Before you go to the mission field, you must first know Christ.
Now, on one hand, it may seem obvious that you should know Christ before you endeavor to serve him. And I pray that any church that would commission you as a missionary has already affirmed that you know Christ as Savior. But the knowledge of Christ I am talking about here is the intimate knowledge of the one who indwells you—the one who is your life. This is the experiential and existential knowledge of walking with Christ as one walks through life with an old friend. It’s that close affinity, that dear kinship, which marked Enoch as he was known for walking with the Lord (Genesis 5:24). I wonder, does that typify you?
Brother, if you are to ground your identity in being in Christ, you must commune with Christ. And if you are intending your days to be dedicated to ministry, you must develop the habits of doing so daily. Letting your soul take delight in him must have already become your habit, your practice, and your daily joy. Learn to run regularly to the fountain of his presence until that path becomes well-trodden.
As you develop these reflexes, Christ and your connection to him will become more real to you than any task that is ever set in front of you. His person, his presence, his real and true existence will be more immediate to you than anything else. You will come to see and savor him until your eyes of faith have greater acuity than your eyes of sight. And as you know him and his goodness with increasing intimacy, you will also know the incredible reality of his approval of you that is independent of your productivity for him.
Practically, this means you must commune with Christ by giving yourself to prayer, Scripture reading, and gathering with your church. These are the means that Christ ordinarily uses to commune with his people. This means that before you begin the task of missions, you must be busy in the task of mining gold from the riches of the Word yourself. Before you direct others to Christ, you must direct your own soul to him through time spent on your knees. Before you gather other new believers together, you must yourself know the joy of meeting with Christ through his gathered body.
In the lived experience of your life, can you say with Paul that your life consists of and is defined by “Christ who lives in me”?
If you can’t, when engaged in the task your danger will be profound. It is possible that you were formerly tempted to place your identity in what you knew and could produce in your pre-missionary setting. If that is you, when your previous culture, previous language, and previous fruitfulness vanish, your soul will seek solace in reestablishing what you do, not in remembering who you are. Your joy will rise and fall with every victory and every battle. If you fail to commune with Christ, it will be the challenges and struggles that you face whose reality you will fixate on instead of the firm foundation of who Christ is and who you are in him.
Brother, regardless of how long you stay overseas, your task in missions will one day end. But your union with Christ will never end. Let me urge you to build your life on this enduring rock.
In sum, your knowledge of Christ and Christ in you must be most real to you. As Richard B. Gaffin Jr writes, “For those who are ‘in Christ,’ this union or solidarity is all-encompassing, extending in fact from eternity to eternity, from what is true of [you] ‘before the creation of the world’ to [your] still future glorification.’”[1] Brother, regardless of how long you stay overseas, your task in missions will one day end. But your union with Christ will never end. Let me urge you to build your life on this enduring rock.
Understand What Christ Has Done
A second, related piece of advice is to drink deeply from the well of Christ’s accomplishment. If you want to enjoy the stability and ability that come through your union with Christ, you must not only commune with Christ now, but you must also keenly understand what Christ has
completed. Reflecting on my time preparing for the field, I have no regrets for any time I spent deepening my understanding of all that Christ accomplished in my salvation. Let me encourage you to do the same.
One way to help you grow in your depth of appreciation for the gospel is by reading well on the atonement. Explore the riches of the cross and become well acquainted with all that is has happened in your redemption. Consider picking up a classic like John Murray’s Redemption: Accomplished and Applied or John Stott’s The Cross of Christ. Study your New Testament well, perhaps doing a deep dive into Romans or Hebrews. Consider doing a study like this with a friend from your local church to further ensure you see fresh insights into the fullness of the gospel.
I suspect that for most, the advice of understanding more of the gospel may not feel very practical or concrete. After all, you probably wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t already care profoundly about the gospel. However, when you consider your identity on the field, there is a direct relationship between how thoroughly you understand what Christ has done and how much you are controlled by what you feel you must do.
You see, when Christ unites himself to you, he gives you all of his benefits. His righteousness accomplished in the gospel is now yours. His perfected obedience is now bestowed on you. His declaration of “it is finished” is now declared over your life before the Father. There’s nothing left for you to do.
But when you arrive on the field and you find yourself stymied before the massive task of missions, your fallen instincts to define yourself by what you do will speak louder than your well-founded principles. You must retrain your instincts. To the person who knows and truly understands what Christ has fully accomplished, any unfinished business that lays before him will seem relatively insignificant in terms of its effect upon his identity. But to the one who has mere surface level knowledge of the gospel, and has not learned it like an old friend, will struggle. His instinct of needing to produce will constantly switch into performance-mode autopilot.
Learn the gospel and study it now better than you think you need to. Understand what Christ has done for you until it is the lens by which you view all your doing. The relationship between your gospel saturation and ministry preparation should be like an iceberg whose peak is visibly manifest above the surface in your ministry, but whose peace stretches miles below the waterline. Brother, take heart—all righteousness has been fulfilled and there’s nothing left for you to do.
Study Faithfulness Apart From Progress
A third piece of advice I would offer as you prepare to head into the challenge of overseas work is to study other examples of what one author calls, “a long obedience in the same direction.”[2] In order to live through destabilizing circumstances with a security in your identity with Christ, you will be helped by examining the lives and ministries of others who have done the same. Be a student of those who have gone before you.
But don’t just limit yourself to those who have been faithful and successful in the eyes of the world. Doggedly pursue those who were faithful apart from visible progress. Pick up some missionary biographies and let their testimonies put steel in your backbone. Let their examples of dependency on Christ train you.
Witness the life and ministry of workers like Adoniram Judson and walk beside him as he limps out of the death prison to find his dear Nancy passing away. Ride in the plane next to Elizabeth Elliot as she returns to the same jungle where her husband was speared. Climb a horse alongside David Brainerd as his body grows increasingly worn and tired from a brutal itinerant ministry.
Hide in the tree with John Paton to listen to his reflections of sweet communion with his Savior, divorced from any sense of worldly success. Listen as he testifies:
Alone, yet not alone! If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Saviour’s spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship. If thus thrown back upon your own soul, alone, all, all alone, in the midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, have you a Friend that will not fail you then?[3]
Brother, before you go, take time to learn at the feet of such men and women. And as you do, you’ll discover why the author of Hebrews not only recounts those who were victorious in faith (11:32-35a), but also those who were brought low in faith (11:35b-38). Discover God’s beautiful design to use us, not because of the success we bring, but because of the one who has united himself to us. You will find that even though these forebearers in the faith and in the task have feet of clay, they lived confidently in the knowledge of their unshakable identity in the Lord.
Discover God’s beautiful design to use us, not because of the success we bring, but because of the one who has united himself to us.
Celebrate Christ at Work Through Others
Let me offer one final piece of advice for preparing for those disorienting days overseas. Before you ever step onto a plane, develop the muscle and reflex of celebrating Christ at work through others. Learn to be on the lookout for God’s work not through your efforts, but through someone else’s.
On our own, this ability is beyond us. Our hearts are naturally turned in on ourselves. We make much of what we’re doing in an attempt to bolster our own confidence. Little do we realize, this actually makes us less secure, not more so.
But if Christ has truly united himself to you, you should have the confidence that you couldn’t be any more valued than you are right now. This will free you up to look beyond yourself. Being found in him, you can radically appreciate what he is doing through those around you.
When you get to the field, applying this aspect of your union with Christ will be crucial. From day one, every person you meet will be more skilled at language, culture, and ministry than yourself. If you can’t celebrate, and keep celebrating, what you witness in other missionaries, you’ll miss out. If you can’t humble yourself to recognize language skills that are better than your own, your growth will be stymied. And if you can’t celebrate how God is working through the national church that is there, your ministry will be torpedoed.
But the stability of resting in Christ can be developed before you leave as you start now in being an extravagant voice of affirmation. Search out his grace in others. See how often you can find it in the lives of those around you. Make much of what might feel to be “small” successes in the lives of other brothers and sisters in your church. When you see someone who is living as one who is crucified with Christ, don’t miss the chance to tell them. Develop these muscles now and don’t wait. It will be good for you, for them, and for your future ministry.
Editor’s Note: This article is an excerpt from Before You Go (For Men): Wisdom from Ten Men on Serving Internationally, edited by Matthew Bennett and Joshua Bowman (Brentwood: B&H, 2024). Used with permission.
[1] Richard Gaffin Jr., By Faith, Not By Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2013), 41-42.
[2] Eugene Petersen, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2000).
[3] John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides: An Autobiography (Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth, 1965), 200.
