On Mission: Servant, Not Savior
It's easy to adopt a savior mentality while on mission. It's like “I have what you need, so let me save you from yourself.” Not quite, friend. Missions is not about lots of mini saviors working for the King, but rather lots of mini servants working for the Savior. Every believer is tasked with going and making disciples and teaching them to obey God.
'When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”'
Matthew 28:17-20 ESV
This week, lets travel to East Asia, on mission with Elizabeth as she prays for refugees and sees God move.
In the summers of 2022 and 2023, I was blessed with the opportunity to serve in a global city in East Asia working among refugees from North Korea. I wanted to go to East Asia to serve among these unreached peoples because of a deep desire for the nations to know the glory of my God. From a young age, I was taught about missions. Why and how we do missions, the Biblical precedent for missions, and even modern missionary stories. At 7, I was a new believer and heard the story of a woman named Lottie Moon, who sacrificed everything she had, even her life for the sake of the Gospel to be proclaimed among people who hadn’t heard it. I decided as a young child that I wanted to be just like “Lottie'' and take the Gospel to the unreached.
My favorite story of my time on the field revolves around my friend Carl. Carl is a first-generation refugee from North Korea, and he loves his English name because it and many “middle names” were given to him by his American friends. Carl was not a believer in 2022. He was in my English class in school, and we spent much time together working through the meanings of English words like salvation, sacrifice, forgiveness, and so many more. Me and my teammates could tell that Carl was so close to becoming a follower of Jesus, and then we had to get on a plane and come back to the states. The following summer, our plan was to follow up with him very intentionally, but as he was in his senior year of High School. His schedule made it quite difficult to have an intentional conversation with him. At the very end of the summer, Carl approached one of my teammates and said that they needed to get coffee, because he was ready to follow Jesus. Two days before we packed up on a plane, two of my teammates got to go sit in a coffee shop for four hours with my sweet friend Carl and walk him through the salvation story, from creation all the way to Jesus’ second coming. Me and another teammate went and sat two doors down in another coffee shop and got the privilege of spending four hours in prayer, fighting spiritual battles for the conversation that was happening just down the road. I have never experienced spiritual warfare like that- hours in tears, praying scriptures of understanding over Carl, wisdom and clear communication over my teammates, and rebuking any schemes that Satan had tried to cook up around my friends in this moment. After four laborious hours of pleading, Carl knew in his heart that he needed a savior, and that the Savior he needed was Jesus Christ. Carl had told me a story of running from the dictatorship he grew up in and not knowing who he had prayed to, but knowing that he prayed to be saved, and he was. He told us that now he knows that it was GOD who saved him then from a dictatorship he had no power over, and GOD who saved him from his sin that he had no power over. It is my joy to share all the things God has done, and to rejoice in a new brother en route to eternity with our Savior!