For a good part of this year, my best friend Austin and I have been discussing what it would mean to live and do mission work in areas where Christians live out their faith journeys in the face of persecution. Particularly persecution by populations who have little to no crucial understanding about this faith or about God. As this year has progressed, I’ve been drawn more toward unreached populations in general and he more to wherever the possibility of persecution is a very sobering reality.
“I would say that the feeling of being drawn towards locations of higher persecution levels has been growing in me all my life – of course, as we’d say about anything – but more noticeably I’ve been able to pick up on it in the past three or maybe just two years,” Austin said.
In seeking out this direction, Austin said an honorary sister of his who was doing missionary work in South Africa gave him some wisdom on where to start.
“God works in people in the quiet places, that true acts of faith aren’t planted in the battle field, the true act of faith with David versus Goliath wasn’t planted that day on the battle field, but it was planted many years ago in David’s quiet faithful moments out in the field with his flock,” Austin said. “So I’ve taken her prayer as my own of, ‘God make me strong in the quiet places.’ Because if I can’t praise God in the time of just a headache, who am I to even think that I could praise God in a time of being imprisoned.”
A Pioneer Bible Translators recruiter who made contact with Austin through a PBT missionary in Africa told him about two internship opportunities in higher risk areas. Hearing about these opportunities, Austin started praying to God to make one of the options the clearer one to pursue should God be leading him to go. Austin realized that there being quite a difference in the level of challenge of his experience to that of those places has asked himself how ready he would be to face those challenges.
Austin said he has seen three particular experiences of past couple weeks as possibly God’s initial way of testing him before facing harder challenges. The first challenge came at the end of a full year of having a commercial driver’s permit when he took the final test to get his license the day his permit expired.
“Everybody was positive that it would be alright and assured me that plenty of other people had done it that way before and everything was going to go smoothly,” Austin said. “I went to the revenue office the next day and basically after an hour of working and talking to several different people, I came away with a brand new CDL learner’s packet having to restart the whole process all over again. That was disappointing in and of itself, but another story was unfolding.”
Austin had decided earlier in the year to close out his hometown bank account, which had fallen into dormancy while he’d been a student, since he had no use for it anymore. The challenge for technical reasons was he was unable to close out the account by any means other than draining the account via debit card, and since it was in dormancy he had lost access to his online banking to keep good records.
He attempted to buy a few things on Amazon for work but only some transactions went through while others didn’t, causing his records to be thrown off. He had gotten used to not worrying about overdraft as his bank in Arkansas protected against that by denying any purchases that would cause such. This, however, wasn’t the case with his hometown bank, and he lost track of how much he had left in the account.
“As I’m sitting in my car outside in the parking lot of the revenue office I received a call from my bank back home informing me that I was over-drafted about $150, and that was quite exciting,” he said with dry sarcasm. “So two very, very disappointing things. It is very easy to just start getting angry and writing angry letters and yelling out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'”
But he said he took the situation as a blessing in disguise, disappointing as it was. With no regular bus route in place and nothing else holding him back, he decided to plan a week by himself at Harding’s missions training village where he works.
The following Monday night, he loaded up his car and began the drive to get there. While coming around a corner about two miles out, he saw two large sets of headlights in front of him in his lane – a situation that resulted in no serious injuries save for the totaling of his vehicle. He felt obliged to return to Searcy.
“That was a very disappointing thing that coupled with everything else, it could be very easy to be very upset about and just be angry about,” Austin said. “Of course it’s a very unsettling place, but as I said before I’ve not necessarily been so used to the experience of being unsettled, of being shaken up. And I was able to look at it and realize that’s exactly what it is – just a bit of shaking up.”
I see the Spirit of God working through friends like Austin who can take challenges like these with the kind of peace that reaffirms who is in control of all circumstances and make a point to foster faith in the quiet places. He is the first to acknowledge how the struggles of many others far surpass what he has yet experienced. Seeing what God has done in him and what God continues to do, I look forward to seeing where God’s Spirit leads him and what He will do through him.
The Lion Is Alive 