Wade Burleson has a wonderful blog that, if you haven’t checked it out yet, you need to read. Today he had a very thought-provoking post about the tension between mission and military success.

"It bothers me that I am not bothered by the death of by the Islamic fantatics [sic]. I wonder if we in the Christian West are in danger of becoming just like the Muslims in the East."

That statement resonated deep within me. I think sometimes people think I’m either a rabid military fanatic because of my support for them and what they are trying to do in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, or they think I’m a weepy wimp for my grieving over the lives lost in the wars and conflicts going on right now. I sometimes confuse myself for all the emotions running around inside me. There is definitely a tension between the side of me that cries out for justice (and perhaps revenge?) for what the terrorists do and the side of me that just cries out for the lives taken in any military action, including those of the terrorists.

I wasn’t always this conflicted, this emotionally wacky, when it comes to the people of the Arab world. There was a time when it evoked only one emotion. But to explain, I need to start in the middle.

God asked me to go to NAME the spring before 9/11. It was a bit of a shock to me, as I’d spent most of my time in China or Japan and was actually on a 4-month assignment in India when He asked — I mean, if God’s going to send me overseas, I just assumed it would be one of the countries and peoples He’d already planted in my heart. But God’s ways are just a little different than mine….

Anyway, I thought little of His place of choice, other than the oddness of where it was not, until the weekend after the towers fell in 2001.

I remember that as I watched the twin towers fall and the fires in the Pentagon rage something deep within my soul cried out, "Father forgive them! They don’t know what they are doing." I kept repeating that all day long. And my heart grieved not only for the people in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and all their families, but also for the pilots of the planes. They had started the morning thinking they were going to enter Paradise, and be celebrated as heroes. They ended it stepping before Almighty God and being found guilty of grievous sins and not allowed into Paradise for all eternity.

I grieved for what they had done unknowingly yet purposefully.

That weekend however, a great rage grew in my heart. And that Sunday night I sat at Urban listening to Erwin talk about the week’s events and reading from Isaiah 6, and hearing God whisper to me, "will you go? I want you to go to them," and my heart burned with rage and my face burned with tears. An absolute rage and built inside me early in the weekend and came bursting forth like a roaring wildfire in the dry hills of Malibu in October, just consuming everything in its sight. And the tears flowed as I realized just how much hatred had grown in my heart for a people I’d never even met. In my teen years I watched "America Held Hostage" (it later became "Nightline") night after night. I watched Iranians burn American flags and effigies of my President(s) and scream about the infidel Americans and how awful we were and how we must be wiped off the face of the earth. Since that time I’d harbored a deep, deep anger, even hatred, for Arabs in general and Muslims in specific, and I didn’t even know it. Until that Sunday in September 2001.

And on that same night, I heart God whisper to me, "will you go? I want you to go."

Why in the world was God calling me to NAME?? Why was He calling me to be His advocate, His ambassador, His intercessor, for these hateful, hateful people? My mind was consumed with pictures of them as ugly, mean and… hateful… people. And I hated them. I’d never known that about myself till the weekend after 9/11. But it was true down to the core of my being. I hated them, with a passion, and did not want to share Jesus with them at all. And yet here is God asking me to go to them and share the Gospel with them??? Did He not realize what was in my heart? —- Though I didn’t think of the similarities at the time, as I type this now it conjures up images of Jonah, and the shock and confusion he must felt when God asked Him to go to Nineveh.

I struggled and struggled with my anger and hatred — I couldn’t believe I had such a ugly feelings for people I’d never met. I’d never felt that way before. Never realized I was even capable of such deep hatred.

And I fought with God over His "wisdom" in asking me to go. One day He finally grabbed my face in His hands and quietly said, "who better to go than you? Than someone who for so long has hated but will someday love them as I do."

Yeah, I thought that was pretty wacked too. But it turns out… perhaps He was right…

In the following months, as I prepared to go, and the year I spent in the region, God did something I never thought possible. He turned my hate into crazy love, my anger into sorrow and tears, and my questioning of His wisdom into begging Him to rain down and drench NAME with blessing upon blessing. It didn’t come all at once. It came in slow increments. But it came. I learned about the cultures. I learned about Islam. I learned about God’s love for the people. And one day I realized, I loved these people. I cared about them and I wept over them.

All I did was ask God to give me His love for them, since I had none of my own. And I said, "yes. If You want me to go, I’ll go. I think You’re crazy, but I’ll go."

I remember spending many nights in my flat in Cyprus on my knees crying out to God to "let it rain on NAME," on all its peoples; to open the floodgates of heaven and drench them with His love and grace and mercy; to wrap them in His arms and whisper His love and His Truth to them; the Truth of who they really are, the people He sees them as, not the people the enemy has tricked them into believing they are. My heart ached and burned with passion, with love, for the people I once hated.

Only God can do that.

Even though I no longer serve that region as a paid advocate (missionary), I still serve them through my prayers, and through my conversations with people about the region and its people; the beauty not only of the land, but of all its peoples with all their diversity of cultures and religions. I guess you could kind of say I left part of my heart in Northern Africa and the Middle East, and God planted NAME deep within the rest of my heart still in me.

I used to not have any problem with killing terrorists. Now, even though I realize that sometimes their deaths are necessary for the safety of thousands, my heart grieves every time one dies.

Isn’t that weird? And yet kinda cool at the same time.