These questions have been rolling around in my head as I am realizing that it’s not just a mission trip anymore. It has finally sunk in that my purpose out here is not to do “good things” and share the Gospel. While these are both noble things, God did not bring me on this journey to just do those things. He could have used me to do that in the States if that’s all He wanted from me. But He knew that He needed to draw me out of my comfort zone into total dependence on Him. He wanted to bring me on a journey so that I could see and experience for myself what authentic faith really looked like.
It might have taken me a little longer than some of the other Racers to realize this, but that doesn’t matter; I’m getting it now. I have moved past the “I’m serving God while having the time of my life” mentality. Don’t get me wrong, this is still the best experience of my life, but the adventure is no longer keeping me high. The adventure, the excitement of seeing new places and meeting and serving new people, is not sustaining me. In my soul, I knew that it couldn’t sustain me for long; I honestly didn’t want it to sustain me. But it did because I unknowingly allowed it to. I was running off of thrill fumes. For no explainable reason (explainable by earthly standards, that is), my tank has hit empty and I am no longer able to operate without total surrender of my life to Him.
What is so strange for me is that this revelation was not triggered by anything traumatic. I have been expecting to go through this stage since the outset of the Race. From talking to the Racers on the January team and reading blogs from last year’s team, I knew that it was inevitable that I would go through this process this year. But I was expecting it to happen in the midst of a hard month—a month living in tents with no running water, or a month of horribly organized ministry. I know that I am stubborn, and that it often takes a great deal of effort for me to pay attention to big things. I thought that I would only respond to God’s call to surrender my life to Him during a difficult situation. This is just all the more evidence for me that our God is a gentle God; a God that doesn’t need to put us in tough situations for us to learn lessons. That’s not to say that He doesn’t operate like that, but He was gentle with me and let me go through this process while I am having a wonderful experience in Phuket.
I’m becoming fully alive. This is the point of the Race, my friends.
