Wonder Before You Wander

When I was 10 years old, a missionary visited my church carrying a 20-foot-long python skin.

I do not remember everything he said that day, but I remember that snakeskin. I remember listening as he described how he encountered the snake and what life was like in another part of the world. The story awakened something in me. Missions was no longer an abstract idea printed on a prayer card. It became a real world filled with unfamiliar people, places, dangers, and opportunities.

My imagination was ignited.

More than 40 years later, I still remember that missionary. His grandson is now on the ABWE board, and I have the privilege of working alongside him to serve more than 1,000 missionaries as they take the gospel to the nations. In one sense, my journey began when a missionary helped me imagine what God might do with my life.

Many veteran missionaries tell similar stories. A visiting missionary, a biography, a photograph, a testimony, or a short-term trip opened their eyes to a world beyond their own. Before they crossed an ocean, they crossed a boundary in their imagination.

If you are considering missionary service, you should do the same. Before you wander, take time to wonder.

Don’t Romanticize It

“Wonder before you wander” does not mean romanticizing missionary life. It does not mean picturing yourself at the heroic center of an exotic adventure. Missions is not spiritual tourism, and the people we serve are not scenery in the story of our personal fulfillment.

Wondering means prayerfully and honestly imagining the life to which God may be leading you. Jesus taught his followers to count the cost of discipleship: “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?” (Luke 14:28 ESV).

Jesus was not discouraging obedience. He was exposing shallow enthusiasm. He wanted disciples who understood that following him would demand their entire lives. Thinking carefully about sacrifice, risk, finances, health, and loneliness and their impact on you, your marriage, and your children is not evidence of weak faith but faithful preparation.

Imagination allows you to bring tomorrow’s possibilities before the Lord today.

Imagine All the People . . .

It is natural to begin by imagining a location. Perhaps you picture a crowded Asian city, an African village, a European university, or a remote community where few people have heard the gospel. But missionaries are not primarily called to places. They are sent to people.

Imagine learning names that initially feel difficult to pronounce. Imagine sitting in someone’s home, eating unfamiliar food, and struggling to understand a conversation. Imagine slowly learning what your neighbors love, fear, celebrate, and grieve. Imagine listening long enough to recognize the questions they are actually asking rather than merely delivering the answers you prepared before arriving.

Can you picture loving people who do not understand you? Can you imagine staying years while relationships develop slowly? Can you see yourself serving people who may be suspicious of your motives or indifferent to your message?

Missionary life requires curiosity shaped by compassion (Matthew 9:36-38). You must learn to see people not as ministry projects but as men and women created in God’s image—people deeply loved by their Creator and made to glorify him.

The missionary task is to proclaim Christ, make disciples, and gather them to form healthy local churches. But that work normally happens through years of ordinary relationships. Before you imagine preaching to a crowd, imagine listening to one person. Before you imagine planting a church, imagine learning how the people around you understand family, authority, shame, suffering, and God.

Imagine the Ordinary Days

Missionary presentations often highlight dramatic conversions, new churches, medical breakthroughs, and courageous ministry in difficult places. God does accomplish extraordinary things through missionaries. But most missionary lives are composed of ordinary days.

Imagine spending hours studying a language and still being misunderstood. Imagine navigating immigration offices, repairing a vehicle, searching for groceries, homeschooling children, completing reports, raising support, and responding to messages from ministry partners. Imagine preparing a Bible study and having no one attend. Imagine investing in a relationship for months before having an opportunity to explain the gospel. Imagine serving faithfully through a season in which there is little visible fruit.

A faithful life of ministry seldom consists of one uninterrupted spiritual high. It is usually a long obedience made up of small decisions: to pray again, study again, welcome another guest, forgive a teammate, learn from a mistake, and explain the gospel one more time.

If your imagined missionary life includes the spotlight and large crowds of admirers, you are not yet imagining missionary life. Instead, picture the errands, interruptions, disappointments, and hidden acts of service. Now you are getting the picture.

Imagine Your Marriage Overseas

If you are married, missionary service is not merely a personal calling with your spouse added to the arrangement. It is a life you must discern and enter together. Picture your marriage without familiar routines, nearby relatives, trusted friends, and established support systems. Imagine your spouse learning a new language at a different pace than you. One of you may thrive in the new culture while the other struggles. One may receive public recognition while the other carries unseen responsibilities at home.

Imagine fatigue reducing your patience. Imagine ministry needs competing with family needs. Imagine conflict with teammates following you home because your teammates are also your closest community. Imagine one spouse feeling energized by the work while the other begins to wonder whether staying is emotionally or spiritually sustainable.

A healthy missionary marriage is not a distraction from the mission. It is part of your Christian witness. Your spouse is not merely an assistant assigned to support your ministry vision. He or she is your first ministry responsibility and a fellow heir of the grace of life.

Imagine Raising Your Children on the Field

Children can flourish in missionary families. They may learn languages, build friendships across cultures, develop compassion for the world, and witness God’s faithfulness in remarkable ways.

They will also make real sacrifices.

Imagine explaining to your children why they must say goodbye to grandparents, cousins, friends, pets, and familiar traditions. Picture them entering a school where they do not understand the language or living where they appear different from everyone around them. Imagine them asking where “home” is and not knowing how to answer.

They may experience adventures unavailable to most children, but they may also face loneliness, frequent transition, security concerns, educational challenges, and grief. Every furlough can bring joyful reunions followed by another painful round of goodbyes.

Your children are entrusted to your care, and perhaps one of your greatest ministries will be to them.

Imagine the Sacrifices and Risks

Can you imagine leaving your aging parents, missing weddings and funerals, surrendering financial opportunities, and living far from the people who know you best?

What about political instability, disease, crime, persecution, visa uncertainty, or inadequate medical care? Plans may be interrupted by evacuation, family illness, government restrictions, or a closed border. You may invest years in language and ministry only to be forced to leave unexpectedly.

The apostle Paul never hid the cost of missionary ministry. He spoke openly about danger, sleepless nights, hunger, hardship, and his daily concern for the churches (2 Corinthians 11:23-28). Yet he also testified that the surpassing worth of knowing Christ made every earthly gain expendable (Philippians 3:8).

Counting or imagining the cost is not the same as deciding the cost is too high. It is looking honestly at the cost and deciding whether Christ is worthy of it. He is!

Counting or imagining the cost is not the same as deciding the cost is too high. It is looking honestly at the cost and deciding whether Christ is worthy of it.

Imagine the Church Sending You

Don’t imagine missionary life alone. In Acts 13, the Holy Spirit directed the church at Antioch to set apart Barnabas and Saul. The church prayed, fasted, laid hands on them, and sent them. Their missionary work emerged from the worshiping life of a local congregation.

Bring your imagination to your church. Imagine telling your pastor what you are considering. Imagine inviting mature believers to evaluate your character, doctrine, relationships, and ministry fruit and asking them whether they can imagine sending you.

Think about connecting with a missions agency that helps you understand opportunities, training, finances, risk, member care, and the realities facing missionary families. Imagine a team of veteran missionaries helping you replace vague assumptions with informed expectations.

Imagine the Joy

Do not imagine only the hardships. Imagine hearing someone pray to Christ for the first time. Imagine watching a new believer open the Scriptures with hunger. Imagine seeing a small group become a church. Imagine watching national leaders mature and take responsibility for the work. Imagine worshiping beside brothers and sisters whose language once sounded incomprehensible to you. Imagine discovering that the global church is more beautiful, resilient, and diverse than you understood.

Imagine watching your children develop a love for people from different cultures. Imagine your marriage becoming stronger as you learn to depend upon God and one another. Imagine supporters at home becoming passionate participants in the Great Commission because they joined your ministry.

Imagine reaching the end of your life knowing that, by God’s grace, you invested it in making Christ known.

The risks are real. The sacrifices are real. But so is the joy.