When I moved to Japan with my family back in 2024, it was the first time I had lived outside of the US. I had lots of ideas about what missionary life would probably be like, and knew that I would be leaving things behind. However, I don’t think I could imagine the true weight of what I was losing.
Of course I left behind family, friends, possessions, and my previous career. But what I didn’t see coming was losing my ability to communicate and to accomplish simple tasks like grocery shopping. I didn’t realize that church, the once weekly place of refuge and refreshment, would become unfamiliar and difficult to understand. I didn’t foresee that missionary life would be one of constant transition, saying hellos and goodbyes to fellow missionaries as they come and go. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have family members pass away and not return for the funeral, or to have new family members be born and not get the chance to hold them as infants.
There is much seen and unseen that a missionary leaves behind to follow God’s call. But God has had much to teach me through this experience. Each day I am drawn to depend on him for everything. Each day I am forced to face the reality that I am fairly incapable at many things and that true change in this world is brought about by our big God. That even the foundational tasks of raising and caring a family cannot be done out of my own strength.
Even more surprising is that God desires and delights for us to depend on him. More and more I realize that the things we leave behind are meant to draw us nearer to God. That God has, in his unending wisdom, designed the missionary life in this way on purpose. My prayer is that through this dependence on God, missionaries would be better prepared to glorify God before the nations. That we would not make ourselves great, but point to Jesus who “is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col 1:17 NIV). The truth is that, whether we are overseas missionaries or not, all of our lives depend on God.
By Jake, an OMF missionary
