I was looking forward to college as the next step in my quest to turn my future hopes into reality. My plans were to study as hard as I did in high school, then attend a top-notch law school and become a top-notch corporate attorney, pursuing the prestige, salary and benefits that accompany such a career. It was my personal version of the American Dream.
“We’re proud of you, Tommy,” my parents would tell me whenever I mentioned my life goals, and their affirmation would send waves of joy inside me, confirming that I was on the right path. They were big supporters of my dream, as immigrants from Taiwan who had high hopes for me, their firstborn son. I was to fulfill all their reasons for coming to America in the first place. College, graduate school, a well-paying job and eventually settling down somewhere with a wife and family—this was the future narrative that I was supposed to follow.
Nothing I learned through my days and years in Sunday school or youth group ever challenged my dream. I thought the formula for being a committed Christian was simple: declare Jesus as your personal Savior, experience God’s unbounded grace and forgiveness, and receive his blessings on your life. I had served God faithfully in the church, I had been a longtime leader in my youth group, and I thought that continuing to serve God in the corporate world was his will for me. Achieving my dream would demonstrate God’s blessings to me, a comfortable reward for a lifetime of following him.
Yet now my life looks nothing like what I was expecting it would become. Instead of joining the business world after college, I went into vocational ministry. Instead of earning the comfortable salary of a corporate attorney, I have to raise my own financial support. Instead of spending my professional life in sleek American office buildings, I have found myself spending years in the frigid grasslands and slums of Mongolia, where the average daily winter temperatures are -40°F, and where staple American brands such as Starbucks and McDonald’s are nowhere in sight.
And looking back, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Over the years, just as the world has dramatically changed since the 1980s, my personal dream has undergone radical transformation. I used to be a young American focused on my own dreams of self-actualization, but now my life goal is to help as many young people as possible recognize God’s dream for them: to be his ambassadors in a world that desperately needs to know about his love and grace. I can take no credit for this transformation. Only God was able to change my dream of self-blessing into one of blessing the nations.
Letting Go of the Dream
As a first-year student at Harvard University, I spent my first six months focused on anything but God. I shaped my identity around my multi-million-dollar American dream, which meant I needed to study all the time, in order to get all A’s, in order to become the valedictorian, in order to gain acceptance to a top-notch law school. But the more I chased after this dream, the emptier I felt.
Then I reencountered Jesus through the ministry of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. In particular, studying the book of Mark proved to be a transformational experience, especially the story of the young adult in chapter 10:
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’ ”“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
This wealthy, young ruler wanted a checklist from Jesus as a way to affirm what he had already been doing in his life. But Jesus sees right through his intentions and challenges him to do something much harder than he was expecting. “You want to follow me? You want that eternal life? Go and sell everything, your stock, your mansions, give it to the poor and then come follow me.”
The young man is shocked and leaves in tears because his identity has been rooted in his wealth, which makes it nearly impossible to leave behind. And the more I spent time with this passage, the more I realized that I had much in common with this young man. I had been a Christian for years, I had kept all God’s commandments, but I did not understand that Jesus was asking me to aim for a much higher standard.
I felt as though Jesus was speaking directly to me, his words boring straight into my heart, mind and soul. “I have a mission for you, Tom. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” He was asking me to leave behind my worldly pursuits, my aspirations for a lucrative and financially secure future. He was asking me to leave behind my dreams.
The Gospel of Mark challenged and transformed me and my understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. I recommitted my life to him at that time, giving the Lord full control of all my time, finances and future. After experiencing the impact of campus ministry in my own life, I soon wanted to serve other students on campus in the same way. By senior year, while my peers were preparing for postcollege jobs in prestigious fields and careers, I was moving in the opposite direction, toward a career in campus ministry.
Embracing a Global Vision
In 1997 I met a young woman through whom God began to challenge my American-centric ministry focus. Nancy had a heart and passion for overseas missions, and we began dating. Soon after, she asked me a pivotal question: “Would you ever consider serving overseas?”
I responded without hesitation. “No, I want to be with Americans. I love America!”
Although I had grown up in the church, I had never heard about the need to care for the rest of the world. Even while doing full-time campus ministry at Harvard and then Boston University, I was closed to going anywhere outside the United States. I didn’t care about any other nation except the one I was living in. I realize now that I had succumbed to an idolatrous “America first” attitude, focusing only on those I...