“There’s no place I’d rather be, there’s no place I’d rather be, there’s no place I’d rather be, then here in your love, here in your love!” -Will Reagan & the United Pursuit Band.
Those words have become increasingly harder to sing for me. After all, can I even say there true? No, I really can’t. I can count at least a dozen other places I’d rather be then here on month 8 of my WR. And each one of those dozen places has a common theme…home. Can I just fast forward the next 4 months of the WR? Home is where my family and friends are waiting. Where the food is good & plenty. Where internet and wifi are constant. Where I can work, make some money then go home & relax. I long to be home because it’s perfect & once I get there all my problems will just go away. At least that’s been my thinking lately.
This month my team & I have had the pleasure of having one of my good friends and Squad Leader Jeffrey Roderick join us. This has been so great for many reasons, but chief amount them has been the wisdom he brings. One such example of this has been the Bible study he has started with our team. This past Monday’s was especially convicting and just what I needed to hear. If you read my last blog “I Want to go Home!”, it’s no secret how I desire to be home, but you see that’s the problem.
This past Monday Jeff took us through Hebrews 11 which is known as the “Hall of Faith” passage of scripture. It talks of the about Able, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah and how they had great faith despite not seeing all, if any, of the promises that God made them. I particularly like verses 8&9. They say:
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
Well if that doesn’t sound like the World Race I don’t know what does. Like Abraham, God has brought me to this place at this time. I know because I think back to the certainty I had when I KNEW I was going on the World Race. Unfortunately, I made the WR something it could never be, and I’m afraid I’m doing that very thing with home now.
AIM tells you to drop all your expectations of what you think the WR will be and they tell ya for good reason. Despite their advice and my best attempts to not have any expectations, the crack I left in my “expectation door” was just enough room for one, huge expectation to get through…that the WR would make me happy and fulfill all my needs. Looking back I realize how silly that is, yet you and I do it all the time. We constantly put all our hope in things, people, places, etc, and when it comes time for that thing to makes us happy it can’t and why…because it was never meant to. That’s what has dawned on me and my wanting to go home. I don’t want to go home per say. I want the unrealistic expectations I have put on home. That it’s perfect and that all my problems will go away once I’m there. What a load of crap, lol because we know it’s not true.
All that to say this. Home isn’t the promise land, my friends. That next job, that next car, that next relationship, that next dream, that next degree is not the promise land. Finding contentment in Jesus in this life and the life to come is the promise land. Let’s stop putting all our hope in things that we know won’t satisfy and instead look to the one who can.
And in this matter I give my judgement: this benefits you, who a year ago started not only to do this work but also to desire to do it. So now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. -2 Corinthians 8:10&11
