By: Krista Fox
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE MAY/JUNE 2014 ISSUE OF Shout! OUTDOOR LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE. EDITED BY MATT EVANS.
Ever feel like you’re supposed to be somewhere else? Krista Fox, her husband Kyle and family listened to God calling them away from their familiar and out to sea to serve as missionaries on a sailboat and share Christ’s love and hope with others. This is their story.
I thought I had an attitude problem. One day, not too long ago, I found myself sitting in church wanting to be somewhere else. For some, this could be inconsequential, but for me and my family this was a big deal. My husband and I were active leaders in our community church, one we helped plant, and one that my husband was also an assistant pastor for.
To feel that my heart was changing towards where we were didn’t quite make sense to me. We were plugged into a church with great families, solid Bible teaching, a place which had been filled with people that we considered our family. So, I prayed. I prayed that God would show me what to do. I prayed that if it was an attitude problem that it would be exposed and God and I could work through it. I also prayed that if this wasn’t an attitude that my husband’s heart would change to meet me where mine was at. I prayed for our God to unite our hearts in one calling together. I decided to keep this specific prayer to myself and let God work it out, and He did.
I would love to say that I prayed these things with utmost confidence, but I didn’t. I was fairly convinced that this desire was not really a desire, but a problem one that I would have to get over and forget about and move ahead serving faithfully where I was at, and so I did; however, after a very short time it was clear that my husband’s heart was beginning to change, he too was wanting to serve in a different capacity.
THE CALLING SERVE ON A SAILBOAT AS MISSIONARIES
I could have never, on my own, changed my husband’s desire for serving and focus it somewhere else. He was the guy that was at everything church related, he was at church early and stayed late, he took calls through the night and made visits to hurting people and families whenever there was a need. I loved how much he cared for the people in our lives and in the church. God was moving us on though.
God has called my family and I out into His world. He has placed a desire in our hearts to leave our home and cars, our family and friends, our church, jobs and anything that resembles anything comfortable, familiar and/or normal. He has called us to give up all of these things for a time to explore His world and to love His people. My husband and I, along with our two kids, have a vision of moving onto a sail boat and sailing around the world as missionaries.
As we pray and prepare ourselves for what is next, it’s been amazing to look back over the years and see the preparation that has had to happen for us to be on this path. Not just what God had to do with us as a family or a married couple, but how He has had to work through myself as well. At times, this journey of sanctification has been hard, and other times it has been freeing. I am pleased to know that the work God has started in me is not done and He is faithful to finish what He has begun, “…being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ…” (Philippians 1:6, NKJV).
God has asked me to do and give up many things over the years. While I never knew at the time why I was being asked to do these things, I trusted God and His plan. Over three years ago, I was a professional therapist with a private practice. At the onset of this reached goal, God asked me to consider taking my kids out of their school and to homeschool them; although, I never had the slightest inclination to homeschool my kids prior to this.
God was not forceful in this request, He simply asked me to consider the possibility. So, I considered it and prayed about it, and soon thereafter I had a desire in my heart to bring my kids home from their schools and teach them myself. God’s desire for me and my family had become mine as well because He had changed my heart. In my naivety, I assumed that this choice was a great self sacrifice on my part, one I was willing to do, for the sake of my kids. However, I had not considered that this was not only for the benefit of my children, but God had things He needed to work through and in me, and He knew it would take my kids for Him to work on some very deep places in my heart.
After some time of trying to juggle being a new homeschool family and being an owner and therapist in my small private practice, I began to hear that small voice suggest something I did not want to hear. God again asked me to consider something I would not have thought of on my own. He quietly suggested that I close my therapy practice. The thought of closing my office could only have been equated in my mind, at that time, of giving up on a dream just attained. I was devastated. My degrees, my business, my independence had not only given me some sense of normalcy, it was part of my identity.
I wasn’t just a homeschool mom or pastor’s wife, I was a therapist, a business owner, a highly educated woman, and that had given me a great sense of accomplishment because it was my own. The only problem with this was that it was not what God wanted me to identify myself with. So I prayed, and God’s will once again became mine as realized that I did want to close my practice, and I was beginning to look forward to not being pulled in so many different directions.
God answered that prayer swiftly. I simply walked out of my office one day praying for His will to be done, and it was. He worked out all the details, and unbeknownst to me that day I walked out praying, it was to be my last time there. God moved swiftly and efficiently once again, and I followed His leading.
God knew where He was going to take me and my family and where He wants us to go, my only job was to trust His leading. Through these acts of obedience I was drawing closer to where He wanted me to go. Each step of faith, some small some large, was preparing me for the very large step of faith I am currently at. Sell everything and go. Had I not been faithful to God’s leading in these other areas of my life, I do not believe that I would have been able to trust God with my life as I do now. Had I not experienced His working in my life first hand, this idea of selling everything comfortable and normal to me would just be too crazy of an idea to entertain.
Through these acts of obedience, which have resulted in a deeper trust and faith in the One leading, God is showing me more of Himself. He is exposing me to something I had never really understood before, and that is His grace, and the freedom that I have in Him through this. For many years, I served God out of the obedience of what was expected of me from in and out of the church. While there has been much joy in serving God and to see Him building up his people, my heart was longing for more.
I did not understand then what I’ve come to know now, which was my heart was burdened because I wasn’t walking in the freedom of Christ. I was walking in the roles and rules set up by man. I would always fail serving in that way. I would never be able to make all the meetings, go to all the Bible studies, or be able to attend all of the outreaches.
I could only do what God had placed before me, and I found contentment in that. However, before there was contentment in these areas there was much heartache. I wanted to be used by God and serve as I saw others doing around me, but it just wasn’t working out. For years I thought I must be doing something wrong in my service to God as I often felt I must have had some sort of issue with my servant’s heart. I know now that there was nothing wrong with my heart, nor was it an attitude problem, my heart was just resistant to the works and demands being placed upon me by others to serve in a certain way. It was only when I experienced God’s grace in my life did I realize that God has a whole world in need of being loved, and that it does not take a person to lead me, guide me, or send me to these areas; it takes my husband and I’s faith and trust in God.
I first experienced this freedom in Christ last year. My family and I spent two months living aboard a sailboat loving the people of a small, sex worker town in the Dominican Republic. We weren’t sent out by our church, nor were we received by church when we arrived. We simply were led by the Spirit of God to do what He asks all of us believers to do, go and make disciples. We didn’t speak the language, and we did not have a defined goal, we just knew we were to go, and God used it. We were able to love the women and children involved in prostitution in that town, we had the opportunity to do some discipleship, but most importantly we were able to shine Christ’s love to others. It’s through this freedom in Christ that makes the concept of selling our things and going to wherever He wants us to be is far less scary and much more exciting.
God has only revealed the first few steps He is asking us to take, but has given us a vision of where those steps may lead. While God has not yet shown us where, how, or what the vision of His work looks like for us, He has clearly laid some initial steps for us to follow. Just as He gave Abraham the command to go without knowing where we trust that God will lead us as we honor His request to go, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8, NKJV).
First, we had a business that needed to sell, a church that to wean us from, and a house to sell. While those steps in and of themselves could have been daunting, God allowed the closing of each to happen quite quickly and naturally. As of last week our business sold, next week this family from Denver, CO will be traveling to Florida to check out some live-aboard sailboats, and the following week is our last Sunday at our home church. We are being faithful in these steps of obedience and trust that He will guide and show us the next steps just as clearly. God has called us out and we are going.
While God has not shown us where we are going yet, or even what we is to be doing specifically, I have come to realize that that’s not the most important aspect of all of this. God does not desire, or even need, me or my family’s work, He desires our hearts. He has our paths laid out and He goes before us, and until He reveals His plans we will continue to pray and wait. We will walk by faith, “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7, NKJV).
WHERE THEY ARE NOW
While Krista and Kyle aren’t currently on a sailboat in the Dominican Republic they are still passionately serving God in international ministry.
After Krista released this story, Called Out Upon The Water, in 2014 in Shout! OUTDOOR LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE, the Fox’s started the ministry Dia Gratia in Brazil. Read their April 2023 update to see how God is leading them on a new journey.
