It was in nearly every blog post. Every email. “Pray for affirmation!!” Okay first, what even is that? For anyone as lost as I was, it’s pretty much the I-am-so-sure-this-is-my-calling feeling. But why should I keep praying for that? I’d already been accepted and that was a sign enough for me. I made silly excuses for not getting on my knees about this one. Looking back, I think it was because I was scared that the answer might be no; that it was an accident; that this really wasn’t my calling; that I shouldn’t be here. The reason we kept being asked to pray about it was because that all the mobilizers and staff at world race had prayed over our applications and felt convicted to offer us a spot on the team because they felt it was God’s will that we should be there. Our own prayer of affirmation isn’t so much for decisiveness about whether we should or shouldn’t be there, but more of a coming to terms with our acceptance and finding a peace about our mission.
A couple of months ago, it was really heavy on my heart to ask a specific girl at my school if she had ever considered joining the race. I’m not sure why this hit so hard and so suddenly, but I felt led to mention it to her. She thought it was cool, but didn’t show much interest and didn’t bring it up again. Today, she asked to meet with me at dinner to discuss the race that I had mentioned to her months ago. So, I went. On the way there, I was extremely nervous. I wanted to say the right things. I said a quick prayer for guidance and then went inside. Here’s what we discussed.
I wasn’t quite sure how to talk to her without sounding like I was preaching to her, so I decided to pull from personal experiences and feelings and hope for a “me too” reaction. That is exactly what happened.
I’ll start by saying that my biggest insecurity throughout this process has been that I had no sign. There was no lightning-in-the-sky sign from God that I should sign up for this race. In fact, I signed up purely for the no-school, fun travel aspect. Little did I know that lots of other people felt that way too and that that small insecurity would become the most important part of my testimony that I could use to reach out to racers who have a common starting point. I first asked this girl why she wanted to go on the race. She told me that it was because she wanted to help people and that she thought she could use a good environment. Relatable. I used the Race partly as an excuse to run from college. In my head, I was so weak to pressure that my freshman year at college, I would get involved in all the wrong friend groups and inevitably go off the deep end. To me, the Race was a baby gate. If I take initiative and surround myself with Christian people, then all of that goes away…right? In that kind of environment, there’s no possible way I could mess up, or so I thought. It turns out that, um, I actually go to a Christian school and I’m surrounded by Christians all day long and for the craziest reason, I STILL struggle with pressure?!? Imagine that.
The second thing she asked was for my biggest piece of advice. I thought about and told her that the Race wasn’t there to change her. Identity at home is identity abroad. Like I wrote earlier, if it’s a challenge that you struggle with, you will struggle with it on the mission field too. I, personally, struggle with pressure. I don’t need friends to help with that, though, I can talk myself into making bad decisions on my own. If there’s a habit that needs to be kicked, it has to be done BEFORE departure.
We talked about the spectrum. On a theoretical spectrum, you have beginning to end ranging from finding your faith to falling in love with Jesus. When your faith is new, everyone wants to tell you the same thing, “don’t worry! You get to spend eternity in Heaven!” So when I first learned to start kicking my pressure challenge, at the beginning, I just said “no thanks, I’d rather not go to that party.” I’d go home, proud of myself for saying no, but then sit on my bed and wish I was there. I was just as bad as if I had gone to the party. I need to learn to destroy the desire. All I had to speak for me was “oh well….at least I get to go to heaven. you know. when I die. a hundred years from now.”
We talked a lot about prayer and how to pray. My excuse for not praying was that, if God knows everything and He’s all powerful then why do I have to tell Him? He can just see it for Himself. The other week I watched my friend open a college acceptance letter and then after I saw it, I walked away. The next day at school, she ran up to me and jumped up and down and screamed “I got in! I got in!” It was so different than just observing her opening the letter. I was able to be excited with her and empathize. This girl and I discussed the importance of maintaining a healthy relationship and the only way to do that is to communicate. He already knows, but He wants you to talk to him anyways, tell Him how you feel, prove that you’re invested in that relationship. He wants to be a part of your life. Prayer can be a really powerful thing. Through that kind of relationship, you learn that He’s more than what you thought. Maybe for you, He was Father or Friend. As you grow in Him, you learn that He’s also Teacher and Healer and Provider. Just when you think you know Him, there’s more because He is so much bigger than anything our earthly minds can even fathom. You slowly inch toward the falling in love part of the spectrum. The desire fades away. You can look at temptation now and not even want to participate because what you have is so much better. It’s not “at least I’ve got Heaven when I die” anymore, it’s present peace, “I’m a child of God RIGHT NOW.” That, in my mind, is what missions is all about, it’s about getting to that depth where you can look at people and wonder how in the world they could NOT want this. This peace and joy that being a child of divine brings to homes and families.
To get to this point requires active work, not passive wants. I love to complain that I don’t see God working and I can’t hear Him talking to me after I have yet to pray to Him. That’s no better than losing a quarter in your house, not getting off the couch all day and then wondering why you can’t find the quarter. God is perfect and turns His back to sin. We are not to try to bring God into our worldly lives, but instead let Him bring us into His holy life. He cannot turn to look at us when we proclaim to be Christians but our heart are still immersed in sin. We must walk around to the other side to see His face and at that point there is forgiveness and new life. He loves us regardless. I had a really bad giving-in-to-pressure point during my fundraiser a few weeks ago and the very next day, I saw that I had an extremely generous donation. I was curious as to why I wasn’t being punished for messing up. It was an act of love to remind me that we live in a deceptive world and the reality is that we mess up sometimes, but He doesn’t love us any less. He is a God of grace and truth, mercy and justice, and forgiveness. As long as we are faithful to Him here, He will continue to provide. I crave to be so deeply rooted that when troubles arise I have to do nothing but throw up my hands in trust that I’ll be led away from temptation and that I no longer have to rely on my own strength to handle the overwhelming.
All of these things led to my assuredness that this Race was where I needed to be. Aside from that, there is still much left to be done in regards to my faith.
I know this post was a little longer but I was really excited to share with you! After dinner, the girl decided that she will be attending the world race next year in place of her sophomore year of college. That made for a pretty good dessert.
