“Start praying,” I heard my roommate Brad whisper in my ear as he approached the customs counter. I was filling out an emigration form, preparing to leave a Southeast Asian country.* My ears perked up when I heard the urgency in his voice.
“The taxi driver just finished talking to the guy in uniform,” he continued. Immediately, I knew we could be in trouble, so I began to ask God to let His will be done in the situation. I was pretty confident we would pass through customs smoothly, no questions asked.
I completed my form and headed up to the counter. As customs officials always do, the guy looked down at my passport, then turned his eyes up to examine me more closely. Despite my anxiety I tried to muster a smile to match the one I wore in my picture. He smirked, stamped my passport hard and immediately focused on the next person in line.
I could see the border station about 30 feet away, manned by solemn sentinels armed with steely glares. In just a few short steps, I would be out of the frying pan and into a country where I hadn’t been breaking any laws.
For the three previous days, I had been backpacking around the countryside, traveling by any and every vehicle imaginable. My plan, and that of our eight-man team, was to go into the remote villages of an unreached people-group and distribute VCDs (video compact discs) that showed a Gospel presentation.
Though giving out VCDs seems harmless enough, it is actually against the law in this particular country to distribute religious literature without the government’s permission. And to make matters worse, officials had issued a crackdown against foreigners distributing these materials at the beginning of that month. Talk about timing! We had known the mission could turn out to be dangerous, but we allowed our faith in God to trump our fear of the unknown.
A Few Steps from Freedom
I was the first to make it through the line, so I decided to wait outside until the other three guys were ready. Our team, which had been split into four pairs for our first few days in country, had reunited and split again into groups of four for the last day, the home stretch of a long, stressful journey.
We fragmented the group to avoid attention from the authorities, but we had already had a few run-ins with the guys in green uniforms.
On our first full day, a military checkpoint halted the bus I was riding. After an ID check and a vehicle search, an officer with a gleaming black machine gun waved us on.
Two days later and we were face to face with the authorities again. No guns this time, but I had that same sick fear down in my gut. Nothing was safe until we crossed that border.
My three other team members emerged from the customs area with stamped passports and smiling faces. All together we walked toward the gate.
A few steps from freedom, a stern man blocked our path. He wore the standard military green, but his demeanor set him apart from the other officers. The look in Brad’s eyes told me he was the same one who had spoken to the taxi driver.
“Excuse me,” he said in broken English, “Please come with me.”
We played dumb, looking at each other and shrugging shoulders. Then we followed him into a small, drab room, and he motioned for us to sit on stiff wooden benches.
A few minutes later, he returned with some other officers, each studying us intently. We looked up from our seats, pleading innocence with our eyes.
But Brad and I knew what was really going on.
On our way to the border town, we had asked our cab driver to stop in at least eight villages. We acted like tourists, but our real reason for stopping was to drop VCDs. When we ran out of villages, we tossed the last of our stock out the windows to people on the road.
Our driver saw everything. He was already annoyed by our frequent stops, so he didn’t need any extra motivation to report us. We probably should’ve been more careful, but excitement clouded our judgment.
“We …want … t-to … search your bags,” the head officer stammered.
My stomach started reeling, and not because of the spicy food I’d eaten earlier. There was still a VCD stuffed deep down in my pack.
To make matters worse, Brad had three left in his hip pack, and Steve had a few tucked away in the chest pocket of his wind jacket. If they found all these and connected the dots, we’d be in serious trouble.
Of course, we couldn’t reveal our anxiety, so we played it off, inviting the officers to take their time with the search.
Steve’s bag … clean. Frank’s … good to go. Brad’s … nothing. After an eternity, they reached mine. I felt violated as three of them dug in like hyenas on a freshly killed carcass. After strewing clothes, hiking gear and toiletries everywhere, they finally found what they were looking for—a white CD with foreign writing on it. I kicked myself for not having brought a CD player along. At least then there would be some context.
“Who … this belong to?” the head officer said, pointing at my pack. I raised my hand, and he nodded as if to take a mental note.
“Wait here for few minutes,” he said. “I will listen to this.” He waved the CD at me.
“OK,” I answered. Externally I was calm, but inside I was shaking. I had read many stories about persecution of Christians here, but I never wanted to be this close to experiencing it. My biggest fear wasn’t a flogging. I was most worried that they would block me from returning or, worse yet, mess up our plans to rendezvous with the other four team members across the border.
God’s Perfect Timing
As 15, 30, 40 minutes passed, we turned the interrogation room into a sanctuary, singing hymns and asking God for deliverance.
The officer finally returned. This time he brought an interpreter with him, a girl who couldn’t speak English much better than he could.
“This is religious pr … prop’ganda,” the officer said.
“Really?” I responded.
“Where you get this?” he questioned further.
I answered evasively.
I felt like the apostle Paul, who on more than one occasion had to talk his way out of sticky situations where a wrong answer could have ended his ministry.
For the rest of the interrogation, we gave vague answers, continually acting as if we didn’t know why we were being detained.
Frustrated, with no evidence to incriminate us, he and his posse retreated into the conference area again. The head officer told us he had to wait on a call from his supervisor before he could let us go. They had already stamped our passports, so technically we should have already been released.
After more than two hours, we were finally allowed to leave. A truck carried us into freedom. We spent the next few days riding a wave of adrenaline back to the States, encountering more adventure and thanking God for his deliverance along the way.
In the past two years, God has five times taken me to parts of the world where people have never heard the name Jesus Christ. Each time God has called me out of the comforts of America, He has stretched my faith in more ways than I can describe.
For a long time, I thought Christian growth primarily took place within the walls of the church or through a Bible study lesson. And while I have been a model pupil, I’ve often struggled to experience God in my daily life. I knew I could trust him to teach me principles, but I wanted my faith to be more real, more applicable to my life.
Now don’t get me wrong. A firm biblical foundation is necessary for any lasting spiritual growth. But failing to apply what we’ve learned in our daily lives is like taking a chemistry class without the lab. It took a 20,000-mile field trip and a brush with persecution to learn that Christianity is not a week-to-week religion; it is constant relationship, filled with riveting plot twists and a lot of danger. In a situation like mine, dependence on God wasn’t a choice but a necessity.
God called me to hop a plane and go secret agent for the Gospel. He might simply call you across the street, but the principle remains the same: God’s purposes will inevitably call us off the pew and into real life. I’ve learned that if we embrace risk with obedience, faith and complete reliance on him, God will lead us into adventures that call us beyond the borders of what we thought we could accomplish for His kingdom. 
