For me the World Race has been the most difficult season I’ve walked through in my life. It’s been a season that has felt like a gap year before the rest of my life. There has been an inexpressible amount of growth, and while I’m thankful for the everything the Race has and will offer me, in all honesty, often times I feel like I’d rather be home pursuing my own hopes and dreams. This has not felt like a season where I arise and say ‘Ok Jesus, what are we doing today?’ Each day has been a fight, a constant battle. Even a good quiet time charges me only for that time and then I feel drained again. It’s been a time when the right answers don’t do anything. Oh are you praying? Yep. Are you reading your Bible? Yup. Do you have bitterness in your heart? Nope I’ve been wary and made sure I’ve released it.
So what is it then? The truth that I’ve come to is sometimes God just ordains a season like this. A time of delay or a desert, when you’re not where you want to be and things aren’t easy. A time when you know there’s a calling on your life, but it is unobtainable. A time of waiting. You see God do this so many times throughout the Bible. You see Him do it with Israel in the desert before the promised land for 40 years. You see it with Joseph, who had dreams of greatness, but had to wait in slavery and prison for 13 years.
Something I struggled a lot with at first was what the purpose of this all was, but as I’ve wrestled in this season for a while, one of the passages in scripture I’ve fallen in love with during this time comes from Acts where it says “He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”?? (Acts? ?17:26-27?).
I’ve come to recognize that while God is not far, He wants us to grasp. He wants us to reach out with desperation. He wants us to make Him the place we turn to in hard times. He wants us to be in full dependence on Him. He wants to starve and kill the dark places in our hearts, the pride, the lust, and the entitlement that would eventually destroy us; and He wants to fill their spot with His true and pure love. A love that will redefine the way we look at and treat others and ourselves.
Hosea 2 has become my favorite chapter over this time. For those who don’t know, Hosea is a prophet that marries a prostitute, Gomer. Not soon after their wedding, Gomer leaves him to go back into the sex slave industry. It’s meant to be an analogy of our relationship with God and how we consistently turn away from Him. In Hosea 2, you see God talk about how he plans to address the situation with his bride, Israel. The initial response is brutal. God crushes all of the blessings He had given the, and it seems like he’s about to wipe them out, but in verses 14-16 we really get to see God’s character:
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. “In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master. ’” (Hosea 2:14-16)
Every time I read this it breaks me, the huge thing I’m learning is that when God wounds his children, He wounds like a surgeon. Not with the intent to harm but with the hope to heal. Seasons like this aren’t easy, but they are beautiful, and while I haven’t fully walked through it, I’m starting to understand more and more about the restorative character of God. I think my invitation for this blog is channeled more to those walking through a similar season or feeling like God is asking them to move into one. The invitation is to go or to buy in, because in the desert you meet a God who wants you to call Him husband and not master, and who seeks to heal and not harm. This is the God many of us need, but we won’t intimately know this part of Him until we’ve seen it, and the desert is one of God’s ordained places where He reveals it to us. I can tell you I’m thankful to be walking through it.
I love you guys,
Andy Ryngaert
My final fundraising goal is coming up at the end of December, I am about $1600 short. If you feel The Lord calling you to give, you can click the link in the progress bar at the top of the page! Thank you for your continued support of this trip whether it be financial, prayer or just encouraging words! You guys bring me joy!
