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I am headed overseas to report in a country that grabs world attention as much for persecution of Christians as attacks targeting journalists. A friend who leads a mission has workers in the country where I’m going, so I asked him to pray for the trip. “Yeah, sure, I will pray,” he answered. “But must you go? You don’t need to risk your life by going there. It’s too dangerous for you to write about these things, let alone be over there yourself.”

I think I’d understand a non-believer’s concerns about my traveling to dangerous places where God calls me to report. In June the Lord sent me to Medellín, Colombia, the most violent city in the most violent country in this hemisphere, to what used to be Colombia’s bloodiest prison before the gospel swept it like a holy fire. Well-meaning friends offered similar warnings.

It’s harder for me to grasp such a fearful admonition by a mission leader. Is it because I have a family? Because women must be hearing God wrong when we hear him call us to dangerous assignments? Or is it because of a fundamental lack of faith and trust in God’s plan for our lives?

But the written word holds power. Getting the news out about what God is doing and what remains to be done by us, the hands and feet of Jesus, is vital to getting Christians to pray, give and go.

Mormon doctrine obliges its followers to spend two years of their lives as missionaries. What would the world be like if every evangelical obeyed the Great Commission? Muslims, claiming to obey Allah and thus guarantee their eternity in paradise, fearlessly fly jets into buildings. What if Christians tossed their fears aside and boldly obeyed a divine mandate to enter Satan’s strongholds, not on suicide missions of terror and destruction but to bear the gospel of peace? Mormonism and Islam are rapidly spreading. If every Christian tithed his or her time and talents, as well as treasure, to further God’s kingdom, what would God do in response?

I’ve been blessed to meet and interview several missionary “celebrities”—and in some cases, their survivors. When Peru’s air force shot down missionary Jim Bowers’ plane in 2001, killing his wife and daughter, secular journalists asked him why he would work in a dangerous place. Bowers, however, turned the question around: “Why do reporters go to dangerous places to report the terrible things that are going on? Reporters tell the bad news; missionaries tell the good news.

“It is the love of God that constrains us to go to the ends of the earth. In the will and providence of God, there is no such thing as an ‘accident.’ He plans everything that comes into our lives.”

Missionary Gracia Burnham, along with her pilot husband Martin, was kidnapped in 2001 by Islamic radicals in the Philippines where the couple served with New Tribes Mission. A botched rescue attempt killed him and wounded her. Last April in Burnham’s living room, I asked her advice for those who feel led to minister in volatile regions. Her answer: “I think the person needs to do what God calls them to do. If God puts a passion in your heart to go reach the Muslim community, that’s what you do. You don’t weigh the dangers, because if it’s time for you to leave that village, God’s going to make that clear, too.”

She added, “Yeah, looking at it from the outside, it’s pretty foolish. But God has called people to do very foolish things before. Even if he calls you to America to the concrete jungle, you need to do it.”

Here’s my answer to the mission leader who questioned my trip: “A week after I became a Christian in Costa Rica in 1987, God clearly told me to become a journalist. That calling sometimes is dangerous, but when I accepted Christ I told God he could do anything he wanted with my life. I gave him everything, and I trusted him with everything.

“Personal safety cannot be my top concern or deciding factor in whether I obey God. Tantamount is hearing his voice and obeying it. Getting out the news about our suffering brothers and sisters in Christ is what God called me to do. That’s why I’d like for you to please pray that I hear his voice and obey.”

Be prudent, seek godly counsel, test the spirit that you believe is calling you to do something, anything, dangerous or not. But beyond that, each of us ostensibly has already counted the cost when we made our personal decisions to follow Christ. We signed a blank contract. God does with us whatever he wants after that. We have the choice to say yes, and be blessed, or say no. God won’t love us any less for saying no, but who of us wants to give God less than what he gave us?

We are on mission, and our mission is to proclaim the gospel and help relieve suffering wherever God reveals it to us. What is that specific mission that God laid out for each of us, and us as the body of Christ? Will we let fear stop us from doing it?

God’s just asking for a trusting, willing heart that says simply, “Here I am, Lord. Send me.” You can’t do everything, but you can do something. And if we all do something as the Holy Spirit empowers us, the world will be radically better.

Make a difference.

Deann Alford is copy editor of World Pulse and a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas.