At the beginning of the Race, I got advice to write a “just in case” sermon, because when you go to church on the Race, for whatever reason, locals tend to think we’re all pastors. But I had never gone to Bible College, I have NO experience preaching or even public speaking. Month 3 rolls around, and I had not written that sermon. I had a few ideas rolling around and had even written a few of them down, but nothing would flow or I would get distracted and go off on a tangent and not be able to reel it back in. I started listening to main stream sermons to glean tips and topics for my own sermon. But instead of feeling encouraged by those, I felt discouraged and stopped writing the sermon I was working on. Month 3 was coming to an end, and we were heading to a four-day Leadership Development Workshop (LDW) before we went into month 4, and a teammate encouraged me to teach at the workshop. To my surprise, I said yes. I hadn’t written one sermon in three months, and I said yes to teach at a workshop for the entire squad in three days. So, we had a 24-hour bus ride to LDW, and I worked on that sermon probably 20 of those hours. It still wasn’t ready when we got there. So I spent all my free time preparing for that talk, which needed to last 30 minutes. I did it all on my own; several people asked if I wanted to share it with them before I had to teach it, but I declined. I ended up talking for the full 30 minutes, but I read straight from my computer screen, and it didn’t look at all like the main stream speakers I had been watching. It didn’t go horribly bad; the topic was good and the references were accurate, but the execution and the preparation stressed me out tremendously. I was terrified to do it again, but I knew I was going to give an actual sermon at some point.
In Mozambique, our ministry was basically all teaching and preaching. I was not going to get out of Mozambique without giving a sermon. Panic. “What am I going to do?!” I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do this by myself; but I was stuck between my prideful self-sufficiency and my team’s wealth of knowledge (three of them attended Bible college, and another two had already given sermons and liked public speaking). I swallowed my pride and asked for help. The first sermon went a lot like the teaching at LDW, but because I asked my team for help, they were able to encourage me and help me grow in that area. I started to shed that ugly outer coat of self-sufficiency. The next couple sermons went exponentially better than the first, and I am continuing to grow in that area because I asked for help and was vulnerable about my needs.
It is our nature to strive for independence. We want to be able to do things ourselves and feel deserving of an ice cream cone after a job well done. However, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned on the Race is that God wants us to be dependent on Him, in everything. But He also created us to live in community with one another, to help one another in love. We are not created to do everything by ourselves. This desire for independence exists in every area of life—work, school, financially, emotionally etc. We all want to be able to support and help ourselves; it’s the American dream, right? God has been breaking me of of this independence and asking me to be fully reliant on Him and His promises. I know that God has called me to the World Race, and fundraising is a part of it, which means I have to put down my pride and ask other’s for help. I have to ask for your help. My final financial deadline is less than two weeks away, and I am still $2,268 short of meeting that. I can’t make that goal on my own. I honestly don’t want to ask for help, but I know that God works through His church, His people. All I ask is that you honestly spend time with God and ask Him if He wants you to donate to this World Race thing He has called me to. Like I said, I can’t do this on my own, but I will be eternally grateful if you would join me in dependence on God and taking His Gospel to the nations.
