What are you willing to die for?

Victoria Stargel is 19 years old, a sophomore at Union University in Jackson, TN.  She recently went to Sierra Leone, West Africa with a team of ten people from her church, First Baptist of Humboldt, TN.  After her return, I asked her about the process of going on the trip, whether her age impacted her ability to serve the Lord and why she was motivated to journey across the expanse of the Atlantic to visit a people she has never seen.

WHAT PURPOSE? You get so much life experience just going and experiencing new things.  You can get the same thing from the Peace Corp.  But there is a deep spiritual fulfillment in seeing what God is doing around the world.  It deepens your walk with God when you realize that he is the same no matter where you are in the world.  When you realize that his power transcends Kentucky and Sierra Leone, you realize how great a God you serve.

When I asked Victoria how she knew that God had called her to go, she said, “I believe that all Christians are called to a lifetime of missions wherever they are.  For me, I feel called to a lifetime of international missions.”  Victoria felt excited about the trip when she first heard of the possibility and the excitement, she said, just built as she learned more details.  She began to look at the date and time, the possibilities.  When she talked to her parents, they were immediately supportive and she said that was a green light for her.  Looking back, she realized, “God had been developing a heart for Africa in me for several years.”

WHAT MOTIVATION? Obedience to the Great Commission through my church.  A desire to work in Africa and work with Muslim people because I feel like that’s where my life calling is going.  Seeing lost people come to Christ; God’s glory across the nations is my passion.

Victoria’s team was connected with a ministry called Susu Gospel Mission which was founded by one West African tribe who felt God’s call to reach out to another West African tribe.  They traveled with national believers to new churches and areas where churches were being started.  “The presence of foreigners helped strengthen the ministry of the nationals,” said Victoria.  “It showed the locals that what the national people had to say was important enough for Americans to come all the way to their country and walk to their village.  Because it’s a relational culture, the fact that we went, ate with them, slept with them, danced with them, walked with them meant something.”

WHAT CHANGE?  God moved.  One cool story is that (in the village of Somaya) they had hired a witch doctor who had been there for a month praying for rain.  It hadn’t rained.  When we got there, it rained every night we were there and it stopped raining when we left.  And so the talk around the village was, “The Christians’ God is more powerful; they brought the rain.”

I asked Victoria whether, as a college student, God was able to use her to accomplish His purposes through this trip.  She gave an emphatic yes.  “God worked through me and used me simply as a willing vessel. Now, as in the past, each time I am used by God, He uses the experience to prepare me for the future. A verse that God has used to direct my life and which I used when speaking to the youth in the church in Somaya is 1 Tim. 4:12. This verse talks about being an example to the believers even in one’s youth.”

WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO DIE FOR? I will die for that which motivates the heart of God – His glory and His people. However, my willingness to die means nothing if I am not willing to live as a “living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1) for the same purposes. My life is to be spent “do[ing] all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31) and being a witness to all the world (Acts 1:8); if obedience to these commands leads me to death then, “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21).

I will die rather than verbally or physically reject the name of Jesus. I will die in the stead of a nonbeliever; my fate is eternal life, his is eternal death. If by my death I give him even a few more minutes to decide to follow Christ, I will die willingly.  I am willing to die for fellow believers; Christ loved His church and gave Himself for her, why should I do less?

Jesus Himself declared that, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” (Luke 9:23-4)