How did I get here? When did everything change?
These were the questions that were haunting me when I first committed to The Race. It seemed as if all of sudden that not only did the direction of my life changed, but the inside of me had changed. Not only was I doing something different with my future than many people surrounding me, but I felt different than the people that surrounded me. During this time I had become very sensitive to these differences within my life: how i was noticing the brokenness that filled the world, my growing passion for justice and a call to action, and my all-consuming desire for everyone to know the glory of the King. From the beginning I knew that God was re-directing my path, but what He was really doing was shaping my heart and changing my desires. It was no longer about what He was doing to my life, but how He was working in my heart.
In scripture, when Jesus broke into His disciples life’s He said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Pastor and author of, “Follow Me,” David Platt elaborates on this verse by stating, “Notice in his invitation that Jesus does not tell his disciples what he will call them to do. Instead, Jesus tells them what he will cause them to do. The commands he would give to them could only be accomplished by the work that he would do in them.” This emphasizes the importance of being rather than doing. By being in a constant relationship with God, one where He gives us a new heart, will motivate and shape what we do. The new heart that He gives us transforms our desires, our thoughts, our wills and the purpose of our life. I began to realize why I felt so different than before was because God had broken into my life and by entering into a relationship with my Creator, I had been given a new heart. Now I understood that me being called to The Race was a direct cause of the unending love of my Savior and how He had revealed Himself to me. I have a passion to pursue Christ and to share the gospel with everyone I can because of how my desires, thoughts, and wills are being aligned with my God’s. Thus meaning that now that my heart had transformed, so had my trajectory.
Trajectory is defined as: the path followed by a projectile flying or an object moving under the action of given forces. The second part of this definition has become very real in my life. I was now beginning to move with the force of the Holy Spirit moving inside of me. What an amazing realization that the spirit of the One who rose Jesus from the dead lives inside each of us! It is the Holy Spirit that God gave us to live by, which gives life and peace. That is why even though the trajectory of our life may appear to be scary or uncomfortable, for example living out of a backpack in foreign countries for 9 months, we are not called to be comfortable but called to take comfort in knowing our Lord will be with us always and that we can do everything through Him which is where our strength lies.
So what does all of this means for Christians in our modern world? We are different and we look different because we have different hearts. This isn’t our home because we were created for another lifetime. However, it is our calling to spread the good news, make disciples and love one another as Christ loved us. We follow God, we hold tight to what He has said, and we reflect Him to every broken part of this world. By our Creator giving us new hearts, He transforms the trajectory of our lives, leaving us never the same.
