LAND OF THE LIVING MAGAZINE - Magazine - Page 24
What's your history in missions?
Well my mom was a missionary with YWAM
before she and my dad met and my dad
was in seminary. So my parents
got
married and became missionaries in China.
By the time I was born, they were living in
England at a YWAM base in Harpenden and
then moved to Thailand. We went to a
place called "Beautiful Feet" in Texas where
we would do a lot of street ministry and so
a part of me coming to know Jesus in a
deeper way was seeing the power of
evangelism and the power He brought to
the most broken people I had ever met on
the streets of Fort Worth, and seeing
missions in action led me to love Jesus
more. I grew up as a believer in that and
then got to go back to Thailand, Cambodia
and Myanmar and see orphanages and see
the gospel go out in the marketplaces just
with me and my family. They weren't afraid
to take us out where there were drugs and
guns and profanity in your face and seeing
Jesus meet those things made me
feel so alive.
"Tucked away in church pews are
solutions of the nations, hiding behind
stained glass, if you will, we've heard His
name our whole lives, but we've slipped
into great compromise choosing to be
quiet and stay still " -Hannah Buckner
What was it like becoming a Pastor's
Kid after being a Missionary's Kid?
There is almost a lullaby here that is worse
than it would be overseas in the heat and
battle but knowing with certainty that
whatever and wherever He calls us to is in
front of us. There's a complacency in the
western church that I have rode and
sometimes find myself still riding at times.
When you meet a believer in another
nation,
you're
not
asking
what
denomination they are. We don't have time
for anything else. To come back and see
boundaries and judgements when there's a
way bigger war out there, it made me
realize there's a time and place to lay down
our differences and go together in unity.
How do you stay love centered?
Jesus didn't come for the healthy, He came
for the sick. Obviously its a hallmark of
Jesus' nature and why He came but I think
with that in the forefront of our mind, how
could I not sit across from someone who is
at their lowest of lows, living in the thickest
of sin and really their sin is no different
than mine, there's is just more graphic and
in my face in that moment but Jesus came
to sit with them and dine with them, so who
am I to think I wouldn't be called to do the
exact same?
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