than leaving the second. I had already seen how the Lord would provide, not just financially, but also in terms of a sense of joy that only serving the Master can bring.

There are always new commands to follow, new deaths to die, new crosses to carry.

And there are times that it seems that the burden is too much to carry. But if we carry on, we will be surprised at how light the load becomes as Christ shapes us for eternal glory.

When Living Dead is a challenge for you, be encouraged that we are following the example of the Master when we die to ourselves. And these small deaths that we die will be forgotten in the coming glory of His eternal life.

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