My father died of COVID on January 4th of last year. My mother died of COVID just 48 hours and 3 minutes later. At the time, losing both parents within two days of each other felt like far more than I could take.

The depth of the grief and shock that my brothers and I felt was compounded because we had to tell Mom of Dad’s death over FaceTime. It was the most difficult conversation I have ever had, and we are fairly certain that the devastating news of her husband’s death contributed significantly to her dying so soon after. Having been separated for a week by two hospital floors, she lost the man who loved her most without getting the opportunity to say goodbye.

I share the circumstances of my parents’ deaths because I believe they highlight the kind of man and husband my father was.

In Health and in Sickness

For nearly 56 years, my father loved my mother with a fierce, self-sacrificing love — in health and in sickness.

“For nearly 56 years, my father loved my mother with a fierce, self-sacrificing love — in health and in sickness.”

My mother was seriously ill for well over half of their marriage. When I was 15, she was days away from dying from ulcerated colitis, which she had battled for several years by that point. If not for God putting her in the hospital that had the only surgeon in the country who was capable of doing this particular life-saving surgery, she would have died.

In those many months of suffering, I witnessed my father lovingly care for her when the pain was so severe that the only relief she could fathom was to die and be with the Lord. He was a full-time music professor during the week and was our church’s music minister on Sundays. And he was always a very present father for his three sons. When I was 15, my father’s care for my mother was daily marked by a love I could observe but not fathom.

In 1999, my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. Once again, her suffering was intense, and his care was remarkable. My wife and I were teachers at the time, and we were off for the summer, so we decided to take the nine-hour drive to live with them for a month. Oh, what a month it was. His loving care for my mother in her sickness remained indomitable. He loved; I marveled.

And in Humility

Lest my reflections above tempt you to think that my father didn’t struggle with temptation and sin, he did something that has impacted me even more than his love for my mother. I actually believe it holds the key to understanding how he loved the way he did.

Throughout the entirety of my growing-up years, from elementary through high school, if my father realized he had sinned against me (or my brothers), he would come to me and say something like, “Daniel, I was wrong to do/say that. Would you please forgive me for sinning against you?” My father never merely apologized. If he thought that he had sinned against me, he asked me for forgiveness.

Every time my father did that, my admiration and respect for him grew. Here is a man, I thought, who walks in humility before God and others. Even more than his fierce love for my mother, my father asking his sons for forgiveness has impacted and shaped me, mainly because of what it revealed to me about his God.

Skies of Parchment Made

My father was a consummate musician. I remember him telling us boys of the time when Stan Kenton, the king of big bands in the 1940s and 50s, recruited him to play trumpet for him. For all the love my father had for jazz, though, he loved sacred music all the more.

For decades, my father taught music in Christian colleges, and while he did that, he would also lead worship on Sundays at our church. My mother would play the piano while he would direct the choir and lead corporate worship.

This was back in the days when churches would have “special music” in the worship service. Over the many years I heard my father sing solos, the song that left the deepest impression upon me (and I probably heard him sing it over twenty times) was the song “The Love of God” by Frederick M. Lehman.

The love of God is greater farThan tongue or pen can ever tell.It goes beyond the highest starAnd reaches to the lowest hell.The guilty pair, bowed down with care,God gave his Son to win;His erring child he reconciledAnd pardoned from his sin.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,And were the skies of parchment made;Were every stalk on earth a quill,And every man a scribe by trade;To write the love of God aboveWould drain the ocean dry;Nor could the scroll contain the whole,Though stretched from sky to sky.

Every time he sang it, my heart would burn within me. This is the song that revealed what made my father’s heart tick. He was a man who saw the love of the Father written large, and he couldn’t get over it. Whenever he sung of the Father’s love, you knew he was singing “to the praise of [the Father’s] glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6).

Fuel of His Love

Often, when I think of my father, my mind goes to Luke 7, where we read of the sinful woman who shed tears on Jesus’s feet. She “wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment” she brought with her (Luke 7:38).

When confronted by a Pharisee for letting a sinful woman touch him, Jesus says to him, “I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven — for she loved much” (Luke 7:47). Jesus is not saying that the woman was forgiven because she loved much. No, he’s saying that the evidence she was forgiven was that she loved much.

If we say, “Summer has come, for the temperature has reached 100 degrees,” we do not mean that summer has come because of the high temperature. We mean that the evidence of the arrival of summer is the scorching heat. Or, to say it a different way, the effect of summer is 100-degree weather. My father’s love for my mother and the humility needed to ask me for forgiveness was the evidence and effect of the Father’s great love for him, by which he was forgiven of all his sins. He loved much because he had been forgiven much.

What More Could a Son Want?

Over the many decades that I watched my father care for my mother, God the Father had graciously given me a regular glimpse of something of what it meant for Christ to love the church and give himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25). My father loved my mother like he did because he couldn’t get over how Christ had loved him.

“My father loved my mother like he did because he couldn’t get over how Christ had loved him.”

But that kind of love wasn’t limited to my mother; it spilled over into how he loved his sons — into how he loved me. My father was kind to me, tenderhearted, forgiving me, and humbling himself to ask for my forgiveness, because God in Christ had forgiven him (Ephesians 4:32). He was unwaveringly humble because he knew just how much mercy he had received in Christ.

As I look back on my father’s life, it’s clear to me that he was carried by love — not by a love of his own making, but by the love of the Father in Christ Jesus, poured into his heart through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).

Oh, how I miss him. In my eyes, his life was lived to the praise of the Father’s glorious grace. What more could a son want?

“We shouldn’t be here.”

As my wife stepped into our home after a full morning of language study, I greeted her with these four hasty words. While she was conjugating verbs, I had been doing some studying of my own. After only a few months in the country, I was certain we weren’t fit to be missionaries.

I explained to her that we had been neither adequately trained for the task nor affirmed by a local church. “We should go home,” I abruptly concluded. My wife agreed with my convictions, yet she reasonably talked me off the ledge of a rash decision. We had, after all, committed to serve our team for two years. Surely God could use the remainder of our time to mature us and even make our labors fruitful.

Her counsel was wise. We stayed to finish our term and, in his kind providence, God did develop us in significant ways. We were folded into membership at a local church in our city, and the pastor discipled me until we returned to the United States to attend seminary.

While I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything, I remain convinced that we were neither sufficiently equipped nor properly affirmed to be missionaries. Why would I suggest that? We both regularly practiced the spiritual disciplines, we were not coddling habitual sins, we loved the gospel, and we had previously spent time overseas. Why, then, had I become convinced that the title “missionary” was not ours to own? The answer boils down to this: we were not sent out from a local church to contribute strategically to the Great Commission.

Missionaries as Sent Ones

Our English word “missionary” comes from the Latin missio, a translation of the Greek verb apostellō. Apostellō refers to sending someone out to accomplish an objective. Bible readers are most familiar with the noun form of this verb, apostolos, transliterated into English as “apostle.” In the New Testament, the word apostolos does not only refer to the official apostles, Jesus’s specially appointed spokesmen, but also, in other contexts, to “messengers” sent out by the church to fulfill specific responsibilities in advancing Christ’s mission.

These all followed the pattern of Jesus, “the apostle and high priest of our confession,” who, sent by the Father, faithfully came to do his Father’s will on earth (Hebrews 3:1–2; John 6:38; 20:21). Like the sent Savior, a missionary is a “sent one.” And being sent, of course, requires a sender. There is no such thing as a self-commissioned missionary.

So, who sends missionaries? The Spirit of Christ is the primary sending agent for gospel laborers (Acts 8:29; 11:12; 13:4). Nevertheless, the New Testament also sets forth the pattern of missionaries being affirmed and sent by local churches (Acts 13:1–3; 15:40). Just as congregations call and affirm their own elders and deacons, so too their members test and commission those desiring to labor among the nations.

Since each local church determines whom they send, neither I nor anyone else has authority to create some across-the-board criteria of missionary qualifications. However, I would suggest three general characteristics a local church and its elders might look for in those they commission.

1. Love for the Church

One of my seminary professors once said, “Penultimate to worship, the local church is the fuel and goal of missions.” In other words, healthy local churches are the instrument and intended result of missions. Ideal missionary candidates, then, are meaningful members of a specific local church who desire to see healthy, reproducing congregations among the nations.

I have met Christians, even missionaries, who love Christ and claim to love his bride, yet fail to put this love to work by committing to build up and submit to a local church. However, biblical instructions regarding church discipline (Matthew 18:15–20; 1 Corinthians 5:1–12) and elder-congregant relationships (Acts 20:28; 1 Timothy 5:17–19; Hebrews 13:17; 1 Peter 5:1–5) assume that the universal church will organize itself into local assemblies with identifiable members. God calls Christians to gather and commit themselves to each other in local churches as a way of protecting and preserving his people and his word. Therefore, as a starting place, future missionaries should be faithful members of their local church.

Furthermore, missionaries need to know what a biblical church is, what it does, and the central role it plays in the Great Commission. The conviction that local churches are God’s kingdom outposts, designed precisely for advancing the name of Christ among the nations, is critical for those who aim to advance this work.

A full scriptural defense of the essential characteristics of a local church is beyond the scope of this article, but local-church leaders can help aspiring missionaries by providing a definition. For example, my church’s elder affirmation of faith defines a local church as a group of believers who “agree together to hear the word of God proclaimed, to engage in corporate worship, to practice the ordinances . . . to build each other’s faith through the manifold ministries of love, to hold each other accountable in the obedience of faith through biblical discipline, and to engage in local and world evangelization.”

If aspiring missionaries can’t explain and defend the basic elements of a church according to Scripture, they are not yet ready to plant or strengthen local churches overseas.

2. Knowledge of God’s Word

Explicit communication of God’s word is central to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20). Therefore, global gospel laborers need deep roots in Scripture and the ability to articulate sound doctrine to others.

First, future missionaries should be personally transformed and increasingly sanctified by God’s word. The sacrificial love of Christ will form the central content of their missionary message. Missionaries faithful to this message will live in a manner that demonstrates deep gratitude for and dependence upon the gospel of Christ. Love for that gospel and that Christ will fuel their missionary ambitions.

In preparing candidates for missionary service, one of the local church’s tasks is to observe ongoing growth in godliness. Many churches have sent young people zealous for missions but lacking in spiritual maturity. Churches would do well, then, to ask a few diagnostic questions:

Does the word of God order their affections and behaviors?
Do they fight sin by the power and promises of the word?
Are their minds set on things above, or do they waste their time with social media and worldly anxieties?

Questions like these provide important data points for churches as they aim to send missionaries who are devoted to the truth, increasingly conformed to the image of Christ, and exemplary models for others.

Second, prospective missionaries need to know God’s word well enough to communicate it faithfully and effectively to others. Missions is fundamentally theological work. It requires missionaries to proclaim truth and teach others to know and follow Christ. The ability to faithfully explain sound doctrine and the meaning of biblical texts is not secondary to this task. Theological error, confusion, and syncretism easily arise in places where the gospel is newly advancing. This danger should encourage churches to send theologically astute members to lay solid foundations for the church in unreached regions of the world.

Sending churches can seek to discern candidates’ giftedness for proclamatory ministry by asking questions like these:

How frequently, clearly, and boldly do they share the gospel with others?
Can they give examples of people they’ve discipled and what that discipleship looked like?
Are they able and willing to gain fluency in another language and culture for the purpose of clear and credible communication of Christian doctrine?
Would we entrust them to teach in our Sunday assembly or in our Sunday school classes?

3. Fitness for the Task

Many influential evangelical voices have appealed to any and every Christian to consider becoming a missionary. Unfortunately, the emphasis on urgency sometimes overshadows the importance of sending those who are mature and competent.

The Bible does not call every Christian to be a missionary. Instead, it suggests that certain types of people will make good missionaries according to the abilities God gives them (Romans 12:6). The apostle John tells us that we ought to support gospel laborers “like these” or, more literally, “ones of such a kind” (3 John 8). We are wise to preserve a distinct category for those who go out “for the sake of the name” as evangelists, disciple-makers, church planters, and teachers (3 John 7). Churches can seek to use Spirit-led reason and judgment to determine which members they might faithfully send and what roles they might be best suited for.

Church leaders would do well to patiently observe the faithfulness and fruitfulness of members who aspire to minister cross-culturally. Just because someone desires the task does not mean he is competent for it. Discernment will come as churches fan the flames of those desires and test candidates’ zeal by guiding them toward robust preparation. If they endure and demonstrate effectiveness, churches can give them greater responsibilities and opportunities to develop. Asking pointed questions, calling attention to character flaws, challenging them toward growth, and watching how they respond form important aspects of this preparation.

At the end of the day, the nations need those your church would prefer not to lose — the people you would hire on staff, recommend for church office, or entrust with a major ministry area. We are not wise stewards if we send the unprepared and immature to the nonexistent or fledgling church abroad while we stack our own church staffs with the equipped and gifted. Be willing to dispatch to the nations those you’ve poured countless hours into, those you’ve seen grow in ministry effectiveness, those who have a proven track record of holiness and faithfulness to the word.

King Jesus transforms the nations through ordinary believers — each with weaknesses and sin struggles. But let us not use this as an excuse to send ill-equipped and premature people to the front lines of this work. If our goal in missions is to proclaim the gospel, make disciples, and gather them into healthy local churches, we will send people who love the church, know the word, and are fit for the task.

Over the years, I have talked with several Christians who have told me they wanted to die. They were of different ages and different ethnicities; they had different personalities and different reasons. But they each concluded that death was better for them now than life.

It took courage to bring into the open the secret thoughts of death. Many others could not relate. Most of humanity had only run from the dread that gained on them moment by moment. Few had felt the impulse to stop, turn, and welcome the beast as a friend.

Now these, again, were Christian men and women. They knew the horror of self-murder. They knew such a crime was not a romantic gesture between teenage lovers, but a heinous sin against the Author of life. When suicidal ruminations sought to guide them to another exit, even amid debilitating and cruel circumstances, they knew to resist Satan’s suggestions. By faith, they would continue, one foot in front of the other, until their all-wise Father brought them home. And a few had prayed for just that.

“If you have asked God to take your life, the first thing to realize is that you are not alone.”

If you have asked God to take your life, one of the first truths to realize is that you are not alone.

God has heard such petitions before. For different reasons, at different times, from different pits, men and women of God have prayed to be taken away. And the prayers we find in Scripture come not just from normal saints like us, but from the ones we would least expect to struggle with this life: leaders and heroes of God’s people.

Consider a few men of God, then, whose prayers the Holy Spirit captured to remind us we are not alone and, more importantly, to witness how our kind and gracious God deals with his own at their lowest.

Job: The Despairing Father

Oh that I might have my request, and that God would fulfill my hope, that it would please God to crush me, that he would let loose his hand and cut me off! (Job 6:8–9)

I wager that anguished prayers for death are the most common. They come in the winter of life, when even songbirds are too cold to sing.

Job, a righteous man without rival on earth (Job 1:8), now sits in the ashes, boils rising on his skin, surrounded by accusing friends, and plagued with a heart too heavy to carry. His shards of a prayer rise from the ruins of a former life: all his wealth gone, many of his servants slain, and what was more, all ten of his children buried beneath a house, collapsed by a great wind.

Job, staggering with grief, curses the day of his birth: “Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived’” (Job 3:3). He muses aloud, “Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they find the grave?” (Job 3:20–22). Death now glitters as a treasure, wafts as sweetness. He sees no reason to wait.

Perhaps you, like Job, know great loss. Perhaps you sit in the rubble, scorned by former days and missing loves. You can’t bear any more; you gaze ahead into an endless night. Hope has turned its back. Consider afresh that God has not.

“Continue believing. Continue trusting. This dark night is preparing for you an eternal weight of glory.”

The Lord denied Job’s request. He had more compassion to give, more mercy, more communion, more repentance, even more children waiting on the other side. Job couldn’t yet imagine how his life might turn out to glorify God’s grace, as James summarizes: “You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11).

Some sufferers may not find comfort in the fairy-tale ending of Job, but his renewed fortunes foreshadow not even half of yours in Christ. Continue believing. Continue trusting. This dark night is preparing for you an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). Scars will do more than heal there.

Moses: The Weary Leader

If you will treat me like this, kill me at once. (Numbers 11:15)

This is the second prayer for death we overhear from Moses on his long journey with the people. The first comes in his intercession for them following the golden-calf rebellion (Exodus 32:32). Here, he prays for death as an overburdened, fed-up leader.

The rescued people of Israel, with sores still mending and Egypt still within view, complain “about their misfortunes.”

Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at. (Numbers 11:4–6)

Ingratitude has warped their minds. Their memories suggest that slavery included a seafood buffet; meanwhile, the free miracle bread had grown bitter and bland. Did Moses really expect them to settle for second chef?

The ingrates fix their eyes on Moses, mutinously mumbling about how much they missed Egypt. Moses looks up to God, and exclaims,

I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness. (Numbers 11:14–15)

Notice again God’s gracious answer. He does not kill Moses, but instead provides seventy elders to aid him in his work, giving these men some of his Spirit. And for added measure, God promises to feed Israel meat — so much meat that it will come out of their nostrils and they will begin to loathe it (Numbers 11:20).

If you weary under burdens too heavy for your feeble arms to carry, and could wish to die at times, see the God of Moses. Lean into him in prayer. Your compassionate Father will provide help to alleviate your load and hold up your arms to give victory.

Jonah: The Angry Messenger

Please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. (Jonah 4:3)

The merciless prophet Jonah baffles many when they read the book bearing his name. He shows a calloused determination that Nineveh, capital city of Israel’s enemy the Assyrians, not receive mercy from God but rather destruction. He refuses to be an instrument of their salvation.

God had renewed him after sailing away from his calling. God had rescued him from drowning in the sea. God had given him refreshing shade as he waited outside the city to watch it burn. Yet Jonah still would not put away his hatred. When he realized no doom would descend,

It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (Jonah 4:1–3)

Few in the West today face the temptation to want a whole people destroyed. The Assyrians were a brutal people — brutal to Jonah’s people. But perhaps we often murder in our hearts those who have wronged us. While they live, our life rots. To this, the Lord responds, again, patiently and compassionately, giving us shade while we scorch, asking us as a long-suffering Father, “Do you do well to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4).

Most of the time, we do not do well. This prayer for death is foolish. Repentance is required. Go to your Father for help to extend that impossible forgiveness that you most freely received from him, that you might be able to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).

Elijah: The Fearful Prophet

[Elijah] was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life. . . . And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” (1 Kings 19:3–4)

We can attest truly that here stands one with a like nature to ours (James 5:17). Notice that this moment follows Elijah’s finest hour. The prophet of God won the showdown with Ahab and the 450 prophets of Baal. God rains down fire in front of all Israel to show that a true prophet walks among them.

Or runs among them. After Jezebel hears that he had the 450 prophets of Baal killed, she vows to add Elijah to that number. “Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life” (1 Kings 19:3). The hunted prophet hides in the wilderness, sits under a tree, tries to sleep, and prays not to wake: “O Lord, take my life.”

Do you pray for death because you fear those living? Jesus tells us, “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do” (Luke 12:4). Beyond this, the story of Elijah invites us to survey our last year or our last week or our yesterday for reasons, often conspicuous, to continue entrusting ourselves to a faithful Creator while doing good.

God, again, deals compassionately with Elijah. He calls him to rise and eat, provides a fresh meal for him in the wilderness, and gives provision for the journey ahead (1 Kings 19:5–8). Notice also the smiling kindness of God to Elijah in that the prophet, though threatened with death and praying for death, never dies (2 Kings 2:11–12).

Paul: The Eager Apostle

My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. (Philippians 1:23)

God’s predominant response to those men of God who prayed for death is fatherly compassion.

Whether you be Jonah-like and tempted to despise God’s mercy toward others, or you cry out under your burdens like Moses, or run for your life like Elijah, or yearn for relief like Job, consider your gracious God. He meets Job with himself and a new beginning, Moses with seventy men to help, Jonah with a plant for shade, Elijah with food and drink for the journey ahead.

And God himself, after all, through the finished work of his Son and the recreating work of his Spirit, turns death into an eager expectation for us, does he not? That enemy death must ferry us into that world for which we were remade.

The apostle Paul, though not praying for death, shows us a redeemed perspective on our last foe.

To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. (Philippians 1:21–23)

We too can turn, face the monster in God’s perfect timing, and embrace it with a peace the world does not know. We too have a healthy longing to depart from this earth and be with Christ. We too have the Spirit, who inwardly groans as we await the consummation of our hope (Romans 8:23). We too pray, “Maranatha!” and long for this world’s last night because we long for this world’s new beginning.

We do not long to die for death’s sake, nor merely to escape our troubles, but we do ache for an unending life with Christ that lies on the other side of sleep, and which we can taste more and more, even now, through his word and Spirit.