About 7 months ago, I made the decision to give Jesus everything and I mean everything when it came to my future. One of my favorite authors, David Platt, calls this the “Blank Check”. Essentially what that means is leaving everything on the table and allowing Jesus to write whatever He wants into that “check” for my life.
Come September, I will be participating in a program called The World Race (if you don’t know what The World Race is, this 3 min video can explain it better http://youtu.be/BiYUDhkLpTw). So the natural question is how did I come to this decision?
I fully believe that I have the same potential to serve and bring glory to The Lord making good money by using my engineering degree in a professional setting as I do working in an orphanage in Africa and everything in between. So in my attempt to make my life bring Jesus as much glory as I can, I wasn’t asking myself ‘what’ I should do as much as I was asking ‘why’ I wanted to do the different options I was looking into.
If you have a high performance car, you are not content only driving it around your neighborhood. You are going to want to take it on the biggest highway you can find because that is where you can really test its capabilities. I think so often in my life, I forget I have the God of the universe with unlimited power on my side. All too often, I treat God like an old station wagon and am fine keeping Him in the safety of the neighborhood. I remain in the known, take minimal risks, and allow myself to trust more in my own abilities than God’s provisions. I believe The Lord has the ability to exercise His power anywhere and everywhere, but I also believe He likes to show up more when we are at the end of ourselves and out of backup plans. While all the other opportunities I looked at for next year were good options, I knew what was really drawing me to them was more of a false sense of security rather than a desire to know and serve The Lord more.
I think it’s really easy for The World Race to sound very glamorous (I mean come on who gets to see 11 countries in one year?), but if there is one thing I am sure of, it is that this will be the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Take aside the fact that I will be giving up all the comforts, people, and places I have known my whole life to be put in a situation where all my possessions will be carried on my back, but I will be thrust into the middle of some of the most visibly hurting places in this world. I wish I could say I will be going into these 11 countries and ending all the poverty, hurt and brokenness, but let’s be honest, that will not be the case. The truth is God is going to do what He is going to do in these places regardless of whether I go or not. HE DOES NOT NEED ME. Yes, my desire is to be able to share the Gospel with people who have never gotten the opportunity to hear it before, but God doesn’t need me to do that either.
He does not need me or anyone else, but I believe He wants to use us. And I want to be used.
I want to see The Lord show up in newer and greater ways. I want to love more, let my heart break more, understand more, and grow more.
So that’s the ‘why’ for me with The World Race. It is the opportunity to put myself in a position where I know I am guaranteed to come to the end of myself and in that allow The Lord to do everything. It is getting on the Autobahn and saying “Jesus, show me what You can really do”.
