Greetings!
I wanted to share with you how I was called to the Mission field, more specifically, The World Race. I believe that we are all called into the mission field. Wherever you are, Believer, homeland or on foreign missions…you are living out the most exciting ministry there ever was. Which is sharing the wonderful news of Jesus Christ! He uses you wherever you are.
I can remember back to about four and a half years ago when I was up late “working on homework.” I started looking up John Piper Sermons and Invisible Children videos on youtube. Invisible Children is an organization that wants to stop The Lord’s Resistant Army led by Joseph Kony in Africa from abducting children for the sole purpose of brainwashing them into becoming soldiers. I remember listening to Roseline’s story over and over and just crying for hours. My heart was broken. That was the first time I can remember my heart truly breaking for these children over in Africa. I couldn’t fathom what they were going through, but my heart was filled with compassion that moved me into desiring some sort of action. I would pray and ask to be sent to another country. That same desire to love the lost and broken has only grown stronger throughout the past several years. Another video that has completely changed my perspective is titled “Prosperity Gospel” by John Piper. At the end Piper states one of my favorite quotes from his book Desiring God that, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him in the midst of loss; not prosperity.” I can remember the way that Truth penetrated right to my heart. My walk up to that point had been seeking God for His gifts rather than His Son. Immediately, I wanted to go away to a third world country, any country, and just love people. Even if all I could afford to give them was a hug, I would have done it in a heartbeat. So I started praying about what that would look like and when. My heart was ready, but my faith was not. So I just waited patiently and focused on my walk with The LORD.
Two or three years ago was when I had heard about the World Race through my good friend, Courtney. She told me all about it and to me it was the dream. She went through the application process and I remember being so happy for her. I would read the blogs and updates just wishing I was there myself. “That is where life is,” I would think to myself. In prayer, I knew that it still wasn’t my time to go.
Fast forward to about three months ago, I received a newsletter from The World Race about the 2014 routes. I’ll be graduating in May 2014 and there is nothing that I would rather do than run this race. So I went to the website, which I hadn’t visited since two years ago, and refreshed my mind about this mission trip. Every blog that I read was just pulling on my heart. “A life of abandonment” was what I longed for. I began praying about whether or not to apply but I felt so strongly that The Lord was already giving me the green light. So I prayed and applied. Then I continued praying that I wouldn’t be seeking this out of selfish motives and if Lord willing I do get the chance to go that I would trust He would provide. I have always trusted my heart in the Lord’s hands and knew that He has given me these desires for a very specific reason. I just wanted to know His exact Provision for my life and where He wanted me to go. So I sought it out, prayed, and waited all along the application process. The phone interview just confirmed my desire to go to a third world country. I talked with a woman who had been on the world race before and she just told me so many things that she had the opportunity to experience during her run-it was awesome!! Nearly a month later, I found out that I had been accepted! I was overjoyed.
Psalm 37:4-I delight myself in the LORD and he has given me the desires of my heart, Namely Himself. Not only has He performed the miracle of opening the eyes of my heart to desire Him, but he has given me certain desires of His Heart. Loving His People. Which is so surreal that words cannot describe. Here in America, The Lord puts specific people on my heart all the time to serve, love and pour my life out for, but there is this deep hunger and thirst to lay down my life in another country completely immersed in another culture. Someone shared an Ann Voskamp quote with me this summer which said that, “The potential for new life-is in the giving your life away.”
His perfect timing has been displayed and although my story is simple, there is something so fascinating to me about the contradiction of it all. As Shane and Shane have sung, “To starve is to feast and less of me is more of Jesus.”
