WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK

And the LORD will be king over all the earth; in that day the LORD will be THE ONLY ONE, AND HIS NAME THE ONLY ONE.

—ZECHARIAH 14:9

I wrote this book to share with you what I have learned about walking with Jesus from decades of pioneering mission work in some of the darkest places on earth. Though the locations were exotic, the principles are universal. They apply to everyone who desires to follow Jesus.

During the first twenty-eight years of my life, I excelled at everything I put my hand to. I was an excellent student and athlete. As a result, I was highly self-confident. And everyone, including me, saw me as a “good Christian” who was working to obey God’s Word and expand His Kingdom.

I began focusing on reaching an unreached, unengaged people group (UUPG) in a primitive, isolated, and restrictive environment. One large island had a population of nearly seven million people, but fewer than one hundred known believers. In that context, I discovered that my talents and hard work were not enough. I truly realized, for the first time, that Jesus was absolutely serious when He said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (JOHN 15:5B).

I realized my perspective had been exactly upside down. I thought I was at the summit when actually I had never really started to climb. All my efforts and accomplishments were meaningless if they were apart from God’s intentions. My own efforts would never accomplish any of God’s purposes. The only way I could live the life God intended was to be about His will in His way, in His timing, and by His power.

Living life like this would require a lot more listening and a lot less forging ahead on my own. It would mean more of Him and less of me. Ironically, I had already considered JOHN 3:30 my life verse: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” At that point, I began to understand a little of what that verse means.

During the following five years I developed (or gathered from others) the tools and principles contained in this book. I began to experience joy, fulfillment, and an intimate walk with Jesus, and my wife and I began to see fruitfulness in a new way as we labored among the UUPG. By the end of five years I saw fruit that I had only dreamed of as a lifelong aspirational goal. Soon every village among this large people group had a church. These thousands of churches began to serve as a missions force among many other people groups. Disciples made other disciples, down to many spiritual generations. I realized my desires were too weak. My aspirations were too small. God’s plans for me were far bigger and better than I would dare to imagine.

I began to invest all my time and energy in equipping others to experience what I had begun to taste. My trainees were, like me, long-term missionaries focused on the spiritually darkest places on the planet. Many saw similar results and experienced similar things. After seven years of training and coaching more than a thousand people through intensive one-month programs, I sensed the Lord calling me to relocate to the United States.

I didn’t want to come back to the US. Since my parents were missionaries and I had grown up overseas, this was an unwanted call to a land I did not relate to. I saw it as an inconvenience, because now I would have to travel farther to get to the spiritually darkest places, the places to which I had been called as a high school student. I continued to focus all my attention on what would impact these dark places for the Kingdom of God.

Then, after eleven years of focusing on the most unreached people groups and places in the world while operating from the United States, God clearly showed me that He wanted me to begin to focus half my effort on people in the US. He wanted me to share what I had been sharing in the frontier missions world with believers in this country. He showed me that many American Christians were as blind as I had been for so many years, not knowing that a more abundant life is available to them. They love God and are seeking to serve Him in the best way they know. They are doing what they have been taught and what has been expected of them. This is true for both those in the pews and those in the pulpits. But God has more for us, if we will learn to follow Him fully.

The only reason I saw a deeper way to live out my faith was that God put me in a desperate situation, cut off from any external support system (except for my wife, Debie) and from any distractions. There I was confronted by my own insufficiency and forced to rely only on Him. Without this, I might never have seen another way to live out my faith.

Many North American believers have never had this opportunity. They have ample support systems and unavoidable distractions. There are also obstacles in the form of those who oppose movements in this direction because they feel threatened by the introduction of unfamiliar spiritual expressions and thus discourage anyone who begins to question familiar patterns.

I have now been pursuing this half-time focus on the US for seven years. God is working here just as in frontier mission areas. Every culture has its strengths and weaknesses. Every place has its barriers to the gospel.

I believe the greatest enemy of genuine discipleship in the US is the prevailing paradigm of what it means to follow Jesus. I pray that God will use this book to change that concept. I believe the Lord earnestly desires a radical life for all His children. Speaking about radical Christianity is extremely politically incorrect. Jesus was radical, however, and we are called to walk as He walked (1 JOHN 2:6).

From time to time, I have been asked to endorse books written by others. My policy has been to endorse only books written by successful practitioners, not ivory-tower thinkers. Who would want to read a book on parenting by someone who has never been a parent?

Now, for the first time, I have written my own book. I never aspired to write one. I wrote it because I believe God told me to write it. I suspect that it will be as much for my benefit as for anyone else’s. But I feel a bit awkward as I consider my own endorsement criterion. I cannot claim to be a successful practitioner of everything I discuss in this book—not consistently. I have implemented much of the lifestyle I recommend here in my day-to-day life, but some aspects are still more aspirational in nature. But Paul was not perfect, either, when he told believers in 1 CORINTHIANS 11:1, “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.” I believe that God wants me to help others by recording the principles that have guided me.

For many years I had this quotation from Theodore Roosevelt on my desk:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

In that sense, I am a practitioner. I try. Over the years, I have seen progress in my personal walk with God. That gives me great hope and anticipation. My prayer is that in reading what follows you will not become discouraged by gaps between the challenges I describe and your current state of progress, but rather that you will be drawn into a glorious pursuit of the amazing opportunity before us to know and love and serve God more passionately every day.

Although this book is aspirational, it is not merely descriptive. It is prescriptive. I firmly believe the matters I discuss in this book are meant to be pursued and practiced by every follower of Christ, for His pleasure.