Here are some ways I like to think of myself: world traveler, counselor, teacher, friend, writer, researcher, adventurer. I also have to acknowledge that I am often self-conscious, fearful, ashamed, critical, anxious, unkind, or angry. 

But faith says that because of God’s work through Jesus, this is how I am most clearly defined: loved, known, rescued, forgiven, pursued, redeemed, called, valued.

We are defined primarily by the work of Christ on our behalf. Yet, so much of how we experience the world is connected to what we’re longing for and who we hope to be. 

In over a decade of serving overseas as a missionary, I have learned over and over that to be on mission for Jesus, you must first know who you are in Jesus: a child of your loving Father, equipped by the Holy Spirit.

Because life on mission is a mixture of glorious adventures, mundane rhythms, and many failures and frustrations, we tend to forget this, but we must relearn it every day.

Here are just a few ways that living cross-culturally has shaken my assumptions about my identity:

• I was very articulate until I tried to speak another language.
• I was a pretty good cook until I had to use a charcoal oven and ingredients from a market that sold grasshoppers, cow brains, and absolutely no Kraft macaroni and cheese.
• I believed that if you worked hard enough, then things generally got better—until I lived in a place where hard workers’ lives didn’t really seem to be getting better.

The frustrations of living cross-culturally forced me to face my sin.

I was easy to get along with until I had to work alongside teammates in a stressful place. I cared for others until I had to give myself to people who took advantage of me, lied to me, or misunderstood the intentions of the work I was doing.

Death and destruction are not just in the world; these evils are in people who seek to be first, who steal, and who shoot at one another. 

And ultimately, death and destruction are in me.

I respond with anger and judgment toward the very people I want to serve, which reveals anew my own struggles with sin. As Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

I echo Paul, who said, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst” (1 Timothy 1:15, NIV). Life on mission is a reminder that Christ came into the world for me because of my sins, which make me the chief of sinners.

Only by maintaining the right perspective on my own sin will I be able to offer the world the hope of Jesus coming to save us from sin.

When the ways I defined myself became dislodged, I had to go back to the roots of what makes me who I am. 

The rest of that line from Romans says that although we fall short of God’s glory, we “are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:24–25).

As a missionary, it’s important to have talent and training—but our abilities are not our identity.

What matters is not that I am capable or incapable, having been good or having been evil, but that I have received God’s gift and have been swept into His family. I have a new home.

When I was on the mission field, I once had the opportunity to visit a rehabilitation home for children who had been rescued from a guerrilla group that recruited child soldiers in northern Uganda.

In some ways, the center seemed like a typical Ugandan boarding school. Kids ran around, kicked soccer balls, and laughed. But at lunch, I was struck by one boy huddled over his plate of food.

He refused to make eye contact with others and defensively pulled away to be by himself. When I asked our host about him, I was told that this young man had just come back to the center. He didn’t yet feel safe. 

He didn’t realize that with his rescue, everything had changed. This boy was at home, but he lived like he was still homeless.

He was safe and protected, but he lived like he still had to defend himself. He had food and shelter and love, but he lived like he was alone and couldn’t trust anyone. It would be a slow and painful process for him to come to live out of the freedom that was actually already his, because for so long, what was now true had seemed like an impossibility. 

Most child soldiers have had to be physically rescued by government soldiers who were fighting against them and were technically their enemies. But the government soldiers went after them to bring them home.

Child soldiers are complex because they are both victims and perpetrators of violence. They witness atrocities, and they commit atrocities. And yet, at their core, they are children longing for family, stability, laughter, enough food, and a warm bed. What they need is what we all need. 

We are all like former child soldiers.

We have been rescued by the warrior King, Who is also our older brother, Who pursued us in the violent wilderness, and Who saved us so we can be restored to our true family. 

Believing this is a slow process. It requires staying close to our brother Jesus, laying aside who we were without Him, and returning daily to the truth of who He has made us.

Hear that list again. Let it sink in. 

In Jesus, you are…Loved. Known. Rescued. Forgiven. Pursued. Redeemed. Called. Valued.

In the rehabilitation home, each rescued child soldier entered by burning his military uniform and taking on new clothes. It was a picture of how he was new. He was no longer defined by what he wore when he first came home. 

What worldly identity are you wearing that you need to “burn” so you will be defined instead by who you are in Jesus?

How would that change the way you live out your mission?

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NOTE:

This post is an adapted excerpt from The Mission-Centered Life, by Bethany Ferguson — an insightful Bible study on finding the confidence to move out of your comfort zone to join God’s mission in the world.