Worlds Apart
While spending a morning in the Word, the Jars of Clay song, “Take My World Apart” came on my iPod.
To love you, take my world apart
To need you, take my world apart
I am on my knees
Now this is a scary prayer to pray. A risky thing to ask God to do.
I remember first really meaning these words right after a break up. Maybe that’s why it was a little easier to sing along with, because I already felt as if my world was shattering into millions of pieces before my very eyes. I was on my knees, desperate for change, desperate for something greater in my life.
That’s when the LORD first led me to the World Race.
I remember first really meaning these words right after a break up. Maybe that’s why it was a little easier to sing along with, because I already felt as if my world was shattering into millions of pieces before my very eyes. I was on my knees, desperate for change, desperate for something greater in my life.
That’s when the LORD first led me to the World Race.
Talk about taking your world apart. Physically speaking, I did give up a lot: clothes, car, home, family, job, etc. I have left all I know of normalcy and joined this subculture of Jesus Freaks who live out of backpacks, prophesy, and say things like, “don’t speak that over me!” Oh what will my family think…
For me, this whole idea of taking my world apart has a completely NEW meaning. It’s not about the emptiness I felt after some guy broke my heart, leaving me to pick up the pieces. No, it’s about being MOVED to BROKENNESS by the very things that break the heart of our Heavenly Father.
Poverty. Not the American version of poverty where one lives off a government check and orders from the McDonald’s Dollar Menu. No the kind of heartbreaking poverty where school is literally stopped because the trash trucks have just dumped a fresh load of garbage and the kids run across the street to gather as much trash as their arms can carry. This is their sustenance.
The kind of poverty where open wounds go uncared for because medical supplies as simple as band-aids are hard to come by.
The kind of cultures where an 18 year old is shocked to discover that I, in my early twenties, still have two living parents, because he is the ONLY one of his friends whose parents have not died from HIV/AIDS or TB. He is the exception because his parents have survived to see their late thirties.
This brokenness is realizing that the entire nation of Swaziland is predicted to be extinct in less than forty years because of diseases like HIV/AIDS.
So yeah, now when I sing, “to love you, take my world apart“, I know that I have seen what it is to have nothing, to live in desperation for something greater. I don’t sing that song and think, “well, what else have I got to lose because my plans didn’t turn out how I thought”… No, what else do I have to lose because I have promised to give all for the sake of Christ. It is the picture of the earth being pulled away, falling away like an apple when it’s cored, but instead of stem and seeds, what remains at the core is the cross, the empty grave, the symbol of redemption, the promise of salvation. Because that is what matters. That is TRUTH. So if taking my world apart means leaving my own world and experiencing eleven NEW countries and eleven NEW cultures that are worlds apart from all I’ve known, hoping to share the love of Christ… if it means making me so desperate I can look to nothing but the cross, if it means being wrecked heart and soul by the depravity of the world and the goodness of my savior, then, yes, take it apart.
Take it, LORD.
Yeah, this is still a frightening, risky prayer. But whoever said God was safe? No, He isn’t safe, but He is good.
“What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” Matthew 16:26
