Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

| by archiveworldraceblogs

Ever since I was a little girl I can remember having a heart for people.
I have always loved meeting new people, reuniting with friends & family, and finding special ways to bless people.

My senior year of high school brought a lot of growth and direction in my life – as my relationship with the Lord grew stronger and more focused I began to understand that I was created for a purpose – and that purpose involved more than making good money, pleasing my high school professors, and making a good life for myself – that purpose involved doing God’s work for the Kingdom…
 
The first step in walking along this journey of God’s purpose in my life involved giving up my ‘dreams’ of going to medical school and being obedient in applying to Bethany Bible College. God very clearly spoke to my heart His desire for me to ‘study Christian counseling’. Little did I know that along my journey of learning and studying – in my times of soaking up His Word, learning what it meant to let go of comfortable, safe things one by one, I would also begin uncover glimpses of the depths of my heart.  It took me a fair amount of time to discover I was on an adventure with the Lord, that He had ordained each moment, step, challenge, struggle, success and victory up to this point in my life – and He wasn’t about to stop there. He was asking me for my life – and I began to realize a life altering truth, ‘only in losing my life – in dying to myself, my plans, my dreams, me, me, me, – could I truly find LIFE – in Christ alone”. It was then that I started to recognize the treasures, dreams, and plans carefully and lovingly knit within my heart by God Himself long before I ever knew and understood my purpose in this world. I had finally found life – in Him. Jesus is my strength, my joy, my portion, my healer, my breath, my heartbeat…
 
I began to ask the Lord to ‘break my heart for the things which break His heart’ and to ‘give me eyes to see others, in love, as He does’ – to ‘equip my hands and feet to bring healing to the dark places of others lives’ and to ‘take my voice and let me sing, always only for my King’. 
 
Over the last season of my life God has been speaking to me
through dreams about the nations, and through times of prayer laying specific
persons on my heart I have never met before to intercede for. One instance that
sticks out clearly in my mind is a picture of a little girl sitting in a dark dungeon in shackles. Only a small crack of moonlight hit her face, just enough for me to see her tear
stained cheeks. I quickly realized this was nothing I was capable of handling in my own strength and asked the Lord to affirm these dreams and revelations
through His Word. After praying for
this girl the words “Isaiah 42” burned in my mind. I quickly grabbed my Bible
and flipped to the passage: 

Isaiah 42: 6-7 (paraphrased) – “I the Lord have called you
to demonstrate my righteousness. I will take you by the hand and guard you, and
will give you to my people – as a symbol of my covenant with them. You will be
a light to guide the nations. You will open the eyes of the blind. You will
free the captives from prison, releasing those who sit in dark dungeons.” …I wept. I didn’t even know the Bible said something like this.

Now, how does the World Race play into all this? It’s pretty
simple – I’ve been on my internship for school for the last 5 months in Macon, GA
– three weeks ago I was at a young adults meeting. The leader Mr. Dan began to
talk about opportunities to get involved locally, and put a few plugs in for
opportunities to get involved outside the local area. His plug for Adventures
in Missions especially tugged at my heart so I circled the info. and told
myself I’d check it out eventually. Tired from a long day at the local rescue
mission and running around I crawled into bed excited to sleep. God had other
plans though – He told me to get up and check out the website adventures.org.

*It is important to note that I currently reside in a home with no internet –
however, once in a great while if the wind blows just right I manage to get a
connection.* Reluctantly I crawled out of bed, saying, “Alright Lord, if you
want me to look at this now, you’re going to have to give me an internet
signal.” I loaded up the internet on my computer and chuckled to myself when I
saw it was not working. “Looks like I’m going back to sleep Lord! HAHA” For whatever
reason I pressed refresh and suddenly the internet was working (literally) at
lightening speed – “Okay…I guess I’m going to look at this then“.

At first I looked at facts and seeing how much $ I would need to raise I was thinking, “No way Lord, my parents will never go for this. It’s completely crazy! Clearly I’ve heard you wrong on this.” Then He spoke, “Christy…don’t you think I can provide this for you? Why are you holding back? Haven’t I provided before?” This stung a little bit and after sensing no specific direction of what to do next, I found a promo video.  I had to pause it after 1 minute to take time to apologize to the Lord for not fully trusting Him in this. Those 6 1/2 minutes completely captured my heart. An hour later I found myself laughing and crying on the floor – weeping before the Lord and all I could say was – “that’s my heart Lord…that’s my heart! Okay! Okay! I’ll…I’ll do this!” So…
– a long time of prayer
– inquiry of WR info.
– phone call from WR person
– phone calls to family and trusted mentors
– more prayer & time in the Word (Isaiah 61)
– an application
– more prayer
– an e-mail
– a phone call
– an interview

– an acceptance notification… 1 1/2 weeks later God followed through and I discovered I had been accepted to the July 2010 WR!
 
All I can say is…”THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING…!!!!”