Madagascar! It’s a country that I used to hear about regularly from my nieces and nephews. It’s a country that is in some ways very peculiar. It’s a country where God ended up doing things I didn’t expect. What I had been told… 1) Lemurs were something you need to see. 2) The landscape is beautiful. 3) The people are even more beautiful. Now, these 3 things are great and ended up being 100% true! However, the way God wrecked me this month wasn’t. Disclaimer: (If you’re reading this blog hoping to hear a lot about Madagascar, you may be disappointed… but if you could please, stay with me.) I could go on and on about my experience in the country. In fact, I would rather do that. However, God has called me to share something else, that in ways is more difficult for me, but necessary. It’s a matter of my heart, and maybe, just maybe… your heart.
Meet Michael! Our translator for the month!… Let me first say, this guy is incredible…. He’s 21 years old, dude sings like an angel, he speaks 6 languages fluently, and on top of all has a passion to see people across Madagascar find freedom in Christ. My team had the privilege of working with him the entire month. Between door to door evangelism in the bush, and intimate times of cooperate worship I began to have more and more conversations with Mike about his life and his journey with Jesus. One day after ministry, Mike and me went to our favorite local café. As I was picking his brain about his beliefs and life experiences I asked him, “why do you think some believers have a difficult time hearing from God?”. This question had deep roots. Deep and personal to the point where I rarely brought it up with anyone which is odd, I am a pretty open person (sometimes toooo open :)). Mike is the kind of guy who just speaks his mind about any thing and everything spiritual…. He looked me in the eye and said, “You know Cj, no one should ever say they can’t hear from God with their Bible closed.”
I sat up a little straighter, and stopped stuffing my face with Gordon blue chicken and said… “man”. For the rest of the month I marinated on this thought… this truth that Gods word is one of the most practical and powerful ways to hear Jesus speak to us. It’s something that so easily gets overlooked in search of our own unique spiritual experience. I began to see that sometimes as Christians, maybe we suppress certain truths about God, which are intuitive to us, but in search of a more grandiose, personalized spiritual experience we forget them. I continued the remainder of the month processing, as well as putting into practice this simple truth, and sure enough… God began revealing. Right about now, you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with my title. Just hang with me, I’m getting there…
I have spent the last 3 months in Africa reflecting a lot on this traveling, international mission experience, and taking it all in as I go. If you read my blog “Why Go?”, I talk briefly about about my desire to open a boys home, potentially outside the U.S….. In searching this year, with hands open, and eyes open… Africa has begun to stick to me like dried paint. I just can’t seem to give enough, and no matter how hard I try to move on, I can’t. In my search for this place, a place I will one day call home, I began to ask myself a more personal question… “Where the heck is home?!”…. Coming out of a family where my parents moved around a fair amount, and I have moved myself a lot, I have honestly struggled to identify where home is exactly. In fact, when people ask me where I am from, now a days I usually am unsure of what to say. I have begun to struggle with envy towards people who can identify exactly where they’re from. In ways, it gives a person a sense of belonging, a sense of comfort and identity if you will… The World Race has opened up this deep void in me to call somewhere home. While transitioning has been fairly easy since I enjoying traveling so much, it has exposed an inner desire to truly have a place to call my home…
I began to search Gods word, and it began to hit me when I was studying John 15. Verses 4, and 5 say…
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing”. (ESV)
I began to meditate on this text, as well as several of the parables (particularly, the Lost Son in Luke 15). This idea of abiding in Christ, and he abiding in me sat in my heart and brain and it occurred to me… Here I am. I have come on the World Race, given up just about everything to serve the nations of the world for a year. I have come on the world race in search of home! I’ve come on the World Race to discover where the Lord wants me planted, to find a place to call home. Yet, here I am searching Gods word only to see that home may not be identified with a place, but maybe home is found only in the Fathers heart….
Maybe I have come on the World Race to discover a geographic location to claim as home, when all the while, God the Father has already claimed me as his home and is calling me to identify his heart… To be found in him only, that He would be home…..
Maybe it doesn’t matter where you find yourself on this earth. Maybe that doesn’t matter at all!…. In essence, maybe home isn’t a place, maybe home is wherever I am… because his heart is my home, I abide in him, I am found in him…..
With Love,
Cj
Important Note!
If you would like to donate or sponsor me for this year DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT make any donations to my World Race funding or this blog! Please shoot me an email at [email protected] to let me know that you want to donate to my trip. I will be posting again shortly about where God is leading me and what he is doing. Let me tell you.. it is AWESOME!!! Please stay subscribed, I will be continuing to post here 🙂
