Starry, Starry Night 2024
CAST ADRIFT IN STORMY SEAS
My wife, two young daughters (seven and four years of age), and I had just moved to the city of Tours, deep in the heart of the celebrated châteaux region of France. As first-term missionaries, we had left family, friends, and ministry in America to make a new life in the historic home of the French language. We were here to learn French language and culture, and share the Gospel of Jesus. All by immersion – a life 100% in French, 100% of the time, even before we could communicate in French.
My brother-in-law and sister-in-law, missionaries in Belgium, had done yeomen’s work helping us locate a house to rent and then moving us in. But once we had unloaded the truck and shared a meal, it was time for them to make their long drive home. We waved goodbye and settled into a house that was more hideout than home.
After seeing to further essential unpacking, we put our daughters to bed that brutally hot night. After a little more unpacking, my wife and I were off to bed as well. Turning off the lights, I was surprised at how dark the house seemed. And how quiet. No shadow or sound anywhere.
As I lay in bed trying to sleep, a disturbing thought suddenly dawned on me: if someone breaks into the house, I can’t call the police; we are entirely at the mercy of whoever breaks in and whatever they want to do. I can’t even contact the fire department if the house catches fire. We don’t speak French, and they don’t speak English.
And so began what was, for many months, an arduous and painful process. For weeks and weeks, our daughters cried every morning as they went to day camp and then school, unable to understand or be understood in a 100% French-language world. For weeks, my wife and I visited offices – regional and city governments, banking, education, insurance, utilities – working to establish ourselves. Like our daughters, we encountered a world where no one spoke English. We had precious little French we could speak, and even less could our ears and minds understand as the French amazed us with the speed at which they could speak. I usually had to resort to Franglish or charades to communicate.
Then began language school. In level one studies at L’Institut de Touraine, I was surprised to learn on Day One that our teachers taught their classes by speaking only French. For some insane reason, I had imagined the French would teach us their language as the Americans teach it: in English. That was not the case: Our instructors threw us headlong into the deep end of the pool. It was sink or swim.
It wasn’t long before I was out of my depth: classes in the morning, labs in the afternoon, helping my daughters with their homework (French-English dictionary in hand), then doing my homework after they had gone to bed, squeezing in trips to the offices mentioned above, stores, garage, and even doctors—all with next to no French in a 100% French world. After having pastored for many years in the US, I was suddenly an infant when it came to communication ability. The shock to my system was substantial. All-in-all, the learning curve was as brutal as the heat that summer.
That autumn, I came to a crossroads: would I keep my family in France or pack us up and return to America?
I remember sitting in the car with my wife after yet another frustrating meeting with government officials, a meeting that ended with more paperwork to complete and return, all with no guarantees it would be accepted or approved any more so than the previous paperwork had been. I told her I had had all I could take. I said God had not called us to spend our days completing administrative work for the government or wasting our time in a classroom. God had certainly not called us to, what seemed to me, drop our daughters off the end of the world to sink or swim. I told her God had not called us to these endless circles of meaningless work and frustrations. I was serious. This was it, I told her. We were packing up and returning to the States – God had not called us to this life.
My wife listened empathetically to my venting before quietly responding, “Evidently, He has.”
“What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“You said God has not called us to this – all these challenges and frustration. You said God did not call us to all do this. But evidently, He has. If this is what is required of us to be able to share the Gospel and disciple people, this must be God’s will for our lives no matter how frustrating it is or how painful it is – and yes, it is frustrating and painful.”
Her straightforward response to my emotion-filled complaint struck home. My self-centeredness and my loss of focus on Christ and His call became apparent. I had long said, and even preached, “whatever the cost,” Yet here I was, ready to walk away.
I shook my head as my heart felt the weight of this realization. I knew she was right, but I didn’t know how we could do what God had called us to do; it was all too much.
“I know,” I answered. “But I can’t do it, and I can’t watch you and the girls struggle with all this. I just don’t know how we can do it. I think we have to go home.”
But my wife was ready with Solomonic wisdom: “I know. But let’s give God one more day. Let’s give him one more day to change things before we make that decision. Can you give God one more day?”
I answered yes to her simple question that day. And the next day. And the day after that for several weeks until she no longer had to ask me: I was in, completely in. It’s not that the world around me became any easier or changed in any substantive way. Things inside of me changed. God’s calling became 3-D, full color, alive, and more important to me than my self-dimensional black-and-white personal preferences, pleasures, and pain. It’s that God became more important to me than me.
We stayed in France. We stayed on course. We arrived. We survived. Even more, we thrived.
SAILING BY THE STARS
Sailors of old sailed by the stars.
They followed the constellations suspended over the oceans like road maps. Ursa Minor and her lead star, Polaris (The North Star), are probably the best known to us today. Following these heavenly GPS points, sailors found their way safely to their earthly destinations. The winds might howl like wolves, the rain fall in cascades, and the seas toss them like a juggler, but with their eyes fixed on their friends in the heavens, sailors of old arrived safely at their destination.
So, what was our constellation on the stormy seas of our early days in France? What was our North Star? What heavenly compass points steered my family and helped continue on even in churning waters to come?
1. God’s Call
As my wife reminded me, God had called us. Whatever came our way, pleasure or pain, it was all part of His sovereign will for our lives, His goodness unfolding – whether it appeared so, or appealed to us at that moment. We were His servants. Our lives were His to do with as He pleased. If this was not the case, it was us, not He, who were the masters. If we had veto power over His call, it was He, not us, who was the servant.
The call of God kept us – not only in France, but in our hearts.
The God’s Call Star was a key light in our constellation.
2. The Mission
We were in Tours to learn French language and culture so we could share the Gospel, disciple and pastor people. Not just conversational French, but solid French. And, as much as possible, to think culturally, i.e., with a French mind.
Contrary to the ads you see, “Learn to Speak Like a Frenchman in Just 10 Weeks,” learning to read, write, understand, and speak good French is a long and arduous challenge. Not only for expats like us, but for the French! So much so that French (and Belgian) school children take French every year of their thirteen pre-university school careers.
Missionaries who sidestepped this task missed the hard work but also missed acceptance by native-born French speakers. Many French and Belgians – Christian and non-Christian – told us they took us seriously because we took their language seriously; they respected us because we respected them and what was important to them: their language.
Where Americans see English as a tool to be used, the French or Belgian sees French as the heart of their identity and culture. Anyone with a message he wants the French to hear must understand this, and so, study seriously.
Knowing this was the price of being heard, we gave ourselves to this arduous challenge, no matter how humbling. Stay the course; stay on mission even the training steps seemed endless and pointless.
The Mission Star was a key light in our constellation.
3. Our Own Discipleship
Where many preachers often and easily say, “God told me,” I have always use these three words very sparingly. These are holy, holy, holy words; words tied more to the perfect and glorious nature of God than me, and so, words I am reluctant to invoke. If God has spoken something to me, people will hear it as God’s voice without requiring my label to identify it. That said, there have been times when I am confident God spoke to me.
One of those times was during our first itineration raising our first budget as missionaries. I remember praying, excitedly telling God how grateful I was to go reach a nation for Him with the Gospel. The voice of God came, telling me, “Yes, it’s good you are obeying my call to give yourself to this mission, but my call overseas is much more than this. My call on your life to go overseas is not first to make disciples but to be one. The work I must do in you is so deep it requires taking you out of your home and country, sending you thousands of miles where I can do the work in you that I need to do.”
This thought came back to me over and over again after my “dark night of the soul” experience sitting in the car in front of the regional government offices in Tours. It was a realization that continues to serve me well today as I strive to serve the Master. God’s work is not first something we do for Him; it is first a work He does in us. Discipleship is Job One for the follower of Jesus Christ. Even our ministry for Him is His means for making us disciples.
The My Discipleship Star was a key light in our constellation.
4. Our Daughters’ Discipleship
Children can “feel the real” in their parents. We can talk endlessly about what we believe, but our lives tell our children what we really believe: they feel the real in us.
Our first months in France peeled away layers in the souls of my wife and me, especially me. We peeled through many well-intentioned values, beliefs, opinions, habits, and ways that were obstacles in our own discipleship and, so, in our daughters’ discipleship. This included an understanding that, before our daughters’ birth, God had chosen this life in France and, later, Belgium for them.
During our first itineration, when our daughters were small, well-meaning people would say something like this to them, “Oh, I feel so sorry for you. God has called your parents to this, but He didn’t call you. You’ll just be luggage, along for the ride.” This had quite an effect on our older daughter. We had to remind her and ourselves that, out of all the parents in the world, God had chosen their mother and me to love and raise them in His ways.
This meant that out of all the lives He could have chosen for them, He chose the life of a missionary kid (MK) for them. And it meant He chose an immersion life in France – going to French-language schools, learning French by figuring it out for themselves in a classroom, having French-speaking friends, etc. In short, life in France as MKs was the discipleship path God ordained for our daughters.
“Yes, but wasn’t it hard on them?” you ask. Yes, it was. Initially, it was bone-crunching hard.
“Didn’t it require sacrifice then?” Yes, much.
But today, both girls call France and Belgium their home countries. Both see that sacrifice, and yes, pain, are often a part of the “real” of being disciples of Jesus. This lesson has served them well as adults: they eschew the current American church fascination with consumer Christianity and, longing instead for the “real” of following Jesus as His disciples, whatever He chooses to set before them.
I should add a strong P.S. to this star: the shimmer of laughter.
We were disciplined in discipling our daughters. Every day began with laughter and devotion. Because early days in France were so hard, I brought a joke of some kind to the breakfast table every morning, something to bring a smile to all our faces. This continued long after the girls had come to love their lives there. Then, after our breakfast table leap into laughter, we shared an age-appropriate devotion.
At dinner, we sat at the table together, where we asked our daughters about their day, encouraging and reassuring them. As our daughters became young teens, our dinner conversations turned to current events, politics, religion, philosophy, and other meaty topics. The fruit of these table-talk discipleship conversations is evident in all our lives today.
The final piece of our regular discipleship was bedtime devotions and prayer. I read a chapter of The Chronicles of Narnia with our daughters before laying my hands on their heads and praying over them. Mom would then take them to their room, where she read the Scriptures with them and prayed, tying the ribbons on a day of worshipping and following God.
The Family Discipleship Star (With the extra shimmer of laughter) was a key light in our constellation.
5. Realizable Goals
As our daughters entered French public schools, we knew their grades would not, initially, be anything to “write home about.” They would have to learn French by figuring out what their teachers and classmates were saying. And no, the teachers did not offer them a remedial approach: they were expected to sit in the same class, take the same lessons, do the same homework, and face the same exams as their classmates – all without exception or excuse. Even the parents of our daughters’ classmates were surprised at this.
Homework was a nightly exercise, even in kindergarten. Attending French and Belgian national schools meant two to three hours of homework every night for thirteen years– and no study halls.
And so, from day one, as we dropped the girls off at school, I would ask them, “What are your goals today?” Each would respond, “Do my best and have fun (doing it).” It was a routine we repeated every day of their thirteen years of education in France and Belgium.
As a warm memory and present encouragement, it’s a question I still ask them even today as daughters of God, wives, mothers, and employees. Our little exercise was a way to take the performance pressure off of them – and us – in our new life in France. It was a way to remind ourselves that because God had called us to that life, like bread and fish, He would take, break, and multiply our best into more than enough for us and for the people we served – in learning, grades, family, ministry, and life.
Rather than getting lost in the overwhelming size and scope of the mission before us, God helped us break it up into doable, daily tasks. With His help, the impossible became doable.
The Star of Realizable Goals was a key light in our constellation.
6. Family and Friends
Our journey to France was much longer than the flight from the US to Europe. We had traveled thousands of miles, speaking in over two hundred churches in a dozen states, working hard to raise the budget we needed for our first four-year term overseas. This meant trusting that pastors, boards, and churches would sense our call and support us. Later in Europe, when times were tough, we remembered these friends – what we had promised them and what they had committed to us (some of them sacrificially). This was to us a sacred trust, one God brought often to our minds, helping us to stay the course.
That journey also included pastors and missionaries who spoke into our lives and encouraged us in our calling. They went out of their way to share our journey, confirm our call, and keep us strong. How we leaned on their words and friendship.
Finally, we had tremendous support from family in the US and overseas. This included my wife’s parents, who were missionaries, and her brother and sister-in-law, who were also missionaries. Having missionaries in the family meant having hearts and voices who understood what we were going through. Their support meant more to us than we can ever put into words.
The love and support of family and friends shone a light on our way, one that helped us see and warmed our hearts with encouragement that we could and would arrive.
Even the French people were great encouragers to us, Christians and non-Christians alike. Everyone in our quartier knew who we were and why we were there. They took us into their hearts, going out of their way to help us in any and every way possible. They were true gifts of God to us.
The bond and shared sense of mission with our friends and family was a powerful force for good in our lives. It energized us when we felt the weight of our journey.
The Family and Friends Star was a key light in our constellation.
7. The North Star: The Person of Jesus.
At some point, a minister of the Gospel must cross over from merely being in the ministry to being a servant of Jesus Christ. Whatever the cost. Whatever the price. Whatever the hardship. It is one thing to preach the Gospel, but quite another to put your life – without reservations – into the hands of the One whose Gospel you preach. No Plan B. No fallback position. No turning back; no turning back.
This would seem obvious, but being obvious does not make it evident – heart-beating, palpable, and personal. Some ministers live in a dichotomy: “I will be a minister of the Gospel as long as it doesn’t cost my family,” or “I will stay in the ministry as long as I make enough to pay the bills.” This false dichotomy makes Jesus the servant and me the master, laying down the conditions of my supposed “calling.”
It also betrays a heart that has not yet beheld or been held by this glorious Savior! They are not yet able to say with Paul of this Savior so glorious, mighty, powerful, gracious, and loving:
“What things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Philippians 3.7-11
“… we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Philippians 3.20
“To live is Christ; to die is gain.” Philippians 1.21
Not just pretty words in ink on a page, but a daily decision. If Jesus so loved me that He was willing to die for me, how could I not live for Him, whatever the cost? Not out of heavy duty, but desire and delight? It took a work of the Holy Spirit in my heart, but duty became delight, a deep desire to know Him and please Him. A deep desire for Him.
The North Star of Jesus was the key light in our constellation.
SAFE HARBOR
Young minister of the Gospel, you may not be moving your family to France to undertake the rigors of immersion in the French language and culture. Still, based on the seas behind us in America in 2023, the year ahead may indeed prove to be a challenging one wherever you serve. Are you ready? Ready not just to survive but to thrive in the call of God and the mission He has given you in life? Whatever the cost? Whatever the pleasure or pain?
The winds of culture and change may howl like wolves in 2024. The rain of hardship and trial may fall in cascades at some point in the coming year. The seas of question and doubt may toss you like a juggler in the year ahead. But with your eyes fixed on Jesus and His lights in heaven, you will arrive safely at your destination.
So, your turn: what stars are in the constellation of your life ship? Upon what lights are you willing to cast your complete confidence in your service to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords?
_________
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