Why?
When I tell people that we’re going on the World Race, I get a lot of funny looks. Sure, it sounds like the experience of a lifetime to be able to travel around the world and visit 11 countries in 11 months, but why would we leave our jobs in order to do it? Isn’t it irresponsible to leave with no plan of what we will do when we get back? No guarantee of being able to support ourselves again?
Granted, no one has actually asked me those questions. Maybe everyone else knows why we’re doing this, or maybe they don’t care. Maybe I’m the only one wondering why we would do this and I have to explain it to myself so that I don’t get discouraged. Either way, the purpose of this post is to explain why we are leaving everything we know for a year in order to do God’s work. It is mainly for me, so that I can look at it and be reminded of our purpose.
This all started when Chris and I got married more than a year and a half ago. We had college debt and after reading Dave Ramsey’s plan for a “Total Money Makeover,” we both worked very hard to pay off all of our debt as soon as we could. We wanted to achieve the American Dream of having a family and owning a nice home in the suburbs, all while having the money to do whatever we wanted to do. We were on track to do just that. We were both extremely blessed to be able to find jobs in the same city right out of college when the economy was at its worst, and we used the money from those jobs to pay off all of our debt. We paid off $35,000 in 9 months and we were well on our way to building wealth for the rest of our lives.
I think it was about the time that we had paid off our debt that we both realized that we weren’t really happy with what we were doing with our lives. After finishing college, getting married and getting a job all within two months, a wave of depression hit me and made me really question where my life was going. Things that I thought would be so fulfilling left me feeling empty and I couldn’t help but ask “Is this it? Is this all that life is? What am I really doing with my life?” I was 22 years old and had accomplished some of life’s biggest milestones and all I could think about was, “Okay, the milestones have been reached; now what am I supposed to do for the next 70 years?”
As all of this was happening, our young-adult Bible study group was studying the book of Luke. If you haven’t ever read the book of Luke I would strongly encourage it. Luke holds one of the four accounts of Jesus’ life. It explains the way that Jesus lived when He was here on earth, it describes the things that He was passionate about and it describes the things that made Him angry. The way that Jesus lived is the example for the way that we, as people, are supposed to live.
It was a harsh reality to read about the things that Jesus was passionate about and to think that I honestly I wasn’t passionate about any of those things. Well, maybe if you had asked me I would tell you that I was passionate about feeding the hungry, providing shelter for the homeless and caring for the sick, but I never actually did any of those things. My life did not reflect the values which I knew to be true in my head.
While studying the book of Luke, for the first time in my life I saw myself as the Pharisee instead of the Jesus follower. I saw myself as being the person who was so infatuated with attaining the more lofty parts of scripture, checking personality traits off of a list of the things that Christians were supposed to do and surrounding myself with people who were just like me that I was missing the point! I had missed the point that the two greatest commandments in the Bible are to “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Luke 10:27). What does that mean? It means that you love God so much that you do everything you can to follow His commands. What are His commands; to love your neighbor as yourself. I had missed the point! I was too busy making sure that we were getting all settled in at our new church and creating our new Christian bubble that I was forgetting to love the people that God loves (which is everyone) and put other people’s needs before myself. This is how the Pharisees are referred to in the book of Luke: as those “who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else.” (Luke 18:9) As much as I hate to admit it, that was me.
This was a turning point for me. For the first time in my life I had seen myself as being on the other side of the fence. Jesus says
“If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14:15)
“Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching,” (John 14:24)
“When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ he said, ‘you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my lambs.’” (John 21:15)
“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like. They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.” Luke 6:46-49
I did not love God, or at least I wasn’t living like I loved God. I even questioned my salvation. Some of these thoughts came from a book that I was reading called “Crazy Love” by Francis Chan. In this book, Chan basically calls out our Christian churches in America and says that most of them aren’t really loving God because they aren’t following His commands, and therefore Heaven will have a lot fewer people than what we all think. This was a great challenge to me. I didn’t want to question my salvation because I wasn’t doing what God said. I thought that if I really believed that God loved me enough to send His perfect son to die for my sins, then I would love Him back! I owe everything to God!
This is what motivated Chris and I to go to Haiti to help re-build after the earthquake. We wanted to stop our cycle of selfish living and gathering wealth and help someone else for a change because that is what God told us to do. So we went. In Haiti, we saw some absolutely heart-breaking situations. I have never felt so rich, greedy and selfish in my life. I was awe-struck by the difference in how Americans live compared to how the Haitians live and yet, how much happier the people in Haiti seem to be than the people in the United States. The people were so happy! They played soccer in the streets and hung around laughing for hours in the middle of the scorching hot day and just seemed to be genuinely happy. This confirmed for me the fact that happiness has absolutely nothing to do with what you have or where you live or how you look. Happiness is based on relationships and experiences with people and you can be happy no matter what circumstances you are in.
Oh, and then there was the money thing. While studying Luke with our Bible study we came across an overwhelming amount of verses about how hard it is to be rich and a follower of Jesus. Here is a sample of some of the things that it says in Luke:
“And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” Luke 12:16-21
"When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.” Luke 18:18-30
Chris and I have wrestled a lot with the idea of being rich. As mentioned previously, at first we wanted to gain wealth and live an easy life free of money worries. Now, we desire to do what God wants us to do with everything that we have and if that means that we won’t be rich then we want to be okay with that.
So in September we plan on leaving everything that we know in order to do God’s work, and not just for one year. We want to be free to do whatever it is that God wants us to do with our lives, even though we don’t really know what that is yet. Maybe it is being full-time missionaries in one of the countries that we will visit, maybe it is working for a non-profit organization that focuses on feeding people who don’t have food, or maybe it is to come back to St. Joseph and do the things that we have been doing for the past year-and-a-half. We do not know what God has in store for us, but we are trying to take a step in pursuit of Him.
In summary, we want to show God that we love Him by doing what He says. We are going to leave everything that we have and the lifestyle that we know for eleven months so that we can be free from the stuff that distracts us and weighs us down and see the things that God wants us to see. We want our heats to break for the things that break God’s heart. We want to show love to people who are hurting, feed the hungry, and take care of the sick. As Richard Stearns, the CEO of WorldVision states in his book, “The Hole in Our Gospel,” “It’s not what you believe that counts; it’s what you believe enough to do.”
I am going to print this out and post in on the refrigerator so that I can remember why we are doing this and be encouraged that we aren’t crazy, we’re just trying to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.
