There it is, my racing heart. It’s that slightly up-ticking beat tapping a metronome in my throat as I maneuver my way across an airport. It’s the reminder that in the center of my chest is an ever-pumping, never-ceasing machine driving me forward, propelling me onward.

How often do we remember our hearts?

Day and night our hearts work and rest, through all the ups and downs of life, the joys and pains, sufferings and celebrations, pulsing and pushing. Too often we only become aware of our hearts when they skip a beat or alter their well-worn rhythms. Slowly over time our hearts can shift out of sync, rush too fast, pace too slow or burst into traumatic and terrifying action.

What do our hearts beat for?

In the early days of this new year, my heart quickens once again in the words of Thomas à Kempis as he challenges me to emulate Christ. He says, “Every day we should renew our resolve to live a holy life, and every day we should kindle ourselves to a burning love, just as if today were the first day of our new life in Christ.” In those short and simple words I am undone. He articulates the arrhythmias of my heart and I long to be once again in the first days of new life with Jesus.

What a wonderful thought! To be at the altars of long forgotten days where we met with Jesus. To feel the burning in our chests as we hear His voice speaking life and truth (Luke 24.32). To feel again His redeeming and transforming power coursing through out veins. And how glorious it is that as we fix our eyes on Jesus above the waves of our chaotic waters we see Him there! He is standing in all power calling us to Himself, calling us to re-embrace our first love for truly He is the Son of God (Matthew 14:22-33; Revelation 2.4).

As we find Jesus there and the animation of His truth, we see on the horizon the thousands yet lost in darkness, the millions who have yet to hear His name or know His love…

What do our hearts beat for?

While the pulse in our veins keep time we must steel our finite and frail resolve to ever fan into the flame Christ’s love. Jesus sees our arrhythmias. He hears the skipped beats and missed opportunities. And though our flesh and hearts may fail, we rejoice together with those who find Christ in our witness that He is our strength and portion forever (Psalm 73.26).

As a child I loved to hear stories of great adventures, Hardy Boys braving all to discover the truth or unseen worlds of child kings and talking lions. My real world was one of transatlantic airplanes and the beautiful African rainforest where I caught fish with a spear gun and went to boarding school in the Great Rift Valley, so it wasn’t a lot for my ADHD to color the pages of my life with the adventures I heard in those stories.

When God called me to be a witness of His love to the nations I can’t remember experiencing any reticence. My life was made for high adventures! Why should that stop when I left home?

Over the years my heart to carry the gospel to unreached peoples grew. I would read about distant cities filled with men, women and children where the good news was unknown and my heart would break; seeing pictures of lost people my hands would become stained with easily shed tears.

In college, I met an incredible young woman who spoke as passionately about the lost as I did. And after wedding bells and years of ministry the two became three with number four on the way. Finally, the door to distant lands was open. The far off deserts of Northeastern Africa were open and God’s call was saying go.

Although we never faltered in stepping forward, setting our life in step with God’s call to the unreached a veil I’d never seen before appeared on the horizon. Behind the veil were a growing host of unknowns that hinted at immeasurable risk.

Was I willing to be a martyr? Yes. Was I willing to take my family where my wife and children could face martyrdom?… Those answers didn’t come so quickly. The hyperactive mind that fed my sense of adventure in childhood became a dangerous playground of terrifying thoughts.

Looking back, our years in Northeastern Africa filled our family with the most impressive tapestry woven of great and painful memories. Today, we rejoice remembering as we celebrated Christ with new brothers and sisters and endured persecution in a deeper way than ever before. Without a doubt, we were meant to be there, to laugh with those who laughed and mourn with those who mourned. We were called to speak people’s names and tell them the wonders of our God. We were commissioned to step out from the reached in the known to live Christ among the unreached in the unknown.

Unknown risk is the first veil that keeps followers of Jesus from reaching the unreached. It is not persecution that keeps men and women from proclaiming the gospel, but the fear of rejection and images of suffering the mind conjures up as we stare into the unknown.

We say to ourselves, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” but when the time comes to step out like Peter onto the turning waves do the unseen sea creatures of the deep keep our feet planted in the local church (Proverbs 3.5, Matthew 14.29)?

We ask ourselves what are we willing to sacrifice, but the true question, the question that God places before us is, what are we willing to gain? To our eyes the nations are shrouded in darkness where stepping out means risking more than we could imagine. Then the voice of God calls us higher and as we set out eyes above the veil we hear the heavens declare, “the whole earth is full of His glory!” (Isaiah 6.3).

In that place we are undone. Our fears and courage, our unknowns and knowns weigh around us as we recognize we have been invited into the very presence of the Lord, to be known, loved, redeemed and transformed. And falling to our knees, with contrite hearts and cleansed lips we hear God say, “Whom shall we send? Who will go for us?”

How will you answer?