It all started with a call the Lord laid on my heart, a call to give up everything and carry the Gospel to all nations, a call to serve the least of these, a call to live radically and be changed for ever. That’s why I came on the Race. I believe the Gospel is true and if people die without surrendering their lives to Christ, whether they heard it or not, they will spend eternity without Him. I left because the thought of this made me want to weep for all those who would die never knowing the redeeming grace God offers them so freely. I left because I knew it wasn’t God’s fault, it was mine.
It’s all of ours.
On the Race, I have done relational ministry and discipleship in Serbia, I’ve worked the frontlines of the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Greece where I was able to minister to countless atheists and Muslims, showing them love when nobody else would, I have done construction site by side with locals on a church in Botswana, and I have preached the Gospel in the square of the city we were at in the Philippines where 32 Filipinos gave their lives to the Lord.
Its been incredible. I am drastically different than the boy who left America seven months ago.
Now we are moving into month eight and God gave me heart check. He asked me, “You know why you are doing this, but do you feel it anymore?” I just finished reading through the book of Jonah and I honestly related to him quite a bit when considering this question. He knew the attributes of God and knew Him intimately. He preached the Gospel to one of the most major cities of his time and watched as they repented and turned to the Lord in faith. He did great things in the name of the Lord, and yet, he did not love the sinner.
The great difference between Jonah and Jesus is that Jonah didn’t love the people he came to save, but Jesus had compassion for sinners and proved His love by dying for them on the cross.
I don’t want to spend the final four months of the World Race going through the motions because I know I am supposed to, but I desire to be moved by a heart that is broken for the lost, a love that will do anything and give up everything to see all come to know the salvation Christ offers them, a heart that won’t be able to say, “I’ve done enough”, when I get home, but will forever bring the Kingdom to the lost.
Jonah is one of two books that ends in a question. It kind of leaves the story open-ended. Something interesting I read while studying the book is, “The real issue isn’t how Jonah answered God’s question; the real issue is how you and I are answering God’s question.”
1. Do we agree with God that people without Christ are lost?
2. Like God, do we have compassion for those who are lost?
3. How do we show this compassion?
4. Do we have concern for those in our great cities where there is so much sin and so little witness?
5. Do we pray that the Gospel will go to people in every part of the world, and are we helping to send it there?
6. Do we rejoice when sinners repent and trust the Savior?
