When Faith Is Tested on the Frontier

by Marjorie Fowler

Imagine losing a child or a parent, the pain and grief gnawing at your gut. Now consider the same scenario piled on top of loneliness, debilitating illness, isolation, spiritual warfare, and any or all the other afflictions that pursue AFM cross-cultural workers (CCWs) on the field.

One such, a man we’ll call Malachi, has no need to imagine it. He’s living it every day. Like his fellow laborers, he is living it on the frontier, where dragons of the mind roam. They prey especially on those who are uprooted from home and deposited in an alien world.

We asked Malachi how he copes. He told us he lifts up to God the story of Jesus asleep in the boat as the winds and waves threaten to drown the disciples. Does Jesus know? Is he there? Does he care?

Whenever anxiety or fear begins to rise and overwhelm him, this CCW begins to pray this story of Jesus calming the storm. And when the storm threatened to drown him, Malachi said, “Then, tenderly, calmly, as if whispered in my ear, I would hear the question: Why did you doubt? The waters would inevitably begin to subside, the way would open, the dry land would appear.”

Jesus is there, and he knows. His compassion for the least and the lost, his tears at Lazarus’ tomb, his agony in the garden and on the cross, remind us that Jesus knows what it is to suffer.

When the waves come crashing down, Jesus is there. He does not always calm the seas, but he calms our hearts and minds with his presence. He goes with us through the waves and the winds.

Another Bible story, this one from the Old Testament, also serves as an elixir. In Isaiah, God said: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you” (Isaiah 43:2).

When Elijah, fearing the wrath of Jezebel, fled to the cave in Mt. Horeb, the mountain of God, God asked him, “What are you doing here?” Or, why do you doubt? Elijah had been obedient to God and destroyed the prophets of Baal, but now he feared for his life, sure that he was the only prophet left.

In the cave, Elijah withstood the earthquake, the turbulent wind, and fire. Then God called him out of the cave and spoke to him in the stillness. The threat remained, but God calmed the storm in Elijah’s heart.

“He has kept, although silently, always close at hand,” Malachi says. “He has not left us, but has suffered in and with us, grieving and weeping and tarrying the long night alongside us.”

Jesus told the winds and waves: “Peace! Be still.” He also speaks those words to us, to know His peace, to be still and listen for His voice. And we can find His peace even though winds and waves rage.

AFM’s Member Care Coordinators, Pastors to Cross-Cultural Workers, and CCWs’ Barnabas Teams are crucial for helping those AFM CCWs who are suffering. They come alongside and help them get through the storms. They let our people know they are not alone in their sufferings.

In Colossians, Paul says, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake. And in my flesh, I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (1:24). That is, Paul will not only tell of the sufferings of Christ; he will also live the sufferings of Christ that others might see Christ in him.

When the winds rise and the night stretches long, Christ is still in the boat. His whisper—Peace, be still—steadies the hearts of those who serve where few dare to go.

Through your prayers and faithful partnership, you become part of that whisper. You help weary workers like Malachi know they are not forgotten—that God’s people stand with them, even on distant shores.

Together, we quiet the storms so the Good News can be heard.