Have you ever asked God to use you, thinking you knew what that would look like, and then had him do something completely unexpected? When that happens, it’s easy to get disoriented or disillusioned.

Because global missions—making disciples of all the peoples of the world—is such a vast and complex task, we sometimes assume faithful missionaries are the ones who go and stay for the rest of their lives. Longevity remains an appropriate goal in many contexts, but God is now moving his workforce around the globe with increasing frequency. It’s becoming somewhat rare for a missionary to spend a lifetime in just one location.

The Bible is full of examples of displaced people and unexpected transitions. Think of Abraham, Jonah, Daniel, and the Apostle Paul. Joseph was relocated by force. Moses spent 40 years in the desert of Midian learning his way around in preparation for what we now consider a far more fruitful season of ministry leading the people of Israel out of slavery. And think about how devastated the disciples must have been to see Jesus crucified! From their perspective, God’s plan to provide a Messiah had been shattered irreparably. But then God revealed that apparent defeat was an essential part of his greatest victory. Throughout history, mobility and surprise have been built into his redemptive plans. God’s people have always been on the move.

All or Nothing

When David Moore met Ashley during their first year of college, he told her right off the bat, “I’ve wanted to be a missionary since I was 12.” He had promised the Lord, “I’ll go wherever you ask me to.” David meant he’d do what missionaries in biographies did—move to the ends of the earth, endure trials, and see multitudes saved. He and Ashley graduated, married, welcomed their first baby, and began preparing for the field. To gain experience connecting with Muslims, they volunteered with a ministry reaching out to East African immigrant families through tutoring programs. While David and Ashley enjoyed their stateside ministry, their eyes were firmly fixed on Southeast Asia. They were determined to be one of those missionary families who went to the field, loved it, and stayed forever.

When they arrived in Southeast Asia, Ashley and David faced all the common challenges of starting life over in a new world: language learning, culture shock, and the need to build new relationship networks. During their first rainy season, a roof leak migrated through their house from room to room, dripping from corners and light fixtures and occasionally reducing Ashley to a literal puddle on the floor, crying, “I just want to go back to America where our house never leaked.” However, they both made steady progress in language and culture acquisition and mostly enjoyed the process. Gradually, their lives settled into a rhythm.

As the Moores finished full-time language study, they shifted their focus toward catalyzing house churches among their focus people group. Every week, David and a local believer went to public places to search for spiritually open people. On a few occasions, their outings were marred by what David considered spiritual warfare. His fingers would tingle and then go numb one by one. Or he would see a black blob over the words in the center of his vision as he read Scripture. Medical friends suggested he was having migraines.

One evening, David and a local partner met an elderly man with a history of sorcery, black magic, and violence. Their simple conversation developed into a year-long Bible study from Genesis through the Gospels. The old man began to confess his faith in Jesus in his prayers: “I know you are the Son of God. I know you can forgive my sins. I know you died and rose again.” Watching his transformation crystallized David and Ashley’s ministry vision. They looked forward to investing many years in that type of relationship.

All for Nothing?

At the end of an intense first term, David and Ashley prepared for a home assignment to visit supporters and give birth to another baby. After three years of often thinking, I can’t wait to go home, Ashley now found herself crying over the idea of leaving Asia. They had established a life and ministry they enjoyed. They had deep friendships and a home that felt like a sanctuary. “I want to go home,” Ashley told David, “but I don’t want to go home because this is home.”

When the Moores landed in the US, David’s mom pestered him to see a neurologist about his occasional vision loss and numbness. To humor what he considered her hyper-vigilance, he agreed. The Moores were so confident it was just migraines that Ashley didn’t go to the appointment. David remembers staring at his MRI results in the neurologist’s office, thinking, That glowing white blob on one side of my brain doesn’t seem like something that’s on a normal person’s brain. The doctor assured him, “If you’re going to have a brain tumor, you’ve won the lottery with this one. We should be able to take it out without causing any cognitive deficit.”

While the diagnosis was a shock, David saw it as just one more obstacle to overcome. In his words, “My mindset in encountering obstacles was that you beat them.” He admits that some of that attitude stemmed from pride. When the doctor estimated it would take a year to recover from surgery, David mentally cut that in half. Ashley, however, felt utterly overwhelmed and angry at God. “I just finally decided Southeast Asia is home,” she prayed, “and now this is happening. Why did you even bring us there?”

Distortion and Direction

A few months later, David woke up from surgery with severe double vision that baffled his doctors, since the procedure had gone perfectly. Navigating a distorted view of the world took a huge amount of energy. In January, when the Moores had hoped to be on their way back to Southeast Asia, David was still sleeping 16 hours a day and struggling to function. While his vision eventually improved, other challenges lingered.

Once it became clear that the Moores’ return to the field would be delayed, David signed up for an online ESL certification class which would make it easier for him to get a long-term visa. The class included an in-person student-teaching experience. Even though he was only a few months post-op, David wasn’t concerned since he was a teacher by profession. But during the course, he spent nine hours preparing for each lesson and failed every one of them. He simply couldn’t process and communicate the material.

David was shocked to discover he wasn’t functioning normally. Ashley was not. Ever since the surgery, she had been telling David he was different. “You’re so insensitive,” she insisted, “You’re not showing any empathy at all.” David responded with anger. He had always been analytical rather than emotional. That was nothing new. He couldn’t cope with Ashley’s grief and what felt like unfair accusations.

“We couldn’t wade those waters by ourselves,” David and Ashley realized, so they started intensive marriage counseling. After the ESL teaching disaster, David accepted that his brain surgery had left him with a significant cognitive deficit. That realization, while painful, allowed him to communicate more openly with Ashley. “You’re right,” he admitted, “I’m not the same person anymore.”

For the next two years, the Moores moved their departure back in three-to six-month increments while David worked as a substitute teacher to build his mental stamina. Their oldest daughter’s most common bedtime prayer was still, “God, help us go back to Asia as soon as possible.” But they couldn’t live indefinitely with one foot on each side of the ocean. It was time to make a decision about returning.

Over a Zoom call, the Moores’ pastor and sending organization told David and Ashley they were not in support of them going back to Southeast Asia for the foreseeable future. The Moores gradually came to own that decision and receive it as godly wisdom. They asked themselves, Could God actually care more about molding us to become more like his Son than he cares about our overseas ministry? Ashley felt grief mixed with relief. She wanted to go back to the field, but it also seemed overwhelming. After the relief came panic. How are we going to survive? Ashley is a planner, and they had no plan.

God Gets to Choose

To both David and Ashley’s relief, the uncertainty didn’t last long. A few months earlier, David’s childhood missions pastor had mentioned, “If you need a job here, let me know.” It turned out that he was now overseeing the tutoring ministry for East Africans that the Moores had volunteered with nearly 10 years earlier, which hired David immediately. The Lord had been laying the foundation for the next chapter of the Moores’ ministry for almost a decade. He hadn’t responded as they hoped to their prayers to return to Southeast Asia, but David and Ashley felt him assuring them, I’m still here.

One of the hardest things about not returning was the feeling that they were letting down their national partners. But over the next 18 months, the Moores’ ministry partners in Southeast Asia reported a wave of baptisms and multiplying house churches. “It gave us a lot of peace,” David remembers, “feeling like the work was moving on without us.”

David’s experience working shoulder-to-shoulder with believers in Southeast Asia has forever changed his approach to ministry. When he interacts with the East Africans he serves, he sees himself as a coworker and a learner, not an expert. “I was willing to get on a plane and move somewhere I could do impressive things,” he says. “But am I willing to stay here and let Jesus put my self-righteousness to death?”

For Ashley, her experience overseas impacts her relationships with people who are crossing cultural barriers. One East African mother opened up once she realized Ashley had also lived internationally with children. When the family later decided to leave the US and move to North Africa, she flooded Ashley with questions: “How do you know what to pack? Where do you buy a power adaptor?” And once they landed in their new home, her first text read, “The language barrier is hard. I know you know what that feels like.”

David and Ashley are still committed to the Great Commission, but David has a different perspective now about his part in it. He has come to accept, and even find comfort in the fact that, as he puts it, “God gets to choose how he uses me to bring himself the most glory.”

People on the Move

When I reflect on David and Ashely’s story, and many others like it, I find it reassuring that God not only allows us to bear fruit in each season of ministry but simultaneously prepares us for future stages of fruitfulness in other settings. Nothing is wasted as we prayerfully seek him, even—and maybe especially—in situations beyond our control. I believe that a certain recognition, and perhaps honor, is due to missionaries who have paid a price to establish a life and ministry in one setting and then are willing to start over, whether in their home country or abroad, when circumstances require it. Let’s remember that as God’s people, we are called to a flexible, responsive faithfulness, tenaciously clinging to the God of the unexpected.