Well this week I launched into the first leg of my World Race journey. On Saturday morning I boarded a plane to Atlanta and headed to training camp, not knowing who I would meet or what I would be doing. So I decided to unpack my expectations and leave them at home. That seems to have been good choice so far and will probably continue to be my lifestyle for the next year.
So far I have met incredible people, slept under the stars, and engaged in some of the best worship of my life. Okay, so I also killed a scorpion next to my bed, ate sardines in rice water for breakfast, and haven’t showered in four days. But it has one of the most amazing weeks of my life. It has been good to look back and see God’s hand in bringing me to this place of surrender. There are times in your life when you are just more keenly aware that God is guiding you…seemingly laying the path out for you, simply saying ‘Walk ye in it’. Now is such a time for me. Some may call it a series of coincidences—I call them miracles.
A year ago a man named Bruce Wilkinson happened to speak at my church about the AIDS projects he was doing in Africa. My heart was stirred and just a few weeks following my friend happened to give me a book called ‘The Hole in our Gospel’, all about reaching out to victims of poverty, AIDS, and injustice. A few months later I happened to be given a book called ‘The Revolution in World Missions’, written by a man from India who described the vast gap between the western world’s idea of missions and the true needs of people in the eastern world to come to a saving knowledge of Christ. A few months after that I happened to be given an opportunity to go to South Africa at the last minute, where I put names and faces to the needy people I kept hearing so much about. The day before I came to training camp our church secretary happened to let me borrow this african movie called ‘Beat the Drum’ she had just picked up from the library. And this weekend when I happened to have an opportunity to ask the founder of the World Race how it got started, he described how his friend Bruce Wilkinson called him up. And of course, he happened to be asking him to help with this beat the drum movie project he was working and out of that the concept of the first World Race began.
And I guess if just ‘happens’ to be that God is guiding me, there is a chance perhaps that He also has such a plan for your life as well. Don’t be afraid to dream big!
“No ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for Him”. -Isaiah 64:4
