The Star Trek Calling: What to Do When You’re Led to Go Where No One Has Gone Before
Many of my friends have what I call, “The Star Trek Calling.” They go where no person has gone before. They cross borders. Push boundaries. Explore uncharted frontiers.
Perhaps I’m describing you.
Those with The Star Trek Calling travel to places in time and space where others don’t venture and create what remains invisible to everyone else. The instigator is God.
Sometimes these friends move forward on a holy nudge, a sacred whim, an unshakable prodding. They develop programs, nonprofits, foundations, blogs, books, outreaches. The follow a long obedience in the same direction which disrupts the status quo of pain and poverty, abuse and exploitation.
My friends, Dave and Amy Terpstra, told me years ago that they sensed the nudge to move to Mozambique to love, serve, and become part of the culture. They moved their kids, their lives, their everything to this less-than-safe nation. They soon discovered that many of the women who wanted to escape sex trafficking didn’t have alternative work options.
Dave and Amy observed that many of the women in the culture couldn’t afford bras. He created a non-profit called Free the Girls which invites people to donate their gently used bras. These are shipped to Africa where they are washed, repaired, and sold by women leaving sex trafficking. You can watch a CNN special about their story HERE and learn more to donate your bras HERE.
Move to Africa. Import used bras. Use the sales to liberate women from sex trafficking.
Who does that?
Someone with The Star Trek Calling.
Or consider my friend, Jennie Allen and her team with IF:Gathering who envisioned drawing a generation of women together to pursue Jesus. Within a handful of years, her organization is helping disciple hundreds of thousands of women around the world.
Or take my friend, Kathy Sturgeon, who while riding her bike was mowed down by a drunk driver. Despite a brain injury and physical limitations, she continues to reach out others with brain injuries as a source of encouragement, hope, and inspiration. She courageously stepped into a land, a place, of life-giving service she never saw for herself.
Sometimes The Star Trek Calling takes us to lands and places and people we never imagined on the other side of the world. Sometimes the nudges take us next door or into our neighborhoods.
But the result is the same: God leads us to new frontiers in our lives and the lives of others.
In Acts 8, we find followers of Jesus entering new frontiers. Spaces and place the Gospel hasn’t spread before.
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After the brutiful death of Stephen, the church scatters. The miracles that accompanied Jesus and the disciples and the 72 and Peter now take place with Philip. Unclean spirits scream and vanish. Those with atrophied muscles walk. Even a misguided man named Simon repents. The city rejoices. Side note: Luke-Acts loves expressions of joy.
Then an angel of the Lord tells Philip to go somewhere strange.
“Get up and go south on the road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza.” –Acts 8:26
Philip must “go south.” This sounds vague until you realize the Greek phrase can be translated at noon.
That’s even vaguer.
This makes the divine command even more puzzling and perplexing, because no one wanted to travel in the high heat of the day. The road went south from Jerusalem to Hebron, then west toward Gaza.
This is a desert road.
The middle of nowhere. A new frontier. Instructed by an angel of God.
Yet in that space and place, Philip opens an Ethiopians eyes and heart the power and presence of Christ.
Sometimes I want God to lead me down the well-worn path that feels safe and sturdy and requires less dependence.
But God keeps nudging me and you and those you know toward spaces and places and people who need Jesus and His transforming power.
Who do you know who has The Star Trek Calling? Where is God calling you into a place where few have gone before?
